premise: The Armenian Genocide was the extermination of Armenians who were mostly Ottoman citizens.
hypothesis: The Armenian Genocide ( Հայոց ցեղասպանություն , Hayots tseghaspanutyun ) , also known as the Armenian Holocaust , was the Ottoman government 's systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians , mostly Ottoman citizens within the Ottoman Empire and its successor state , the Republic of Turkey . The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915 , the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up , arrested , and deported 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders from Constantinople to the region of Ankara , the majority of whom were eventually murdered . The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases : the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour , followed by the deportation of women , children , the elderly , and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert . Other indigenous and Christian ethnic groups such as the Assyrians and the Ottoman Greeks were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government in the Assyrian genocide and the Greek genocide , and their treatment is considered by some historians to be part of the same genocidal policy .