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The reform project in Ottoman Armenia, also known as the Yeniköy Agreement, is a plan of reforms negotiated between and by the great powers in favour of the Ottoman Armenians and more precisely in favour of their home of settlement, the six vilayets (or Western Armenia), east of the Ottoman Empire. After decades of persecution that reached their peak in the Hamidian massacres (1894-1896) and the massacres of Adana (1909), the Ottoman Armenians, at the height of national awakening, were more and more demanding reforms during and at the beginning of the 19th century, supporting in particular their claims to Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty (1878) by which the Ottoman State had undertaken to implement them in its eastern provinces, but had not kept this promise.

For a year and a half, the Russian Empire, the United Kingdom, the German Empire, France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, as well as the governing bodies of the Ottoman Armenians themselves, are negotiating a plan of reforms designed to put an end to the abuses suffered by the Armenians as well as to ensure some autonomy for the Armenian provinces and this under European supervision. This reform plan, signed by the Ottoman government, provides for the creation of two provinces in Ottoman Armenia, each administered by a European Inspector General responsible for managing Armenian issues. Last episode of the Armenian question before the almost total destruction of this minority during the 1915 genocide, the project was repealed on the , a few months after the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, without ever having been put in place.

Background

From the Russian-Turkish War to the Berlin Treaty (1878): First Promises of Reform in Ottoman Armenia

Although European diplomacy was first concerned with Armenians during the Zeitoun revolt of 1862, which saw in particular the personal intervention of , it was above all after the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 that the Armenian question really emerged. The conflict saw Russian progress in the Balkans and in Ottoman Armenia, with the imperial army taking over Bayazet and Kars. The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople Nersès Varjapetian and the Armenian National Assembly then sent the Armenian primate of Andrinople to the Grand Duke Nicolas to include in the future peace treaty clauses guaranteeing autonomy of the Armenian provinces, then subjected to banditry by Kurdish and circassian bands. The patriarchate also drew close to Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev, then Russian ambassador to Constantinople. The Armenians obtain from the Russian negotiators the Treaty of San Stefano (), which provides for immediate reforms for the Ottoman Armenians and whose text follows:

These reforms are supposed to be implemented under Russian control, whose troops have advanced to