During the First World War, the Union and Progress committee, a party-state with exclusive nationalism governing the Ottoman Empire, implemented the systematic destruction of its Armenian and Syriac subjects, thus breaking with the multi-ethnic imperial tradition.
The context of war was the necessary condition, conducive to these planned mass violence that was carried out in two stages: massacres of adult men and conscripts from April to October 1915, then deportation of women and children; gradual elimination of the deportees in the concentration camps established in the Syrian Desert and Mesopotamia. Forbidden to return by the Kemalist republic, the survivors and their descendants now form a global diaspora.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Shoah Memorial dedicated an exhibition to these events that foreshadow the mass murders that occurred during the 20th century, also highlighting the denial it continues to be subjected to.
