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The Armenian Genocide took place in the Ottoman Empire, involving a campaign of deportation and mass killing against Armenian subjects by the Young Turk government.

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Table of Contents

Armenian Genocide, campaign of deportation and mass killing conducted against the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turk government during World War I (1914-18). Armenians charge that the campaign was a deliberate attempt to destroy the Armenian people and, thus, an act of genocide. The Turkish government has resisted calls to recognize it as such, contending that, although atrocities took place, there was no official policy of extermination implemented against the Armenian people as a group.

Armenians in Eastern Anatolia

For centuries the great mountain plateau of Eastern Anatolia-in present-day eastern Turkey-was inhabited primarily by Christian Armenians who shared the area with Muslim Kurds. In antiquity and the Middle Ages the area was ruled by a succession of Armenian dynasties, although it often faced incursions by outside powers. Armenian political independence was largely brought to an end by a wave of invasions and migrations by Turkic-speaking peoples beginning in the 11th century, and in the 15th and 16th centuries the region was secured by the Ottoman Turks and integrated into the vast Ottoman Empire. Armenians retained a strong sense of communal identity, however, embodied in the Armenian language and the Armenian Church. That sense of distinctiveness was fostered by the Ottoman system, which accorded non-Muslim minorities significant administrative and social autonomy.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were about 2.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, mostly concentrated in the six provinces of Eastern Anatolia. A significant number of Armenians also lived beyond the eastern border of the Ottoman Empire, in territory held by Russia. In Eastern Anatolia Armenians lived intermixed with the dominant Kurdish nomads. Armenians did not constitute a majority in any of the regions in which they lived, although they often resided in homogeneous villages and neighborhoods within towns and cities.

Life for Armenian villagers and townspeople in the Ottoman Empire was difficult and unpredictable, and they often received harsh treatment from the dominant Kurdish nomads. Because local courts and judges often favoured Muslims, Armenians had little recourse when they were the victims of violence or when their land, livestock, or property was taken from them.

The great majority of Armenians were poor peasants, but a few found success as merchants and artisans. Armenians' involvement in international trade led in the 17th and 18th centuries to the establishment of significant Armenian settlements in Istanbul and other Ottoman port cities and as far away as India and Europe. Although Ottoman society was dominated by Muslims, a small number of Armenian families were able to attain prominent positions in banking, commerce, and government. For several generations in the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, the chief architects of the Ottoman court were in the Armenian Balian family. The prominence and influence of the well-educated and cosmopolitan Armenian elite had a drawback, however, in that it became a source of resentment and suspicion among Muslims. In the 19th century Armenians struggled against the perception that they were a foreign element within the Ottoman Empire and that they would eventually betray it to form their own independent state.

Young Armenian activists, many of them from Russian Caucasia, sought to protect their compatriots by agitating for an independent state. They formed two revolutionary parties called Hënchak ("Bell") and Dashnaktsutyun ("Federation") in 1887 and 1890. Neither one gained wide support among Armenians in Eastern Anatolia, who largely remained loyal and hoped instead that sympathizers in Christian Europe would pressure the Ottoman Empire to implement new reforms and protections for Armenians. The activities of the Armenian revolutionaries, however, did stoke fear and anxiety among the Muslims.

Anti-Armenian feelings erupted into mass violence several times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When, in 1894, the Armenians in the Sasun region refused to pay an oppressive tax, Ottoman troops and Kurdish tribesmen killed thousands of Armenians in the region. Another series of mass killings began in the fall of 1895, when Ottoman authorities' suppression of an Armenian demonstration in Istanbul became a massacre. In all, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in massacres between 1894 and 1896, which later came to be known as the Hamidian massacres. Some 20,000 more Armenians were killed in urban riots and pogroms in Adana and Hadjin in 1909.

In 1908 a small group of Ottoman revolutionaries-the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), an organization within the broader Young Turks movement-came to power. Armenians welcomed the restoration of the Ottoman constitution, and the promise of elections led Armenians and other non-Turks within the empire to cooperate with the new political order. Over time, however, the ambitions of the Young Turks became more militant, less tolerant of non-Turks, and increasingly suspicious of their Armenian subjects, whom they imagined were collaborating with foreign powers. Increasingly authoritarian, the Young Turks consolidated power and sidelined their more liberal opponents, and in January 1913 the most militant members of the party, Enver Paşa and Talat Paşa, came to power in a coup d'état.

Antipathy toward Christians increased when the Ottoman Empire suffered a humiliating defeat in the First Balkan War (1912-13), resulting in the loss of nearly all its remaining territory in Europe. Young Turk leaders blamed the defeat on the treachery of Balkan Christians. Furthermore, the conflict sent hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees streaming eastward into Anatolia, intensifying conflict between Muslims and Christian peasants over land.

Fearful Armenians capitalized on the Ottoman defeat to press for reforms, appealing to the European powers to force the Young Turks to accept a degree of autonomy in the Armenian provinces. In 1914 the European powers imposed a major reform on the Ottomans that required supervision by inspectors in the east. The Young Turks took that arrangement as further proof of the Armenians' collusion with Europe to undermine the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire.

As World War I began in the summer of 1914, the Young Turks joined the Central Powers ( Germany and Austro-Hungary) against the Triple Entente ( Great Britain, France, and Russia). Because Armenians and Assyrians lived along the Russian-Ottoman front, both the Russians and the Ottomans attempted to recruit the local Christians in their campaigns against their enemies. The Young Turks proposed to the Dashnaktsutyun, by then the leading Armenian political party, that it convince Russian Armenians as well as those in Ottoman lands to fight for the Ottoman Empire. The Dashnaks replied that Armenian Russian and Ottoman subjects would remain loyal to their respective empires. That was seen by powerful Young Turks as an act of treachery.

Armenians in the Ottoman Empire fought alongside the Ottomans, while Armenian volunteer units made up of Russian subjects fought on the Russian side. In the areas where Ottoman and Russian troops faced each other, there were massacres of both Christians and Muslims.

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Armenian Genocide | History, Causes, & Facts

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Armenian Genocide, campaign of deportation and mass killing conducted against the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turk government during World War I (1914-18). Armenians charge that the campaign was a deliberate attempt to destroy the Armenian people and, thus, an act of genocide.

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Ottoman authorities arrested 240 Armenian leaders in Constantinople and deported them to Asia Minor, which is commemorated as the beginning of the genocide by Armenians.

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View all events before 1933

In anticipation of threatened Allied landings at the strategically important Gallipoli peninsula, Ottoman authorities arrest 240 Armenian leaders in Constantinople (today: Istanbul) on April 24, 1915, and deport them to Asia Minor. This roundup is commemorated today by Armenians as the beginning of the genocide.

The Ottomans claimed that Armenian revolutionaries had established contact with the enemy and were preparing to facilitate a Franco-British landing, from where the Entente forces would march on Constantinople. When challenged by the Entente Powers, the then neutral United States, and even by their own allies Germany and Austria-Hungary, Ottoman officials justified the deportations as a precautionary measure that was essential to the defense of the Empire. Mass atrocities and genocide are almost always perpetrated within the context of armed conflict. The destruction of the Armenians was closely linked to the events of World War I in the Near East and the Russian Caucasus.

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April 24, 1915. On this date, Ottoman authorities rounded up 240 Armenian leaders in Constantinople, an event commemorated today by Armenians as the beginning of the genocide.

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Having suffered a crushing defeat in the Caucasus Mountains only a few months prior, the Ottoman Empire's authorities are searching for someone to blame. To put an end to any cries for Armenian independence, they begin the methodical movement of Armenian troops and disarm them inside their ranks.

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The Armenian Genocide I THE GREAT WAR - Week 37

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Much of the genocide came to an end with the conclusion of World War I. Armenian women and girls were often sold or abducted during this time.

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"Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention. What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians."
-Talat Pasha, in a conversation with Dr. Mordtmann of the German Embassy in June 1915

The Armenian Genocide unofficially began with the arrest of 250 Armenian intellectuals by Turkish officials on April 24, 1915. Over the next several years a series of systematic deportations and mass executions along with intentional starvation would cause the deaths of more than one million Armenians. The aftermath left the remaining Armenian population scattered, resulting in one of the greatest diasporas in the twentieth century.

Below is a condensed history of the Armenian Genocide, beginning with the life of the Armenians before the genocide and extending to the genocide's legacy today.

The Armenians before the Genocide

The Armenians and other Christian communities, including the Greeks and Assyrians, were significant minorities in the Ottoman Empire. Despite being a multi-religious and multi-ethnic state with members from all three of the great monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism), the empire was dominated by ethnic Turks. The second half of the 19th century, saw the rise of Turkish nationalism that placed emphasis on the ethnic and religious identity of the majority element of the empire to the growing detriment of religious and ethno-religious minorities inhabiting the country. Beset by a series of military defeats, an ever-shrinking economy, and an overall political instability on both domestic and international fronts, the Ottoman Empire eventually turned inwards. The various Turkish nationalist movements meanwhile grew both in strength and stature, a growing sign of their influence being the nearly overnight proliferation of literature and articles that touted the uniqueness and supremacy of Turkish civilization.

The military losses that saw the further fragmentation of the empire and the ensuing reactionary nationalism would have a disastrous impact on Empire's remaining Christian minorities, but especially the Armenian community. It left them as one of the largest Christian groups in the Ottoman Empire, geographically largely confined to Eastern Anatolia and away from other Christian populations, and thus especially vulnerable to political abuse and collective violence. Although throughout the centuries Armenians had been considered the "loyal nation," and had risen to economic and civic prominence in the most important of imperial urban centers and in the capital, with the rise of Turkish nationalism their situation was becoming increasingly intolerable and untenable. The first Armenian political parties established around this period sought to address the increasing vulnerability of the Armenian cultural life in the empire, seeking political and economic reforms that would alleviate the growing discrimination towards the Armenian minority. This growing Armenian political awareness on one hand, and their economic overachievement in the Sultan's domain on the other, would contribute to the atmosphere of distrust between Turks and Armenians.

The Armenian question, long a fixture of European and Ottoman diplomacy, was now becoming a fiercely debated topic of highest importance in Turkish politics. Political and economic reforms advocated by European powers and at least on paper embraced by Ottoman authorities was fast becoming a mere afterthought given how fast events on the ground were developing. Tensions would ultimately come to a head when a series of pogroms were unleashed against the Armenians and to a lesser extent against other Christian groups in the empire. The Hamidian massacres of 1894-1896 claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, serving, in the words of one Armenian historian, as a "dress rehearsal" for the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

In the years leading up to the genocide, the Ottoman authorities would further tighten the restrictions for learning, property ownership, and religious practices for minorities, including the Armenians, in the empire. This would foreshadow future events.

The Armenian Genocide

It can be difficult to pinpoint an exact date when the Armenian Genocide begins because it was the culmination of a series of policies targeting the Ottoman Empire's Armenian population. In February 1915, Armenians serving in the Ottoman army were removed from active duty and forced into labor battalions. However, April 24, 1915 is widely considered the date the genocide began because it was then that Turkish authorities arrested 250 Armenian intellectuals. The reason given was fear that the Armenians were in league with Russia, the Ottoman Empire's historic rival, and could serve as a potential fifth column. The hysteria created by World War I created a perfect cover for the Ottoman government led by the nationalist ruling party of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a.k.a. the Young Turks, to set in motion its genocidal plan against their Armenian fellow citizens.

In May 1915, the deportation of the Armenians from Empire's eastern provinces began apace. A series of consecutive laws passed by the Turkish government gave it the right to confiscate or otherwise impound Armenian properties and businesses left behind by the departing deportees as a wartime necessity. Other restrictions of similar or harsher nature soon followed, leaving the Armenian population defenseless, property-less, and generally destitute. Forced marches, massacres became more commonplace and widespread, especially on deportation routes. The Turkish military instituted a number of gruesome methods to exterminate the Armenian population, some of which would be adopted and refined by the Nazis a mere 25 years later. Those who were not killed outright by the military often faced starvation along the way. Rapes of women and girls were also commonplace.

The Armenians who managed to survive the marches were sent on foot to concentration camps created by the Ottoman military. These camps were located near modern Turkey's southern border, in the Syrian desert of Deir ez-Zor. The Turkish government routinely withheld food and water from the Armenians in the camp. The lack of nourishment, coupled with unsanitary conditions and widespread disease, meant life expectancy at the camps was extraordinarily short. Armenian women and girls were often sold while in the camps by Turkish gendarmes to local Arab bedouins and chieftains. Many of the Armenian women were also routinely abducted and taken as forced brides by Turkish and Kurdish militiamen.

Much of the genocide would come to an end in 1918 with the conclusion of World War I.

Reaction to the Genocide

The international community was fully aware of the genocide as it was unfolding. Several European countries and the United States had active consular missions throughout the Ottoman Empire providing a detailed account of events during the Armenian Genocide. In addition, Christian missionary organizations and charities were also active in the area at the time. It is through these missions that newspapers of the period were able to get regular updates on the events in Turkey. In the years after the genocide, several western witnesses to the atrocities would publish their own accounts, most notablyHenry Morgenthau, the former US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

Aid groups, especially from the United States, sent groups to provide relief to the Armenian people. In the aftermath of the genocide, thousands of Armenian people were adopted by westerners. In all, relief groups raised more than $100 million to provide aid to more than two million Armenian refugees.

Between 1919 and 1920, a series of Turkish court cases issued guilty verdicts to the Three Pashas, three senior officials and orchestrators of the genocide. These convictions were for naught, as all three had left the country. One hundred and fifty Turkish men implicated in the genocide were arrested by Allied authorities and sent to Malta for trial. All the detainees would eventually be returned to Turkey without trial. In the end, there was no punishment for those involved with the Armenian Genocide.

The lack of justice inspired Polish law student Raphael Lemkin to begin his work defining the term genocide. The massacres against Armenians influenced Lemkin's drafting of a law to punish and prevent genocide. Although it would take more than 20 years, Lemkin would eventually see the crime of genocide made illegal by the international community when the United Nations passed the Genocide Convention in 1948.

The Armenian Genocide, Denial, and Memory

As the first of the modern genocides, the Armenian Genocide holds a complicated place in world history. For decades, the Armenian community, dispersed throughout the globe, struggled with recognition. Today, more than twenty countries officially acknowledge the atrocities as genocide. Uruguay was the first to officially recognize the genocide back in 1965. Several countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Slovakia and, most recently, Cyprus in early April 2015, have gone as far to make genocide denial a crime.

The topic of recognition is a largely political issue in the United States. Turkey is seen as a strategic ally, especially post 9/11, making leaders in Washington, DC cautious about officially recognizing the genocide. However, 48 states have taken steps to officially call the massacre of the Armenians genocide, the latest state to do so being Indiana. In Minnesota, the genocide was first marked by a proclamation by Governor Jesse Ventura.

Two countries officially deny the Ottoman government's role in the elimination of the Armenian community-Azerbaijan and Turkey. Turkey has taken a far more aggressive approach to genocide denial, threatening lawsuits and calling into question the authenticity of academic research into the Armenian Genocide. One famous example is Dr. Taner Akçam, a Turkish scholar. Dr. Akçam has written extensively on the Armenian Genocide, and came under harsh criticism by Turkish or pro-Turkish scholars. In 2007, while a guest lecturer at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Akçam was sued under Turkey's laws that forbid 'insulting Turkish-ness.' The lawsuit was eventually thrown out. The University of Minnesota itself was sued by a pro-Turkish American organization which questioned the authenticity of materials found on the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies website. In 2011, this suit was also dismissed.

Besides lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and public denunciation by Turkish officials the denial of the Armenian Genocide has also academic dimensions with studies designed to cast doubt on the veracity of eyewitness reports, consular dispatches from sites of massacres, and relativization of the numbers of persons killed. Despite the persistence of denial, the overwhelming majority of historians and genocide scholars agree that the massacres of the Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire cannot but be classified as genocide, given the intent of the perpetrators, the scope of the massacres, and their social, demographic and cultural consequences.

Beyond the reach of international politics, the legacy of the Armenian Genocide continues to be explored by a new generation of Armenians and Armenian-Americans through film, music, and literature.

Further Reading

For more information on the Armenian Genocide, denial, and memory, check out:

Killing Orders: Talat Pasha's Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide, by Taner Akçam. This new book by acclaimed Turkish historian offers a fresh new take on documents showing criminal intent on the part of the Turkish rulers during the Genocide and refutes contemporary denial of the Armenian Genocide through primary sources and meticulous research.

Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789-2009, by Fatma Müge Göçek. University of Michigan sociologist Fatma Müge Göçek tackles the Armenian Genocide and its denial in this groundbreaking study of original Turkish sources by tracing the emergence of the official Turkish narrative from its origins to its present-day form.

"Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide," by Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton. In this article published in the Journal of Holocaust and Genocide studies, a trio of American genocide scholars unveil the secret correspondence between former Princeton University historian Heath Lowry and the Turkish Ambassador to the United States wherein Prof. Lowry offers to ghost-write a letter on behalf of the Turkish ambassador to Robert Jay Lifton and protest latter's inclusion of the Armenian Genocide in his book on Nazi doctors. It tackles the broader issue of professional ethics and genocide denial in the academia.

My Grandmother: An Armenian-Turkish Memoir, by Fethiye Çetin. This book by Turkish human rights activist and prominent lawyer Fethiye Çetin details her discovery of her Armenian roots, which had been an elaborate and decades-long family secret.

Court Dismisses Turkish Coalition Lawsuit Filed Against the University of Minnesota

On March 30, 2011, US District Court Judge Donovan Frank dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Turkish Coalition of America against the University of Minnesota. The lawsuit arose from materials posted on the university's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) website, including a list of websites CHGS considered "unreliable" for purposes of conducting scholarly research. The Turkish Coalition claimed the university violated its constitutional rights, and committed defamation, by including the Turkish Coalition website on the "unreliable" websites list.

Bruno Chaouat, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in 2011, said of the ruling: "This is an important victory for scholars and educators all over the United States. I want first to express my gratitude to General Counsel at the University of Minnesota, and in particular to Brent Benrud, for his outstanding work on this case. I applaud Judge Frank's decision, as it bears witness to the high esteem in which the judicial system in this country holds academic freedom. This outcome honors the principles of freedom of speech, and is a remarkable example of the law's protection of free inquiry into matters of public interest."

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In the aftermath, relief efforts were made by various groups, including western witnesses who published accounts of the atrocities. Relief groups raised over $100 million to aid more than two million Armenian refugees

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6/28/1919 - Germany Signs Versailles Treaty 2/24/1920 - Nazi Party Established

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6/28/1919 - Germany Signs Versailles Treaty 2/24/1920 - Nazi Party Established

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The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to admit guilt for World War I, cede territories, limit its military, and pay reparations, much to their displeasure; In 1920, the Treaty of Trianon reduced Hungary’s territory and population, exacerbating Hungarian discontent.

The development of National Socialism began with the formation of the German Workers' Party in Munich in 1919, which was reorganized in 1920 when the NSDAP, or Nazi Party, under Adolf Hitler, cleverly attempted a coup will be in 1923 including, followed rapidly the.

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Significant events that occurred between the years 1914-1933

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8/1/1914 - World War I BeginsFollowing the crisis touched off by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Germany declared war on Russia and additional countries joined the war within several days.

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Between 1919 and 1920, the Armenian Genocide aftermath saw survivors grappling with immense trauma and displacement. Armenian diaspora communities emerged worldwide, advocating for justice and recognition, while ongoing conflicts and diplomatic efforts shaped the quest for remembrance and healing.

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The genocide continued until 1923, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.

By the end of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian homeland had been devastated, and the surviving Armenian population was scattered across the Middle East and beyond.

The genocide had a profound and lasting impact on Armenian identity, culture, and demographics, shaping the modern Armenian diaspora and fueling demands for recognition and justice in the decades to come.