In April 1909, Ottoman forces and Muslim mobs killed an estimated 30,000 Armenian Christians in and around Adana, in wha...

In April 1909, Ottoman forces and Muslim mobs killed an estimated 30,000 Armenian Christians in and around Adana, in what is now southern Turkey. The killings took place over roughly two weeks, beginning around April 14, and targeted men, women, and children in their homes, churches, and streets. Survivors described mass burnings of Armenian neighborhoods, systematic executions, and widespread sexual violence against women. The massacre occurred just months after the Young Turks came to power following the collapse of the old Ottoman regime in 1908. Far from bringing the promised reforms, the new government's rise coincided with a wave of ethnoreligious violence directed at Christian minorities across Anatolia. The Adana massacre is now recognized by historians as a direct precursor to the Armenian Genocide that began in 1915, carrying the same logic of ethnic and religious elimination. Armenian community leaders at the time documented the killings in detail. The victims were targeted specifically because they were Christian Armenians living in a region their ancestors had inhabited for centuries. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to ash. The death toll of 30,000 represents a conservative estimate, with some sources placing it higher. The Adana massacre is rarely discussed in Turkish state education. Turkish school textbooks, according to research by the Middle East Forum, continue to characterize Armenians as instigators of violence rather than its victims, and describe the broader "Armenian matter" as foreign-driven propaganda threatening Turkish national security. Erdogan himself denied in a speech in June 2026 that Ottoman or Turkish history contains "any genocide, no massacres, no oppression." That statement has since been viewed nearly 100,000 times on X, drawing renewed attention to events like Adana. #AdanaMassacre #ArmenianHistory #NeverForget