Armenia is a landlocked mountainous country in the Southern Caucasus bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east and Iran and the Nakchicheevan exclave of Azerbaijan to the south. Only landaccess for foreigners is via Iran and Georgia.
A former republic of the Soviet Union, Armenia is one of the oldest and most historic nations in the world. It is considered to be the place where Biblical Noah and his descendants first settled, as well as the first nation to adopt Christianity as its offical religion. Although Armenia is constitutionally a secular state, Christianity plays a major role in both its history and the identification of the Armenian people.
The Armenian Genocide (also known as the Armenian Holocaust or the Armenian Massacre) refers to the deaths of thousands or over a million Armenians during the government of the Young Turks from 1915 to 1917 in the Ottoman Empire. Some main aspects of the event are a matter of ongoing dispute among the academic community and between parts of the international community and Turkey. Although generally agreed that events said to comprise the Armenian Genocide did occur, the Turkish government and several international historians reject that it was genocide.