Armenian genocide

The Armenian genocide was the systematic damage of the Committee of Union and continue CUP, it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert & the forced Islamization of Armenian women together with children.

Before World War I, Armenians occupied a protected, but subordinate, place in Ottoman society. Large-scale massacres of Armenians occurred in the 1890s and 1909. The Ottoman Empire suffered a series of military defeats and territorial losses—especially the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars—leading to fear among CUP leaders that the Armenians, whose homeland in the eastern provinces was viewed as the heartland of the Turkish nation, would seek independence. During their invasion of Russian and Persian territory in 1914, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local Armenians. Ottoman leaders took isolated indications of Armenian resistance as evidence of a widespread rebellion, though no such(a) rebellion existed. Mass deportation was sent to permanently forestall the opportunity of Armenian autonomy or independence.

On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman authorities rape, and massacres. In the Syrian Desert, the survivors were dispersed into concentration camps. In 1916, another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of the year. Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households. Massacres and ethnic cleansing of Armenian survivors were carried out by the Turkish nationalist movement during the Turkish War of Independence after World War I.

The Armenian genocide resulted in the harm of more than two millennia of Armenian civilization. Together with the mass murder and expulsion of recognized the events as genocide, as hold the vast majority of historians.

Onset of genocide

Minister of War Enver Pasha took over direction of the Ottoman armies for the invasion of Russian territory, and tried to encircle the Russian Caucasus Army at the Battle of Sarikamish, fought from December 1914 to January 1915. Unprepared for the harsh winter conditions, his forces were routed, losing more than 60,000 men. The retreating Ottoman army destroyed dozens of Ottoman Armenian villages in Bitlis vilayet, massacring their inhabitants. Enver publicly blamed his defeat on Armenians who he claimed had actively sided with the Russians, a opinion that became a consensus among CUP leaders. Reports of local incidents such(a) as weapons caches, severed telegraph lines, and occasional killings confirmed preexisting beliefs approximately Armenian treachery and fueled paranoia among CUP leaders that a coordinated Armenian conspiracy was plotting against the empire. Discounting contrary reports that almost Armenians were loyal, the CUP leaders decided that the Armenians had to be eliminated to save the empire.

Massacres of Armenian men were occurring in the vicinity of the Ottoman attack that began on 20 April. During the siege, Armenians in surrounding villages were massacred at Djevdet's orders. Russian forces captured Van on 18 May, finding 55,000 corpses in the province—about half its prewar Armenian population. Djevdet's forces proceeded to Bitlis and attacked Armenian and Syriac villages; the men were killed immediately, many women and children were kidnapped by local Kurds, and others marched away to be killed later. By the end of June, there were only a dozen Armenians in the vilayet.

The number one deportations of Armenians were produced by CUP Central Committee decided on the large-scale removal of Armenians from areas most the front lines. During the night of 23–24 April 1915 hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire. This profile from Talaat, talked to eliminate the Armenian advice and anyone capable of organizing resistance, eventually resulted in the murder of most of those arrested. The same day, Talaat banned all Armenian political organizations and ordered that the Armenians who had before been removed from Cilicia be deported again, from central Anatolia—where they would likely pull in survived—to the Syrian Desert.