Abstract
Several mass atrocities were perpetrated by the government against distinct Christian populations during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. These occurred against the backdrop of Pan-Turkism-an aspect of the Young Turk Movement through the infamous Committee of Union and Progress, which began as a constitutional reform coalition seeking to curtail the absolute power of the sultan, but progressively morphed into a replacement government stripped of its originally liberal democratic leanings. By promoting Turkishness over and above all other ethnicities within the multi-ethnic empire, Pan-Turkism assumed many forms throughout this progression, including discrimination, persecution, exclusion, and ultimately, extermination. Which form it took depended on the context in which it was expressed (when, where, against whom, and by whom). This inquiry studies several instances of mass killings against Christians during the rise of the Young Turks and their consolidation of power within the collapsing Ottoman Empire to determine whether those atrocities qualify as genocide by in turn determining whether the associated expression of Pan-Turkism qualified as specific intent. In other words, can specific intent to commit genocide be inferred in the context of a movement that seeks to exclude rival populations?