For a half century leading up to World War I , the Armenian populations of Anatolia became increasingly politically active , and in turn endured increasingly more brutal persecution under Sultan Abdul Hamid II . As the Ottoman Empire declined , its political leadership either authorized or tolerated increasingly violent and reckless attacks on the Armenian population , attracting harsh criticism from various Western nations whose missionary communities in Anatolia witnessed several wide scale massacres of Armenians . From 1894 to 1896 the Sultan ordered the deaths of up to 300,000 Armenians , resulting in at least 50,000 Armenian orphans , in the Hamidian massacres , which were later described by BBC correspondent Chris Morris in '' The New Turkey '' ( Granta Books , 2005 ) as " a portent of the grim events of 1915 "
Hamidian massacres
Hamidian massacres
Armenia–Turkey relations