Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide refers to the mass deportation, expropriation, and killing of Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire carried out chiefly by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, the "Young Turks") government during and after World War I. Most historians date its onset to 24 April 1915, when Ottoman authorities arrested and later executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. That date is now commemorated worldwide as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

The campaign proceeded through several interlocking measures: conscription of Armenian men into labour battalions where many were worked to death or shot; the Tehcir Law (Deportation Law) of 27 May 1915, which authorised the forced removal of Armenians from Anatolia; death marches into the Syrian desert, with concentration sites such as Deir ez-Zor; massacres carried out by regular troops, gendarmes, and the irregular Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa (Special Organisation); and the seizure of Armenian property under "abandoned goods" legislation. Estimates of the death toll generally range between 600,000 and 1.5 million, with most scholarship converging near 1 million.

The term genocide was coined by the Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1944, and Lemkin explicitly cited the Armenian case as a formative example. The 1948 UN Genocide Convention later codified the concept.

Recognition remains politically contested. The Republic of Türkiye officially rejects the genocide characterisation, framing the deaths as wartime casualties of intercommunal conflict. As of the mid-2020s, more than 30 states — including France, Germany, Canada, and the United States (Senate and House resolutions in 2019; presidential recognition by Joe Biden in April 2021) — together with the European Parliament (1987) and numerous scholarly bodies such as the International Association of Genocide Scholars, formally recognise it as genocide. The issue continues to shape Turkish-Armenian relations and EU-Türkiye diplomacy.