Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire (1915-1923)
The Armenian Genocide occurred across the Ottoman Empire—spanning Europe, Asia, and North Africa—and its successor territories, rather than within a country called Armenia. Between 1683 and 1914, the empire lost territory through military defeats, nationalist uprisings, and expanding European imperial power.
By the 19th century, observers labeled it the “sick man of Europe.” The atrocities occurred primarily in what is often referred to as historic or Western Armenia, which was part of the eastern Ottoman provinces. Sunni Islam, the dominant religion of the ruling elites in the Ottoman Empire, was in decline. In addition, non-Muslim subjects, including Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Jews, remained second-class citizens who faced legal discrimination, exclusion from military service, heavy taxation, and widespread hostility.
In 1878, European powers convened the Congress of Berlin to reshape the borders of Balkan countries while pressuring the Ottoman emperors, known as Sultans, to modernize and extend equal rights to all inhabitants. While not ensuring their security, the congress did recognize the “Armenian Question,” which was the debate about the treatment, rights, and undetermined status of Armenians.
In 1908, the Young Turks, political activists who wanted to modernize the empire, assumed power following a coup and raised hopes for modernization and equality. Armenians initially supported the revolution, but the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, the ruling political party of the Young Turks), soon adopted an increasingly nationalist and hostile stance.
During the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), the Ottoman Empire lost vast parts of its territories across Europe, which intensified resentment toward minorities. By World War I, Ottoman leaders portrayed Armenians as internal enemies. Allying with Germany and Austria-Hungary provided the empire with wartime cover to resolve the so-called “Armenian Question” through violence.
Elimination of the Armenian population unfolded in stages to abolish resistance. Armenian soldiers were first disarmed and reassigned to labor battalions, and then they were killed through starvation, exhaustion, or execution. On April 24, 1915, Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople were arrested, deported, and murdered. These arrests eliminated community leadership and marked the beginning of coordinated mass violence against Armenians across the empire.
This was followed by mass deportations of women, children, and the elderly, all forced to walk into the Syrian deserts under the pretense of “relocation.” Guards shot those who fell behind, and many died from starvation, disease, heat, and exhaustion. Survivors of these death marches were placed in concentration camps, where many were massacred.
Between 1915 and 1918—and continuing in some regions until 1923—Armenians endured abduction, forced conversion to Islam, enslavement, rape, torture, starvation, and massacres. Ottoman officials concentrated tens of thousands of Armenian deportees near railroad stations and transported them across the empire to their deaths. This train system was designed by German engineers with funding from Germany’s Deutsche Bank.
Approximately 1.5 million Armenians, in addition to Assyrian and Greek Christians living in the empire, were murdered. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) leaders Mehmed Talaat Pasha, Ismail Enver Pasha, and Ahmed Cemal Pasha—chief architects of the Armenian Genocide—were never held accountable.
The atrocities provoked widespread international outrage, fueling major humanitarian relief efforts led in part by United States (US) Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr. He reported to Washington that Ottoman authorities carried out a “campaign of race extermination” against Armenians.
The failure of justice to hold the perpetrators accountable later inspired Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to coin the term “genocide.” In 2021, US President Joseph Biden formally recognized the mass killing and deportation of Armenians as genocide. However, more than a century later, many countries have not yet formally recognized the genocide, while consecutive regimes in Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, have continued to deny it.