Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide is the mass deportation and extermination of the Armenian population, planned and executed at the state level during the years of the First World War in the Ottoman Empire. The main phases of this process took place between 1915 and 1923, under the rule of the Young Turk Party "Ittihad ve Terakki" (Union and Progress) and the subsequent Kemalist regime, resulting in the destruction of approximately 1.5 million Armenians, while the western part of their historical homeland was completely emptied of Armenians. The implementation of the genocide had a premeditated and phased structure. The officially accepted start date is April 24, 1915, when more than 250 leaders of the Armenian intellectual, religious, literary, and political spheres were arrested and later martyred in Constantinople (including Grigor Zohrap, Daniel Varujan, Siamanto, Ruben Sevak, while Komitas suffered a severe psychological blow). With this step, the leadership of the empire aimed to deprive the Armenian community of organizational and spiritual leadership. This was preceded by the disarmament and extermination of about 60,000 Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army, which deprived the population of the possibility of self-defense. The second main phase involved the mass deportation of the population, which was formalized by the "Tehcir Law" passed in May 1915. The Armenian population of Western Armenia and other regions of the empire, mainly the elderly, women, and children, wer