April 15, 1915
The Armenian Genocide, the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects from their historic homeland within the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey, started on this day, when Ottoman authorities rounded up and arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. The total number of people killed has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million. The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labor, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert. The current Turkish government continues to protest against the formal recognition of the genocide by other countries and to dispute that there ever was a genocide.
