Between 1915 and 1921 the Young Turks government of the collapsing Ottoman Empire persecuted Eastern Christian populations in Anatolia , Persia , Northern Mesopotamia and The Levant . The onslaught by the Ottoman army , which included Kurdish , Arab and Circassian irregulars resulted in an estimated 3.4 million deaths , divided between roughly 1.5 million Armenian Christians , 0.75 million Assyrian Christians , 0.90 million Greek Orthodox Christians and 0.25 million Maronite Christians ( see Great Famine of Mount Lebanon ) ; groups of Georgian Christians were also killed . The massive ethnoreligious cleansing expelled from the empire or killed the Armenians and the Bulgarians who had not converted to Islam , and it came to be known as the Armenian Genocide , Assyrian Genocide , Greek Genocide . and Great Famine of Mount Lebanon . which accounted for the deaths of Armenian , Assyrian , Greek and Maronite Christians , and the deportation and destitution of many more . The Genocide led to the devastation of ancient indigenous Christian populations who had existed in the region for thousands of years
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Persecution of Christians