"[What actually happened in 1915-16] was no accident, this was not a marginal or small thing, it was not a geographically or demographically limited thing, virtually the entirety of Ottoman Armenians has been ordered to be rounded up, socially deracinated, uprooted, dispossesses, and deported for no reason other than that they were Armenians and, secondly, that there was very strong evidence that the accompanied violence and massacres had not started spontaneously or despite the best intentions of the state to protect the convoys of the deportees. Rather, there was strong evidence to the effect that there were orders issued, disseminated, and executed through the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa and that this in turn triggered secondary and tertiary rounds of violence and massacres once it became clear that the Armenians were fair game and that the shooting season was open on them. It fits the clauses of the 1948 UN convention [on genocide] comprehensively, and in that light, if we are permitted to take those categorizations and apply them to an event that occurred 33 years earlier, then we have to say, "Yes, it was genocide""
Armenian genocide

January 1, 1970