The Christian population of the western half of the region was exterminated during the Armenian genocide (1915–1917), organized and perpetrated by the Committee of Union and Progress as part of their Turkification policies.

[citation needed] Since the 1040s, the highlands have been under the rule of various Turkic peoples and the Safavid dynasty, with pockets of Armenian autonomy in places such as Artsakh.

[18] The central, axial chain of Armenian highland ridges, running from west to east across Western Armenia, is called the Anti-Taurus.

To the west is the Anatolian plateau, which rises slowly from the lowland coast of the Aegean Sea and converges with the Armenian highlands to the east of Cappadocia.

The Caucasus extends to the northeast of the Armenian highlands, with the Kura river forming its eastern boundary in the Kura-Aras lowlands.

[9] From 4000 to 1000 BC, tools and trinkets of copper, bronze and iron were commonly produced in this region and traded in neighboring lands where those metals were less abundant.

Seljuk Turks first arrived in the Armenian highlands in the 1040s and expanded westward, conquering territories and populating the peninsula until finally the Ottoman Empire was declared in 1299.

Considered the successors of the Abbasids, Sassanids and Seljuks, the Mongols eventually converted to Islam and established their dynasty in modern day Azerbaijan.

In 1468, the Ak Koyunlu Turks assumed power; their reign lasted until 1502 when the Safavids brought Armenia under Iranian rule.

Heavily contested for centuries between the Iranian Safavids and its archrival the Ottoman Empire, with numerous wars raging over the region, large parts of the Highlands comprising Western Armenia were finally conquered by the Ottomans in the first half of the 17th century following the Ottoman–Safavid War (1623–39) and the resulting Treaty of Zuhab.

[30] Eastern Armenia, the other major part of the Highlands, stayed in Iranian hands up to the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, when it was ceded to Imperial Russia.

During the first half of the 19th century, the Ottoman-held parts of the Armenian highlands comprising Western Armenia formed the boundary of the Ottoman and Russian spheres of influence, after the latter had completed its conquest of the Caucasus and Eastern Armenia at the expense of its suzerain, Qajar Iran, after four major wars spanning more than two centuries.

[31] The Highlands saw a massive demographic shift after the Armenian genocide and fall of the Ottoman Empire, with Western Armenia being relabeled "Eastern Anatolia".