During WWI the Ottoman Empire engaged in a genocide against local ethnicities in its territory. The Armenian genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust, was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of 1.5 million Christian Armenians, mostly Ottoman citizens within the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Republic of Turkey. The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders from Constantinople to Ankara, the majority of whom were eventually murdered.