The Ottoman government destroys its Armenian population through mass deportation, starvation and killing — around a million or more dead, the Armenian presence in eastern Anatolia ended. The characterisation as genocide is established by the overwhelming weight of historical scholarship; Türkiye disputes it.
Why it mattersThe genocide stands behind Armenian threat perception to this day: the closed Turkish border, the reflex to read blockade as existential threat, and the political impossibility — until recently — of normalisation with Ankara. No account of Armenian decision-making in this module works without it.