[12] Armenians in the eastern provinces lived in semi-feudal conditions and commonly encountered forced labor, illegal taxation, and unpunished crimes against them including robberies, murders, and sexual assaults.

[18][19] From the mid-nineteenth century, Armenians faced large-scale land usurpation as a consequence of the sedentarization of Kurdish tribes and the arrival of Muslim refugees and immigrants (mainly Circassians) following the Russo-Circassian War.

[20][21][22] In 1876, when Sultan Abdul Hamid II came to power, the state began to confiscate Armenian-owned land in the eastern provinces and give it to Muslim immigrants as part of a systematic policy to reduce the Armenian population of these areas.

[28] Under international pressure at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the Ottoman government agreed to carry out reforms and guarantee the physical safety of its Armenian subjects, but there was no enforcement mechanism;[29] conditions continued to worsen.

[25] The Ottoman state bore ultimate responsibility for the killings,[38][39] whose purpose was violently restoring the previous social order in which Christians would unquestioningly accept Muslim supremacy,[40] and forcing Armenians to emigrate, thereby decreasing their numbers.

[41] Abdul Hamid's despotism prompted the formation of an opposition movement, the Young Turks, which sought to overthrow him and restore the 1876 Constitution of the Ottoman Empire, which he had suspended in 1877.

[58] Although the massacres went unpunished, the ARF continued to hope that reforms to improve security and restore lands were forthcoming, until late 1912, when they broke with the CUP and appealed to the European powers.

[59][60][61] On 8 February 1914, the CUP reluctantly agreed to reforms brokered by Germany that provided for the appointment of two European inspectors for the entire Ottoman east and putting the Hamidiye regiments in reserve.

[71] CUP leaders such as Talaat and Enver Pasha came to blame non-Muslim population concentrations in strategic areas for many of the empire's problems, concluding by mid-1914 that they were internal tumors to be excised.

[89] Armenian leaders urged young men to accept conscription into the army, but many soldiers of all ethnicities and religions deserted due to difficult conditions and concern for their families.

[93][94] Beginning in November 1914, provincial governors of Van, Bitlis, and Erzerum sent many telegrams to the central government pressing for more severe measures against the Armenians, both regionally and throughout the empire.

[132][133][134] Armenian homes, businesses, and land were preferentially allocated to Muslims from outside the empire, nomads, and the estimated 800,000 (largely Kurdish) Ottoman subjects displaced because of the war with Russia.

Resettled Muslims were spread out (typically limited to 10 percent in any area) among larger Turkish populations so that they would lose their distinctive characteristics, such as non-Turkish languages or nomadism.

The killings near the front lines were carried out by the Special Organization, and those farther away also involved local militias, bandits, gendarmes, or Kurdish tribes depending on the area.

[174] At least 150,000 Armenians passed through Erzindjan from June 1915, where a series of transit camps were set up to control the flow of victims to the killing site at the nearby Kemah gorge.

[187] Some Armenians were allowed to convert to Islam and evade deportation, but the regime insisted on their destruction wherever their numbers exceeded the five to ten percent threshold, or there was a risk of them being able to preserve their nationality and culture.

[212] Outside Istanbul, the traces of Armenian existence in Turkey, including churches and monasteries, libraries, khachkars, and animal and place names, have been systematically erased, beginning during the war and continuing for decades afterward.

[221] In general, Armenians were denied food and water during and after their forced march to the Syrian desert;[219][222] many died of starvation, exhaustion, or disease, especially dysentery, typhus, and pneumonia.

[218] In the western Levant, governed by the Ottoman Fourth Army under Djemal Pasha, there were no concentration camps or large-scale massacres, rather Armenians were resettled and recruited to work for the war effort.

[231] More than 200,000 Armenians were killed between March and October 1916, often in remote areas near Deir ez-Zor and on parts of the Khabur valley, where their bodies would not create a public health hazard.

[236][237] On 24 May 1915, the Triple Entente (Russia, Britain, and France) formally condemned the Ottoman Empire for "crimes against humanity and civilization", and threatened to hold the perpetrators accountable.

[250] As the British Army advanced in 1917 and 1918 northwards through the Levant, they liberated around 100,000 to 150,000 Armenians working for the Ottoman military under abysmal conditions, not including those held by Arab tribes.

[252] As a result of the Bolshevik Revolution and the subsequent separate peace with the Central Powers, the Russian army withdrew and Ottoman forces advanced into eastern Anatolia.

[287] CUP war criminals were granted immunity[288] and later that year, the Treaty of Lausanne established Turkey's current borders and provided for the Greek population's expulsion.

[296] According to historian Margaret Lavinia Anderson, the Armenian genocide reached an "iconic status" as "the apex of horrors conceivable" before World War II.

[308][309] In 2002, the AK Party came to power and relaxed censorship to a certain extent, and the profile of the issue was raised by the 2007 assassination of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist known for his advocacy of reconciliation.

[310] Although the AK Party softened the state denial rhetoric, describing Armenians as part of the Ottoman Empire's war losses,[311] during the 2010s political repression and censorship increased again.

[312] Turkey's century-long effort to prevent any recognition or mention of the genocide in foreign countries has included millions of dollars in lobbying,[313] as well as intimidation and threats.

Initially involving peaceful demonstrations by Armenians, the conflict turned violent and has featured massacres by both sides, resulting in the displacement of more than half a million people.

[339][340][341] Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide in 1944, became interested in war crimes after reading about the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian for the assassination of Talaat Pasha.