Armenian Genocide Causes

To further analyze the causes of genocides, the first genocide that scholars tend to examine is the Armenian genocide, which began on April 24th, 1915 and by its conclusion in 1917 would have taken an estimated 800,000 to 1.5 million lives. The Armenian Genocide was so horrific that in 1943 Raphael Lemkin, a polish lawyer, coined the word genocide deriving it from the stem of Ancient Greek γένος ‎(génos, “race, kind”) or Latin gēns ‎(“tribe, clan”) (as in genus), +‎ -cide ‎(“killing, killer”). The causes of the Armenian Genocide begin in the early 20th century when about 2.5 million Armenians called the Ottoman Empire their home, Life for the Armenians, who were Christian, was difficult and unpredictable, because they were often at the receiving
In 1908, a small group of Ottoman revolutionaries, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), popularly referred to as the “Young Turks”, came to power. Armenians welcomed this, but the new government became increasingly suspicious of their Armenian subjects. In January 1913, the most-militant members of the party, Enver Paşa and Talat Paşa, came to power in a coup d’état. Antipathy towards Armenians grew after the loss of the First Balkan War. Conflicts between Armenians and Muslims continued to support the suspicion that Armenians were trying to undermine the Ottoman Empire. As World War I began in the summer of 1914, the Young Turks joined the Central Powers (Germany and Austro-Hungary) against the Triple Entente (Great Britain, France, and Russia). Because Armenians lived along the Russian-Ottoman front, both the Russians and the Ottomans attempted to recruit the local Christians in their campaigns against their enemies. Despite many Armenians joining the Ottomans some did not and the Young Turks interpreted it as treason. In January 1915, Enver Paşa attempted to push back the Russians at the battle of Sarıkamış, only to suffer the worst Ottoman defeat of the