The First Long-Term Cause Of The Armenian Genocide
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The first long-term cause of the Armenian Genocide was the tension between the Turks and the Armenians. The Armenian people had made their home in the region of modern day Turkey for around 3000 years. Armenia had reasonable amounts of independance for periods of time for example in the 4th century AD, Armenia became the first nation in the world to make Christianity the official religion of the country. In the 15th century, Armenia united with the Ottoman Empire, in the broadest sense of the term. The majority of the Ottoman Empire was Muslim and disagreed with the Armenians Christian ways. Armenians had less rights than their Turkish neighbours, having to pay higher taxes among other things. But despite this, the Armenians flourished, tending to be wealthier and better educated than the Turks. Of course their success was greeted with resentment from the Turks. The tension finally erupted in the 1890s when the Ottoman Empire began to crumble, and this tension and conflict of beliefs eventually escalated to the Armenian Genocide.
The next cause that led to the Armenian genocide was the actions of the Young Turks. The Young Turks were a…show more content… Between 1894 and 1896, the Turks responded to the Armenians protests for equal rights with a state sanctioned massacre of the Armenian people. This involved the Turkish soldiers, military officials and even every men ransacking Armenian cities and villages and murdering the citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished. These killings later escalated to a full-blown genocide on April 24, 1915.
The official date for the inception of the Armenian Genocide was April 24, 1915. Armenian intellectuals were the first to be targeted by the Turkish government who arrested and executed several hundred of them. Next, everyday Armenians were forced from their homes to flee through the Mesopotamian desert without water or