I'll wait for nkular's comments first before I respond to some of your statements I have “issues” with. Primarily

I think 1.5 million dead Armenians and their families would disagree with this.Also there were a lot of parallels that one could compare to the Jewish Holocaust.  Boycotting Armenian businesses and disarming Armenians come to mind as this also happened to the Jews of Nazi Germany.

Well, as you all know this is a very sensitive and lenghty subject. More so for me because my grandmother was a Christian Armenian who converted to Islam (out of her own free will) when she married my Grandfather. I'll say the last thing first; No, I do not believe a genocide in the legal sense of the word occured against the Armenians during or after WW1. I'll explain my reasoning later but first I have to state something about the number of Armenians skiguy cited above;- Stalin famously said 1 death is a tragedy 1000000 is statistics. Now I don't intend to diminish the enormity of human suffering by saying there were not 1.5 million Armenians killed but none of the official records of the time can verify such number. According to the Ottoman official records 413.067 people were deported 56.610 of which died, the number of people that were deported is reported as 600.000 in the Catholic Encyclopedia and according to the official letter of the American Consul JB Jackson the number of Armenians subject to deportation was 486.000.Keep in mind that the total number of Armenians living in what was then the Ottoman Empire was roughly 1.5 million. Again the number of dead being 50.000 or even 5 instead of 1.5 million doesn't diminish the humanitarian tragedy but let's try to keep it within the proven facts.Article 2 of 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."Now, why do I think that regrettable episode was technically not a genocide. In 1915 the Ottoman Empire was in utter turmoil, It had just lost the Great War, it was under occupation and there was rebellion all over the empire. The idea of nationalism had come to the empire and the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Armenians etc. all had recently gained or were still struggling for their independance. All of these nations had the backing of one of the western powers or Russia. The Armenians had received support for their independance cause from both France (directly) and Russia (indirectly). Scout mentions the "legitimate fears" the government had about the Armenians fighting with the Russians against the Empire. Actually these were not "legitimate fears" but actual happenings. There are records of Armenians volunteering with the Russian Army as well as Armenians forming armed gangs in rural areas which acted in coordination with the Russian army. There are also records Armenian legions who fought under the French flag.I can understand the Armenians longing for independance, they are an ancient and proud people and when the opportunity presented itself they alligned themselves with the enemies of their former rulers. For me this is perfectly understandable. What I can't understand is how can anyone expect the Ottoman empire to defend itself from an Armenian insurrection without harming its Armenian subjects? There was no "intent to destroy the Armenians" but an intent to defend the country. The Armenians living in the western part of the empire were left unmolested and continued to live as equal citizens. As I said, among these was the family of my grandmother. However in the east as a result of the abovementioned cooperation with the Russians and later with the French, the Armenian population was seen as a threat to national security and deported. I accept that during these deportations there were probably some random killings and such, but I really do not believe that there was an intent to rid the Empire of Armenians at any time. If the Ottoman Empire's actions were to be accepted as genocide; then off the top of my head; I think putting Japanese in concentration camps in WW2, the French actions in Algeria, Italian actions in Libya should also be considered genocide.Scout, with respect to your question about the Turkish Governments silence: They really are not that silent but just can't get any airtime, my guess is western media just doesn't like to be percieved as deniers. And face it, Turkey is not a popular country in the west , we are seen as barbarian, quazi-civilized muslims who should be kept at arms lenght. You prefer us to the afghans and taliban but that's about it. Look, I am not a nationalist and I did not come to this forum to blindly defend "my country". But I can not and will not ever compromise my views to be accepted, here or anywhere else. I realise the abovementioned views will be unpopular, maybe even offensive to some, but this is what I believe to have happened.

Also, biased may not necessarily mean unreliable as long as the reader knows it biased.  Yes, they may have gathered all evidence to prove or try to prove their case, but there are still letters from American, British, and German ambassadors that can't or shouldn't be dismissed.

I agree it's overused (Darfur is NOT genocide), but I think there are some instances where people are afraid to use that word for whatever reason.

Just thinking logically here (not emotionally), if people who've never lived in the desert were suddenly forced to march there with no supplies, no known allies, and no weapons, (in other words, unihabitable) isn't it fairly likely they are going to die?