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One of the first historical accounts of genocide, the Armenian Holocaust remains a dark reminder of the horrors humans are capable of committing against one another.

Though April 24, 1915 is commonly referred to as the date of inception, this atrocity was not actually caused by a single catalyst but rather by a collaboration of various social, political, economic, psychological, and moral factors. Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the ensuing Turkish Revolution, and the subsequent reinstatement of Ottoman rule, Armenians struggled with inequality, poverty, and oppression. Not only that, but the entire nation as a whole faced internal issues around their economy and government.

Then, in November of 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered WWI on the side of the Central Powers, thus setting themselves against their geographic neighbor and longtime enemy, Russia. In the widely-known Battle of Sarikamis, a battle in which the Ottoman Empire attempted to regain territory previously lost to the Russians, the War minister Enver Pasha had been supremely confident in their likelihood of victory. However, in an ironic turn of events, the Russians crushed their forces. As a result, Enver Pasha became suspicious of the Armenians, especially those who openly sympathized with the Russians.

Therefore, Enver Pasha began to take actions that would eventually lead to the inevitable genocide. He stared by spreading propaganda throughout the country’s Turkish population about the supposed traitorous nature of their fellow countrymen, the Armenians. Next, the War minister ordered that all Armenian military units be demobilized, disarmed, and sent to work in labor battalions, which would later become labor camps, then eventually death camps. Also, the Ottoman military began to draft healthy, able-bodied Armenians under the guise of conscription; however, they too were killed.
Then, the Turks began making more blatant moves, such as the infamous incarceration of 250 notable Armenian individuals. Finally, the true nature of the genocide became apparent under the Tehcir Law, which mandated the “temporary” deportation of all Armenians, justified as necessary to maintain national security.

The death marches that resulted from this law left somewhere between 500,000 to 1,000,000 Armenians dead and tens of thousands more as refugees forced to seek asylum in other countries. Though the majority of deportees died en route, the few that survived the trek across the Syrian desert found no additional comfort but awaiting death as a result of lack of preparation or gathering of resources that would have been necessary in order to sustain the lives of the deportees.

To this day, the Turkish government refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide for what it was.