In 1914 the Ottoman empire was home to at least two million Armenians, most of whom inhabited the six provinces in Eastern Anatolia that separated the heartland of Ottoman Turkey from the Russian Caucasus. As a substantial Christian minority in a Muslim empire, with their own vibrant culture and nationalist aspirations, the Armenians endured an uneasy relationship with the Ottoman government. State-sponsored persecution was often brutal. Between 1894 and 1896, more than 200,000 Armenians were massacred on the orders of Sultan Abdul Hamid. In 1909 a further 30,000 were killed in the Mediterranean coastal province of Cilicia.

After the Ottoman empire's entry into the First World War on 29 October 1914, fighting between Turkey and Russia quickly spilled into Eastern Anatolia. After a series of Ottoman military setbacks, most notably at Sarikamish (29 December 1914-3 January 1915), the Armenians were accused - in a few cases justly - of conspiring with the advancing Russian forces to ensure Turkish defeats. The legend of 'Armenian treachery' gave the Ottoman government the pretext to sanction measures designed to remove all traces of the Armenian population from the empire.

Beginning in April 1915, the Ottoman authorities rounded up tens of thousands of Armenian men and had them shot. Hundreds of thousands of Armenian women and children were deported. Many Turkish historians have contended that these actions were a justified, or at least explicable, response to a serious threat to national security. They cite in particular the Armenian 'revolt' that began in the city of Van on 20 April. In fact, the 'revolt' was a desperate response to the persecution already underway - by 19 April, 50,000 Armenians had already been killed in Van province, and tens of thousands were being deported from neighbouring Erzerum.

Damning eyewitness accounts - ranging from German missionaries to consular officials from the Vatican, Italy and Greece - testify to the fact that similarly horrific acts took place throughout Anatolia during the rest of 1915. In Bitlis, 15,000 Armenians were murdered during an eight-day period in June. A month later, rampaging Turkish troops massacred most of the 17,000 Armenians in Trebizond on the Black Sea.

The fate of those who avoided the mass killings was little better. An estimated 400,000 deportees did not survive the march south towards Syria and Mesopotamia. Armenian refugees flooded into Russia and the Mediterranean ports, where starvation and disease claimed further lives. An exact death toll is unknown, but Western historians now estimate that at least one million Armenians - and possibly many more - perished in this attempted genocide.

Despite the half-hearted protests of its diplomats in Constantinople, Erzerum and Aleppo, the German government made no serious attempt to curb Turkish excesses. Armenia's plight received far greater publicity in the neutral United States, with its small but active Armenian diaspora, and in the Allied countries.

Russia, France and Britain issued a joint statement on 24 May 1915 condemning the Armenian massacres. Books and pamphlets such as Arnold Toynbee's Armenian Atrocities: The murder of a nation detailed the methods and scale of Turkish crimes against a small and defenceless 'Christian' people. Organisations such as the Armenian Refugees (Lord Mayor's) Fund were set up to provide financial aid to those who had survived massacre and deportation.

As Lord Bryce conceded in a letter to Asquith on 28 August 1915, more substantial financial support was urgently required. However, no Allied government wanted to divert precious resources into the hands of either the Armenian refugees or the Armenian soldiers who fought the Turks in the Caucasus for the remainder of the war. Armenia thus remained vulnerable to its two powerful neighbours, Russia and Turkey.