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Title: Armenians Vanished - Oppression and Extraction Survived
Subtitle: Angarya - Corvée Labor - Labor Battalions of the Two World Wars, an Ottoman-Turkish Policy of Forced Labor
Author(s): SUCIYAN, Talin
Journal: Revue des Études Arméniennes
Volume: 41    Date: 2022   
Pages: 239-252
DOI: 10.2143/REA.41.0.3291886

Abstract :
This article examines the continuities of slavery and forced labor between the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic in the forms of angarya and unpaid corvée labor. It argues that the Ottoman-era practice of angarya laid the foundations for the Labor Battalions of World War I and later World War II, coupled with oppressive and abusive taxation policies such as the Wealth Tax (Varlık Vergisi). Utilizing both the Armenian Patriarchate and Ottoman Archives, as well as the recently published autobiography of Zaven Biberyan, this article demonstrates that the policies used against the remaining Armenians, Greeks, and Jews in post-1923 Turkey were the latest manifestations of the well-tried policies which targeted the Armenian peasantry throughout the nineteenth century.

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