Category: Mixed — Wikidata’s classes point to more than one group: siege (War), battle (War), rebellion (Uprising)
Defense of Van (1915)
Part of: Caucasus campaign
Wikidata classes on our event-class list: siege, battle, rebellion (all its classes: Wikidata item)
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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. Witness reports agree that the Armenian posture at Van was defensive and an act of resistance to massacre. The self-defense action is frequently cited in Armenian genocide denial literature; it has become "the alpha and omega of the plea of 'military necessity'" to excuse the genocide and portray the persecution of Armenians as justified.
Text retrieved 2026-09-26 from Wikipedia.
Cite this
The link is the Wikipedia revision of August 26, 2026 (revision 1371446088), whose lead is exactly the text shown here.
APA 7
Defense of Van (1915). (2026, August 26). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Defense_of_Van_(1915)&oldid=1371446088
MLA 9
“Defense of Van (1915).” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Aug. 2026, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Defense_of_Van_(1915)&oldid=1371446088.
Chicago (note)
Wikipedia, “Defense of Van (1915),” last modified August 26, 2026, 13:52 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Defense_of_Van_(1915)&oldid=1371446088.
Chicago (shortened note)
Wikipedia, “Defense of Van (1915).”
Chicago cites well-known reference works such as Wikipedia in notes only, not in the bibliography.
This event on Middle East, 1900–present: https://middleeast.events/event/defense-of-van-1915
If you use the map’s borders: CShapes 2.0 - historical country borders. Schvitz, G., et al. (2022). CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://icr.ethz.ch/data/cshapes/ (modified by middleeast.events); West Bank Areas A/B/C: UN OCHA / HDX "Oslo Agreement" Areas A/B/C (West Bank). Distributed under the legacy HumanitarianResponse.info terms: non-commercial use with credit to UN OCHA. https://data.humdata.org/dataset/state-of-palestine-other-0-0-0-0-0; some corrected border points: GeoNames - CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://www.geonames.org/
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wikipedia contributors, from the article Defense of Van (1915). Classes are Wikidata’s labels (CC0). “Part of” is Wikidata’s statement, in its labels (CC0).