Today, the
Republic of Turkey rejects the notion that the event constituted a
genocide and instead claims that the deaths among the Armenians were a result of inter-ethnic strife, disease and
famine during the turmoil of
World War I. However, most
Armenian,
Russian,
Western, and an
increasing number of Turkish scholars believe that it was indeed a genocide, or campaign of state-sponsored
ethnic cleansing and mass extermination. For example, some Western sources point to the sheer scale of the
death toll as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the Armenians. The event is also said to be the second-most studied case of genocide,
[1] and often draws comparison with
the Holocaust. To date 21 countries, as discussed below, have officially recognised it as genocide.
