The debate about the World War I deportation and massacre of
Armenians in eastern Anatolia has become more contentious with
time. Opponents of Turkey's European Union accession treat the
Armenian question as original sin. Yet much of the historical
debate upon which politicians pass judgment is tinged more by
polemic than by fact. Nine decades after hundreds of thousands
of Armenians—and millions of others—died during World War I, it
is important to dig down into the archives to show what the
historical record really says. There is little argument that
many Armenians perished during World War I, but there remains
significant historical dispute about whether Armenian civilians
died in the fog of war or were murdered on the orders of the
Ottoman government. More specifically, the debate about whether
or not there was a genocide of Armenians rests upon three
pillars: the record of the Turkish courts-martial of 1919-20
during which the new Turkish government, formed following the
defeat of the Ottoman Empire, tri