"In the Spring of 1915, when the snow was beginning to melt on the Armenian plateau, the government in Constantinople began work on the systematic annihilation of Armenians. The Armenians were driven to the South, avoiding routes from where Armenians were already cleansed. The town of Urfa, nearby the Syrian desert, which was the terminus for the driven Armenians, was the last one to be cleansed of Armenians. By the Summer of 1916, the Armenian community had been removed and fragmented. The largest nucleus [of Armenians] outside Constantinople, consisted of laborers found outside Adana, working on the Baghdad railroad. There were no Armenian villages left. The history of the Armenian genocide is the history of Armenian women and urchins. The men were murdered right at the start. From primary sources, both Ottoman and other, it appears that in the East where a war was being fought with Russia, the Armenians were murdered on the spot. Elsewhere, they were deported, whereby their houses were not destroyed but confiscated. Their personal possessions, such as money and jewelry were looted from them. For the reason for the implementation of the genocide, you should ask Talaat. Both pan-Turkism and Islamic fervor existed well before the genocide. the provocation thesis, which states that Armenian were the fifth column and would have turned on the Turks the moment the Russians advanced, is a concoction that was hatched at the German embassy in Constantinople in May 1915. The Ottoman Empire was extensively centralized. A good bureaucracy held it all together. The telegraphic system of communication was exemplary. Special military units were instituted for the purpose of carrying out the genocide. No one was allowed to murder Armenians without the consent of these military units. Those who disregarded the rules were dealt severely."