In May 1895 , the Powers forced Abdul Hamid to sign a new reform package designed to curtail the powers of the Hamidiye , but , like the Berlin Treaty , it was never implemented . On 1 October 1895 , 2,000 Armenians assembled in Constantinople to petition for the implementation of the reforms , but Ottoman police units violently broke the rally up . Soon , massacres of Armenians broke out in Constantinople and then engulfed the rest of the Armenian-populated provinces of Bitlis , Diyarbekir , Erzurum , Harput , Sivas , Trabzon , and Van . Estimates differ on how many Armenians were killed , but European documentation of the pogroms , which became known as the Hamidian massacres , placed the figures at between 100,000 and 300,000
Hamidian massacres
Hamidian massacres
Armenian Genocide