In late 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers and launched an attack against neighboring Russia, its longtime adversary, on the Caucasus front. After a few early victories, however, the Ottoman army suffered a devastating defeat in early 1915, which allowed Russian forces to advance. Meanwhile, the capital Constantinople faced the threat of falling into the hands of France and England, allies of the Tsar. Feeling endangered, the Ottoman leadership grew suspicious of the Armenians, a Christian indigenous population that had lived in Eastern Anatolia (and the Caucasus) for millennia and had been subjects of the Turkish sultan for centuries.

Accused of collaborating with the Russians, Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army were disarmed, and soon after, the first massacres against their people began, marking the onset of what would become a full-scale genocide. The symbolic date for the beginning of this catastrophe is April 24, 1915: on that day, dozens of Armenian intellectuals and political leaders residing in Constantinople were arrested and later executed on government orders. The aim was to eliminate their leadership and prevent any organized resistance.

The arrest of the Armenian intelligentsia achieved its purpose, and the Ottoman authorities proceeded with mass deportations and massacres of Armenians throughout the empire. Once removed from their villages, Armenian men were often killed on the spot, while women, the elderly, and children were forced into death marches through the desert without food or water. Through this systematic strategy, the three-thousand-year-old presence of the Armenian people in Eastern Anatolia was virtually eradicated. Some survivors fled to the Caucasus, where Armenian-majority regions already existed, while others escaped to nearby Arab countries or to the West, where they established diaspora communities.

Each of these communities would preserve the memory of the genocide in the decades that followed. The beginning of this tragedy is universally recognized as April 24, 1915, the date of the arrests that marked the start of a mass slaughter of the Armenian people.