The first genocide of the 20th century?

Wars & Conflicts · Published 16 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: While many recognize the Holocaust as the definitive modern atrocity, historians and international bodies often point to a preceding tragedy. Between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman Empire engaged in systematic massacres and forced deportations of Armenians—an event that served as both a historical precedent and a blueprint for later crimes.

The recognition of the Armenian genocide is characterized by a stark divide between international consensus and official state policy. Outside of Turkey and Azerbaijan, there is a broad historical agreement that the Ottoman Empire's actions against Armenians constituted genocide. However, several governments remain reticent to offer formal acknowledgment due to ongoing political concerns regarding their diplomatic relations with the Turkish government.

The legal architecture for recognizing these events was built long before the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. In 1948, a United Nations War Crimes Commission report used the 1915 Armenian case as a vivid example of state-sponsored crimes against its own citizens to differentiate between war crimes and crimes against humanity. This precedent influenced the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters. By 1985, the 'Whitaker Report' formally cited the systematic Ottoman massacres as meeting the criteria for genocide.

The geopolitical friction persists today. Turkey demands that Armenia abandon recognition efforts as a condition for normalizing relations, while Armenia advocates for diplomacy without preconditions. Despite this, formal recognition has spread globally; as of 2026, 34 countries—including the United States, France, and Germany—have officially recognized the genocide. Even religious and cultural bodies have weighed in, with the International Association of Genocide Scholars passing a unanimous resolution in 1997 and various Jewish organizations affirming that the events were tantamount to genocide.

The human cost is often cited as reaching up to 1.5 million lives. Some advocacy groups, such as the Central Council of Jews in Germany, argue that these murders by starvation and dehydration served as a blueprint for the Nazi Holocaust. While Turkey continues to deny the genocide label, many European nations view this denial as a significant indicator regarding the nation's commitment to human rights.

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