An Evaluation of the Impact of Armenian Genocide on the Political Dynamics of South
Caucasus in the 21st Century
Bolai Yan
AP English Language and Composition
March 22, 2026
1
Introduction
The Armenian Genocide between 1915-1917 was widely seen as a national trauma by
Armenian diaspora all across the world due to its sheer scale at the time. The event didn’t happen
at an instance; the atrocity was built up from decades of ethnic tensions and political instability
within the late Ottoman Empire, factors whose consequences continue to shape regional relations
in the South Caucasus in present time. The term “genocide” was first coined in the mid-1940s by
the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, whose works were highly based off of his experience fleeing
the Nazi occupation of Poland. Today, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment on the
Crime of Genocide defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” 1The mass killing and deportation of
Armenians by the Ottoman government during World War I was widely considered as the first
extensively documented case of genocide in the modern era, which resulted in intense population
draining of Armenia proper and a large refugee population worldwide. In fact, it is estimated that
the total population of Armenians across the world in the present measures around six to eight
million, including those who established themselves in Southern Europe and India as early as the
eighth to twelfth century CE. However, most members of the diaspora today are the result of the
Ottoman policies during World War I that forced them out of their homeland in Eastern Anatolia.
2
More than a century after the Ottoman rule, the actual event of genocide seems to have
become a very distant collective memory for most people around the world, but during the
interval between the Ottoman era and the modern republic of Armenia lies the seventy-year
Soviet period which saw the policy of divide and rule by Moscow. The mutual hatred between
1
2
Kramer et al., “Genocide”
Gale et al., “Armenians”
2
Armenians and neighboring Turkic people such as the Azerbaijanis were strategically exploited
by the Soviet Union to weaken regional opposition to Russian rule in the South Caucasus. The
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from 1988-2023 bears the legacy of this particular period, and the
acts of aggression from Azerbaijan in this conflict were often interpreted by some Armenian
scholars as a form of continuation of the Armenian Genocide due to deep, existential fears of the
Armenian communities of being once again driven away from their homeland. Moving into the
21st century, historical narratives like this are not merely symbolic but actively shape political
rhetoric, military decisions, and international responses in the South Caucasus. After the military
operation in September 2023 by Azerbaijan which put the entirety of Nagorno Karabakh under
Azerbaijani rule, over 7,600 residents of the region, about half of the population of NagornoKarabakh, fled due to the fear of genocide. Some officials even went further to claim that the
entire population will leave at some point in the future. 3This enduring perception of existential
threat continues to influence Armenia’s security policies and its reliance on external powers,
while also hardening Azerbaijan’s territorial stance in regional diplomacy.
This paper aims to explore the causal chain between the legacies of the Ottoman policies
of ethnic cleansing in the Armenian plateau and the contemporary tensions in South Caucasus
involving Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkiye. Although the political situation of South Caucasus
in the most recent conflict seem far removed from direct Ottoman policy and its subsequent
catastrophes in 1915, some Armenian officials and scholars today consider the forced annexation
of Nagorno-Karabakh as a continuation of Turkish hostility since the Ottoman era, and Turkiye’s
purposeful genocide denial and the still boiling discussions of the war atrocities by both
3
Ebel et al., "For 3 decades, Nagorno-Karabakh sought statehood. That quest is dead."
3
Azerbaijan and Armenia further immortalizes the power of the genocide rhetoric in speeches and
institutions.
Background of the Armenian Genocide
The Armenian Genocide emerged from the intersection of rising Turkish nationalism
under the Committee of Union and progress (CUP), otherwise known as the Young Turks, and
the increasing scapegoating of Armenian communities, whose economic ties with European
powers fueled Ottoman fears during the empire’s decline. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century when the Committee of Union and Progress was established, the Armenians became the
primary beneficiaries of trade with Western powers forced upon the Ottoman Empire during its
era of decline.4 After taking power in 1913 by conducting the Raid on the Sublime Porte, the
primary aim of the CUP was to create a renewed, Turkish nationalist state. To achieve their goal
of making the population of the empire more ethnically homogenous and reducing influence
from the western powers, the CUP perceived any non-Turkic ethnic groups, especially the
Armenians, as a threat to the national consolidation of the empire.5
Additionally, separatist movements encouraged by European states in the late nineteenth
to early twentieth century also caused the Ottomans to grow suspicious of any ethnic movement
within its border. Previous military failures such as the Balkan War in 1912-1913 already caused
the collapse of Ottoman rule in Europe. To the east, the Armenians were also perceived as threats
to imperial stability, similar to the Serbs and Bulgarians in previous conflicts. Roughly twenty
years before the CUP took power, Armenian reform movements supported by Russia during the
reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II prompted the Ottoman troops and Kurdish militias to massacre
4
5
Cooper & Akcam et al., “Turks, Armenians, and the G-Word”
Stock et al., “Armenian Genocide Begins: April 24, 1915”
4
more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians all across Anatolia in 1894-1896. The event was later
referred to as the Hamidian massacre. A decisive incident that was used to justify the Armenian
Genocide was the Van Rebellion in 1915,6 which immediately reinforced the CUP’s decision to
forcibly deport the Armenians from their homeland in East Anatolia. The fears of being torn
apart from inside and constant support for separatist movements by European states during the
decline of the Ottoman empire contributed to the justification of mass deportations and violence
against Armenian communities during World War I.
Consequences of the Ethnic Cleansing and its Mark on Diaspora Communities
The Armenian Genocide was a brutal and traumatizing collective memory to look back
for Armenian communities globally. The consequences of the genocide are visible in both the
diverse diasporas across the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North America who fled during
the ethnic cleansing and the enduring collective memory of persecution and displacement among
Armenians both in Armenia and abroad. Abram Elkus, the US ambassador to the Ottoman
empire in 1916, wrote to the US federal government that the Ottoman officials had “adopted and
are executing the unchecked policy of extermination through starvation, exhaustion, and brutality
of treatment.7” The official census of the Turkish government after the defeat of the Ottoman
Empire in World War I claimed that about 800,000 Armenians perished between 1915 and 1918,
and some other estimates cited figures as high as 1.5 million.8
Throughout the century, the Armenian diaspora never stopped suing for genocide
recognition, especially in the West. As of 2017, forty-eight American states have formally
6
Cooper & Akcam et al., “Turks, Armenians, and the G-Word”
Stock et al., “Armenian Genocide Begins: April 24, 1915”
8
Cooper & Akcam et al., “Turks, Armenians, and the G-Word”
7
5
recognized the Armenian Genocide9, and the federal U.S. government formally recognized the
Ottoman actions against Armenians during World War I as “genocidal” in 2019 under the Biden
administration.
Roles of Soviet Intervention after 1920
The history of Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan after World War I is also important
for understanding the historical narrative between legacies of the Ottoman Empire in South
Caucasus and the chain of events that led to the more recent Nagorno-Karabach conflict.
Throughout the Soviet era, Moscow deployed a strategy of divide and rule in the South Caucasus
to suppress any resistance against the Soviet government. By supplying one over another
simultaneously during periods of tension between the two states, Soviet leaders successfully
made those states their subjects for seven decades.
During the Gorbachev period, the Russian grip on the Caucasian states had become ever
weaker. It was during this time that the Nagorno-Karabakh problem began to emerge as a crisis.
The region was actually widely recognized as a part of Azerbaijan on the international stage.
Around the end of 1980s, around a quarter of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population was Azerbaijani,
but the community was forced to flee, cleansed, or simply left during the course of the conflict.
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The rhetoric of Karabakh as a land robbed away from the Armenians by the Turks justified
Armenian offensives in this period.
Impact on the Geopolitical Structure of South Caucasus in 21st Century
9
Bolsajiyan pg. 38, “The Armenian Diaspora: Migration and its Influence on Identity and Politics”
Hoch pg. 310, “The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review”
10
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In conclusion, the Armenian Genocide was not only a humanitarian catastrophe in the
early twentieth century, but also a historical event whose consequences continued to shape the
political dynamic of South Caucasus in the present. In the 21st century, the historical memories
of Armenia continue to influence geopolitical relations through conflicts such as NagornoKarabakh, debates surrounding genocide recognition, and security concerns of Armenian
communities across the world.
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