Turkey - Armenian Genocide
For centuries, the Christian minority under the Ottoman Empire strived for political representation. In the year 1900, the government of empire, in an effort to quell these calls, ordered wholesale massacres of Christians. Approximately 300,000 Armenian Christians died in these massacres. In 1908, the hopes of Armenians soared when The Young Turk Rebellion. The Young Turks relied heavily on Armenian support to accomplish the take over from the Sultan, and they had hoped to receive support for an increased role in the government, instead the Young Turks adopted a nationalist stance and began to gain support through propoganda blaming the Armenians for many of Turkey's problems. On April 24, 1915, the government implemented mass arrests of Armenian scholars and intellectuals, about 250 were rounded up and executed. This began a government plan of extermination, Armenians were gathered up and forced to move to relocation camps in the Syrian desert, camps that did not exist. No supplies were given to these people, and disease and starvation were rampant.
