In the propitious context of the First World War, the dictatorial and ultranationalist government of the Union and Progress Committee, at the head of the Ottoman Empire, implemented the systematic and planned destruction of its Armenian citizens: arrest and execution of notables in the capital and major cities, massacres of adult men and conscripts, deportation of the civilian population to the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia, elimination of the survivors of these death marches in the concentration camps where they had been regrouped. From April 1915 to December 1916, between 1,200,000 and 1,500,000 Armenians were murdered.

Forbidden to return by the Turkish Republic, the survivors and their descendants now form a global diaspora, mainly in Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and France.