Unhappy Meal

Armenian Genocide, campaign of deportation and mass killing conducted against the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turk government during World War I (1914–18). Armenians charge that the campaign was a deliberate attempt to destroy the Armenian people and, thus, an act of genocide. The Turkish government has resisted calls to recognize it as such, contending that, although atrocities took place, there was no official policy of extermination implemented against the Armenian people as a group. For centuries the great mountain plateau of Eastern Anatolia—in present-day eastern Turkey—was inhabited primarily by Christian Armenians who shared the area with Muslim Kurds. In antiquity and the Middle Ages the area was ruled by a succession of Armenian dynasties, although it often faced incursions by outside powers. Armenian political independence was largely brought to an end by a wave of invasions and migrations by Turkic-speaking peoples beginning in the 11th century, and in the 15th and 16th centuries the region was secured by the Ottoman Turks and integrated into the vast Ottoman Empire. Armenians retained a strong sense of communal identity, however, embodied in the Armenian language and the Armenian Church. That sense of distinctiveness was fostered by the Ottoman millet system, which accorded non-Muslim minorities significant administrative and social autonomy. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were about 2.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, mostly concentrated in the six provinces of Eastern Anatolia. A significant number of Armenians also lived beyond the eastern border of the Ottoman Empire, in territory held by Russia. In Eastern Anatolia Armenians lived intermixed with the dominant Kurdish nomads. Armenians did not constitute a majority in any of the regions in which they lived, although they often resided in homogeneous villages and neighborhoods within towns and cities. Life for Armenian villagers and townspeople in the Ottoman Empire was difficult and unpredictable, and they often received harsh treatment from the dominant Kurdish nomads. Because local courts and judges often favoured Muslims, Armenians had little recourse when they were the victims of violence or when their land, livestock, or property was taken from them.