EXACTLY a century ago, on April 24th 1915, Ottoman officials rounded up scores of Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul, most of whom were later murdered. What followed is still bitterly contested. According to the official Turkish version, perhaps 500,000 Armenians died, some while fighting alongside invading Russians against Ottoman forces and others as a regrettable side-effect of deportations that were understandable in the context of the times. But many scholars say that 1m-1.5m Armenians died, and that their deaths were a result of a deliberate campaign to eliminate the Ottoman empire’s only sizeable Christian population. Members of the Armenian diaspora want the events recognised as genocide. What marks genocide out from other mass killings, and why does it matter what word is used?
