Western Armenia Government in Exile

The presence of Armenians in Anatolia has been documented since the sixth century BCE, about 1,500 years before the arrival of Turkmens under the Seljuk dynasty.^[9][10]

In the 16th and 17th centuries, historical Armenia was divided between the Ottomans taking the West and the Safavids taking the East.

On the eve of World War I in 1914, around two million Armenians lived in Anatolia out of a total population of 15–17.5 million.^[11] According to the Armenian Patriarchate's estimates for 1913–1914, there were 2,925 Armenian towns and villages in the Ottoman Empire, of which 2,084 were in the Armenian highlands in the vilayets of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Harput, and Van.^[12] Armenians were a minority in most places where they lived, alongside Turkish and Kurdish Muslim and Greek Orthodox Christian neighbors.^[11][12] According to the Patriarchate's figure, 215,131 Armenians lived in urban areas, especially Constantinople, Smyrna, and Eastern Thrace.^[12] Although most Ottoman Armenians were peasant farmers, they were overrepresented in commerce. As middleman minorities, despite the wealth of some Armenians, their overall political power was low, making them especially vulnerable.^[13] The ethnic cleansing of Armenians during the final years of the Ottoman Empire is widely considered a genocide, The Ottoman Empire massacred approximately 600,000–1,500,000 Armenians. The first wave of persecution was in the years 1894 to 1896, the second one culminating in the events of the Armenian genocide in 1915 and 1916.

On February 4, 2011, the beginning of the process of formation of the Government-in-Exile of Western Armenia was announced (now – the Government of the State of Western Armenia). In November 2013, through direct elections via Internet, the National Assembly (Parliament) of Western Armenia was formed, whose deputies at the first session of the Parliament on January 20, 2014, in Paris, elected the President of Western Armenia.^[14]

The "Western Armenia TV" newscaster introduced cities such as Bitlis, Muş, Van, Mardin, Iğdır, Adana, Trabzon and Rize as "Western Armenia" in his news bulletins.^[15] Artsakh and Nakhichevan is also claimed lands.^[16] The announcer also added that Western Armenia, which was declared an independent and sovereign state in 1920, is now occupied by Turkey. Sooner or later it will return to its true owners, the Armenians," he said.^[17] Erzurum, which the Armenians call "Karin", is claimed as the capital.^[18]

• Suny, Ronald Grigor (2015). They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-6558-1.
• Kévorkian, Raymond (2011). The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-85771-930-0.
• Bloxham, Donald (2005). The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-927356-0.
• Ahmed, Ali (2006). "Turkey". Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-57958-388-0.