Alan Whitehorn
The two key human rights concepts of “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” have their roots in the response to the Young Turk mass deportations and massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Following the April 24, 1915 mass arrests of hundreds of Armenian political, religious, and community leaders in Constantinople and their subsequent exile and deaths, and the massacres of multitudes of other Armenian civilians, the Entente allied powers of England, France, and Russia on May 24, 1915 warned that the Young Turk dictatorship would be held accountable for the massacres and the “new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization.”
