The Armenian Genocide is the mass killing of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. These killings were carried out in various regions of the empire by the Young Turk government, which was in power at the time. The first international response to the violence was expressed in a joint statement by Russia, France and Great Britain in May 1915, where the atrocities against the Armenian people were defined as "new crimes against humanity and civilization." The parties agreed that the Turkish government should be punished for committing the crime.

With the beginning of World War I, the Young Turk government, hoping to preserve the remnants of the weakened Ottoman Empire, adopted the policy of pan-Turkism - the creation of a huge Turkish Empire, absorbing the entire Turkic-speaking population of the Caucasus, Central Asia, Crimea, and the Volga region.

The policy of Turkism envisaged the Turkification of all national minorities in the empire. The Armenian population was considered the main obstacle to the implementation of this project.

Although the decision to deport all Armenians from Western Armenia (Eastern Turkey) was made at the end of 1911, the Young Turks used the beginning of World War I as a convenient opportunity to implement it.

On the eve of World War I, two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. About 1.2 million was destroyed between 1915 and 1923. The remaining Armenians were scattered throughout the world.

On April 24, 1915, with the arrest and subsequent extermination of about a thousand representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia, mainly from the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (Istanbul), the first stage of the extermination of the Armenian population began.

The second stage of the "final solution" of the Armenian question was the conscription of about three hundred thousand Armenian men into the Turkish army, later disarmed and killed by their Turkish comrades.

The third stage of the Genocide was marked by the massacre, deportation and "death marches" of women, children and the elderly to the Syrian desert, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed by Turkish soldiers, gendarmes and Kurdish gangs, or died of hunger and epidemics. Thousands of women and children were subjected to violence. Tens of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam.

The final stage of the Genocide is the total and absolute denial by the Turkish government of the mass murders and extermination of Armenians in their homeland. Despite the process of international condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey continues to fight against its recognition by all means.

Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute