The Armenian genocide was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman government.Jo Laycock, "Beyond National Narratives? Centenary Histories, the First World War and the Armenian Genocide Armenian Genocide." Revolutionary Russia 28.2 (2015): 93–117.For studies from scholars of the Ottoman Empire, see David Gutman, "Ottoman Historiography and the End of the Genocide Taboo: Writing the Armenian Genocide into Late Ottoman History." Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 2:1 (2015) pp. 167–83. online In 1915, as the Russian Caucasus Army continued to advance into its eastern provinces the Ottoman military began the ethnic cleansing of the region's large historic Armenian population. The genocide was implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of able-bodied Armenian males through massacre and subjection as army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches to the Syrian desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and murder.Taner Akcam, The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton UP, 2013) online The diplomatic dimension considered here was the diplomatic response of Allied powers. Ottoman officials denied any massacre, and their German allies helped cover for them. Allied governments tried diplomacy to stop the genocide but were ignored.Thomas Schmutz, "Reacting to Violence: The Diplomatic Context of the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide (1913–1917)." Australian Journal of Politics & History 62.4 (2016): 501–13.
