Armenian Genocide

After World War II and the holocaust, a man named Dr. Lemkin came up with the term genocide to describe what had happened. The UN then came up with the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." In this the UN defined what the term "genocide" means. It states that "genocide means acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Examples listed in it as genocide are "killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." During World War I (1914-1918) Turkey was experiencing a hard time. They took out their anger on a group of people in their country known as the Armenians. Today, it is still debated that what happened to them during the war is considered genocide or not.

From the 1830's - 1876 the Ottoman Empire was ruled by a man name Tanzimat. Tanzimat used the millet system to run his empire. This meant that each religious group was able to run their own affairs. Through this system the Ottoman Empire began moving towards a democracy as well as everyone being considered equal. In 1876 Hamid took over as sultan. Hamid didn't agree with Tanzimat's reforms. Unlike Tanzimat, Hamid wanted to be seen as a Muslim religious leader and so he un-did the reforms that Tanzimat had established and began to persecute non - Muslims. Just five years before World War I began, a group known as the C.U.P. (Committee of Union and Progress) or Young Turks overthrew Hamid and took over the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turks had different ideas from that of Hamid, one of them being that they wanted a country of all Turkish people. Their slogan became "Turkey for the Turks" and this slogan showed their Turkish nationalism.

The Ottoman Empire wanted very badly to expand its empire. When war broke out between Russia and Germany, the Young Turks saw this as a perfect time to get involved and quickly joined the side of the Germans. However, they were defeated rather quickly by the Russians which angered them very much. They immediately began to seek revenge by taking out their anger on the Armenians. The Young Turks ordered that "all Armenian