Rape and beating were commonplace.


InMarch 1914, the Young Turks enteredWorldWar I on the side of Germany. Armenians were accused of cooperating with the Russians. While certain Armenian nationalists did act as guerillas and assist the Russians, the Young Turks portrayed the entire population as a threat to the state. Under this guise of war, the Young Turk government began its attempt to eliminate the empire’s biggest minority: the Armenians.


On April 24, 1915, the date generally acknowledged and commemorated as the beginning of the genocide, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, mostly from Constantinople,were arrested and thenmurdered on theirway into exile.Not long after, tens of thousands of Armenian men were drafted into the Turkish army, supposedly to fight in the war. Instead, they were disarmed and slaughtered by Turkish soldiers. Over the next two years, hundreds of thousands of Armenian men, women and children were forcibly marched into the deserts of Syria under unbearable conditions. Thousands were killed by the Turkish soldiers transporting them, while thousands more perished fromstarvation, thirst, exposure and disease. The Turkish soldiers employed cruelmethods such as decapitation, rape, toxic gas, crucifixion, drowning and burning to kill their captives.


There is no definite end date for the Armenian genocide in written records. Some say that the killings ended in 1917, while some say the genocide continued well into 1922. In addition, massacres of Armenians took place in 1894, 1895, 1896, 1909 and between 1920 and 1923. Ultimately, population records indicate that therewere approximately two million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the First World War and by its end less than 400,000 remained.


Soviet Era


In 1917, the Bolsheviks took power in Russia andwithdrewtheir troops from the conflict with the Ottoman Empire. Soon after, Armenia joined with its neighbors, Azerbaijan and Georgia, to formthe Transcaucasian Federation


Thosewhowere not killed at oncewere driven through mountains and deserts without food, drink or shelter. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians eventually succumbed or were killed.


David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 1989.


and when the Ottoman Empire surrendered in 1918, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia emerged as independent states. In August of 1920, the Triple Entente recognized Armenia’s independence, but within a month Turkey and the Soviets invaded Armenia again. In 1922, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia combined to become a single republicwithin the Soviet Union. By 1936, the states dissolved to become independent republicswithin the USSR.


Armenian nationalism and religion were repressed under Soviet rule. Many Armenian churches were destroyed.As the SovietUnion began to crumble in the late 1980s, a new Armenian nationalist movement began influenced by the increasing population of Armenians in Azerbaijan. The growing population eventually led to the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict of 1989. In 1991, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic declared full independence, electing a president to


Amap of the Armenian Genocide. 6


http://genocide-museum.am/eng/mapping_armenian_genocide.php


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