( CNN ) The mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire , which began 100 years ago Friday , is said by some scholars and others to have been the first genocide of the 20th century , even though the word `` genocide '' did not exist at the time . The issue of whether to call the killings a genocide is emotional , both for Armenians , who are descended from those killed , and for Turks , the heirs to the Ottomans . For both groups , the question touches as much on national identity as on historical facts . Some Armenians feel their nationhood can not be fully recognized unless the truth of what happened to their forebears is acknowledged . Some Turks still view the Armenians as having been a threat to the Ottoman Empire in a time of war , and say many people of various ethnicities -- including Turks -- were killed in the chaos of war . In addition , some Turkish leaders fear that acknowledgment of a genocide could lead to demands for huge reparations . So , what do we know about happened in those fateful days ? Here are some answers : . The Ottoman Turks , having recently entered World War I on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire , were worried that Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire would offer wartime assistance to Russia . Russia had long coveted control of Constantinople ( now Istanbul ) , which controlled access to the Black Sea -- and therefore access to Russia 's only year-round seaports . Many historians agree that the number was about 2 million . However , victims of the mass killings also included some of the 1.8 million Armenians living in the Caucasus under Russian rule , some of whom were massacred by Ottoman forces in 1918 as they marched through East Armenia and Azerbaijan . By 1914 , Ottoman authorities were already portraying Armenians as a threat to the empire 's security . Then , on the night of April 23-24 , 1915 , the authorities in Constantinople , the empire 's capital , rounded up about 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders . Many of them ended up deported or assassinated . April 24 , known as Red Sunday , is commemorated as Genocide Remembrance Day by Armenians around the world . Friday is the 100th anniversary of that day . This is a major point of contention . Estimates range from 300,000 to 2 million deaths between 1914 and 1923 , with not all of the victims in the Ottoman Empire . But most estimates -- including one of 800,000 between 1915 and 1918 , made by Ottoman authorities themselves -- fall between 600,000 and 1.5 million . Whether due to killings or forced deportation , the number of Armenians living in Turkey fell from 2 million in 1914 to under 400,000 by 1922 . Almost any way one can imagine . While the death toll is in dispute , photographs from the era document some mass killings . Some show Ottoman soldiers posing with severed heads , others with them standing amid skulls in the dirt . The victims are reported to have died in mass burnings and by drowning , torture , gas , poison , disease and starvation . Children were reported to have been loaded into boats , taken out to sea and thrown overboard . Rape , too , was frequently reported . In addition , according to the website armenian-genocide.org , `` The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria , where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger . '' No . Genocide was not even a word at the time , much less a legally defined crime . The word `` genocide '' was invented in 1944 by a Polish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin to describe the Nazis ' systematic attempt to eradicate Jews from Europe . He formed the word by combining the Greek word for race with the Latin word for killing . Genocide became a crime in 1948 , when the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide . The definition included acts meant `` to destroy , in whole or in part , a national , ethnical , racial or religious group . '' Armenia , the Vatican , the European Parliament , France , Russia and Canada . Germany is expected to join that group on Friday , the 100th anniversary of the start of the killings . Turkey , the United States , the European Commission , the United Kingdom and the United Nations . A U.N. subcommittee called the killings genocide in 1985 , but current U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declines to use the word . Also , a year ago , on the eve of the 99th anniversary of Red Sunday , then-Turkish Prime Minister ( now-President ) Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered condolences for the mass killings , which he said had `` inhumane consequences . '' While Turkey vehemently continues to reject the word `` genocide , '' his remarks went further than those of any previous Turkish leader in acknowledging the suffering of Armenians .
The 100th anniversary of the start of the mass killings should be celebrated Friday . activists and academics oppose the use of the word ` ` genocide '' Most estimates of the deaths fall between 600,000 and 1.5 million .