Defense of Van (1915)
The defense of Van (Armenian: Վանի հերոսամարտ, romanized: Vani herosamart) and in Russian Van operation (Russian: Ванская операция, romanized: Vanskaya operatsia) was the armed resistance of the Armenian population of Van and Russian army against the Ottoman Empire's attempts to massacre the Ottoman Armenian population of the Van Vilayet in the 1915 Armenian genocide. Several contemporaneous observers and later historians have concluded that the Ottoman government deliberately instigated an armed Armenian resistance in the city and then used this insurgency as the main pretext to justify beginning the deportation and slaughter of Armenians throughout the empire.