In 1919, the newly founded Armenian state did not have the means to protect themselves. Their male population had been targeted during the Genocide and their armories ransacked by the death squads. The Armenians turned to the European powers and America for support, but they would find none.

Kemal Atatürk, aware of America’s booming economy and the international desire for oil, used his Empire’s reserves as political capital to curb America and other foreign power’s influence in the area. To the dismay of the newly founded Armenian government, neither America, Britain nor France would commit to protecting the Armenian borders at the risk of losing access to Turkish oil reserves. Nor could Armenia count on their historic ally, Russia. With the fall of the Czar in 1917, the Bolsheviks took control of Russia and, by 1919 they had formed an alliance with Turkey over their shared distrust of Europe. In the fall of 1920, Kemalist forces marched on independent Armenia and began a new campaign of genocidal violence, indiscriminately slaughtering thousands of Armenian civilians.