Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 24, 2022
The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. At the orders of Talaat Pasha, an estimated 800,000 to 1,200,000 Armenian women, children, and elderly or infirm people were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916. Driven forward by paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robberies, rapes, and massacres. In the desert, the survivors were dispersed into concentration camps. In 1916 another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of 1916. Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households. The Turkish nationalist movement carried out massacres and ethnic cleansing of survivors during the Turkish War of Independence after World War I. The Armenian genocide destroyed more than two millennia of Armenian civilization in eastern Anatolia. (Full article...)