Armenian Genocide

Before Ottoman invasion - lived in their native Armenia - devoted to Christianity even as rulers adopted Islam

Ottoman empire - Islamic state. Christian Armenians were often discriminated against for their beliefs, wealth and power, taxed disproportionately, growing resentment, percieved as a threat

Resistance - Hamidian massacres 1894-1896

Genocide - systematic and mass deportation, murder and forced islamisation 
Casualties - around 1 million

Dates - 1915-1917

Resistance groups based in Russia

Young Turks (Enver Pasha) - Adana massacres

Battle of Sarikamish against Russia - defeat blamed on Armenian treachery

Marched to desert in Syria, left to starve, thrown in wells and off cliffs, beaten, stabbed…

Children forcibly taken and converted to Islam

Hidden as a ‘result of the war’

Turkish government still denies it was a genocide, claiming it to be an unfortunate consequence of World War 1.