WHERE: Ottoman Empire (Present day Turkey)
WHEN: 1915-1923
WHO: Armenian and Assyrian Christians and Greeks (victims); Ottoman empire (perpetrators)
WHAT: 1.5 million killed
WHY: As a religious minority in Ottoman Turkey, Christian Armenians had been subjected to discrimination and persecution over the centuries. During World War I, this religious conflict intensified when the Young Turk government entered the war on the side of Germany. Armenians were blamed by the Young Turks for taking the side of Russia. The Young Turks portrayed them as a threat to the state and put in place measures aimed to exterminate the Armenians through deportations and mass killings.