The Distribution of the Armenian Abandoned Properties in an Ottoman Locality: Kayseri (1915–18)

Abandoned properties of the deportee Armenians is a new topic in the literature which began to attract the interest of scholars. As a general tendency, most of the related studies focused on the evaluation of the rules and regulations on the abandoned properties. Even though it is important to take legal framework into consideration, this article would rather focus on the analysis of the actual process in an Ottoman locality, Kayseri. By doing this, it tries to go beyond presenting the ‘mentality’ of the ruling elite, and construct the actual history of the process. In the first part of the article, the studies on the abandoned properties would be analyzed, and in the second part, the distribution of the Armenian abandoned properties in the sanjak of Kayseri would be detailed.