The Armenian Genocide (1915-1923)

The Armenian Genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century.

The Genocide, or "The Great Crime," took the lives of 1.5 million Armenians, who were massacred by Ottoman Turkey's "Young Turk" government, beginning in 1915. The deportation and mass extermination of Armenians continued until 1923.

The Armenian Genocide began on April 24, 1915, when Ottoman authorities arrested and killed some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Those arrested included Armenian doctors, lawyers, parliamentarians, authors, and artists. Armenian civilians—including the elderly, women and children—were then forcibly removed from their homes and sent on death marches for hundreds of miles, with no food or water.

Tsitsernakaberd, a memorial to the Armenian Genocide overlooking Yerevan

Planned and executed during World War I, the Armenian Genocide saw the virtual elimination of Armenians from their ancestral homeland. Those who were not killed immediately were led on horrific death marches, like the one through the Der Zor desert in Syria. The mass exodus of surviving Armenians from Anatolia resulted in the dispersal of the Armenian people to every corner of the world. Today, the large Armenian diaspora comprises over 4 million people (roughly equal to the number of Armenians living in the modern Republic of Armenia).

Armenian communities around the world commemorate each April 24 as "Armenian Martyrs Day," which they observe with religious and cultural memorials.

To this day, the Republic of Turkey continues to deny that the Armenian Genocide took place, although historians and scholarly authorities throughout the world recognized the Genocide as a tragic fact of history.

Read more about the tragic legacy of the Armenian Genocide...