Franco-Turkish War in the context of Sykes-Picot Agreement

Armenian genocide survivors were Armenians in the Ottoman Empire who survived the Armenian genocide. After the end of World War I, many tried to return home in Western Armenia but most were prevented by the Turkish nationalist movement which considered Armenian survivors to be a mortal threat to the Turkish state. Thousands of Armenians who tried to return were killed.

Roughly half of the survivors fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East with the other half fleeing to Eastern Armenia which later became the First Republic of Armenia. A further wave of Armenian refugees was created by the Turkey's invasion of the new Armenian Republic, and another 100,000 Armenians were uprooted from their homes in Cilicia following the French withdrawal in 1920. Between 1922 and 1929, the Turkish authorities eliminated surviving Armenians from southern Turkey, expelling thousands to French-mandate Syria. Fearing renewed persecution, the last Armenian communities of Cilicia fled after France ceded the territory to Turkey in 1939.

Henri Gouraud (17 November 1867 - 16 September 1946) was a French army general. He played a central role in the colonization of French Africa and the Levant. During World War I, he fought in major battles such as those of the Argonne, the Dardanelles, and Champagne. An important figure in the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire, he served as High Commissioner of the French Republic in the Levant from 1919 to 1922, during which he led military campaigns in Cilicia and Syria.

Affiliated with the colonial party, Gouraud was an active colonizer, influenced by figures such as Joseph Gallieni and Hubert Lyautey. His name remains closely associated with the conquest of Sudan, Mauritania, Chad, and Morocco, and his arrest of Samory Touré in September 1898 marked a turning point in the French colonization of West Africa. This act brought him to prominence at a time when France sought to overcome the humiliation of the Fashoda Incident.