Suny explains that during the First World War, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and was thus at war with Russia and most of Europe. "When the Ottomans were defeated at a major battle in the winter of 1914-15, the government saw the Armenians, who were on both sides of the Russian-Turkish frontier, as a potential 'fifth column' - a danger, an internal danger to their empire," he said.

"And they then carried out systematically, deportations of Armenians from eastern Anatolia, first demobilizing the Armenian soldiers who were serving with the Ottoman army, forcing them to dig their graves and shooting them. And then women and children, deporting them into the deserts of Syria, massacring them along the way and ultimately killing thousands and thousands when they reached Dayr az Zawr, the end point in the Syrian desert," he added.

Suny says the case is clear - the action by the Ottoman Turks was genocide. "There is no doubt that there was, in fact, a state organized, systematic deportation and massacre of a designated population, defined by their religion and ethnicity, namely the Armenians," he said.

"And that it was carried out, initiated and organized by this government. So if you have a mass killing of an ethno-religious group, carried out by a government in order to eliminate those people from their homeland, or to destroy their political and cultural potential - that is, by the conventional definition and most scholarly definitions, a genocide," he continued.