The idea of nationalism is the belief that one's nation is superior to all others. By nation I mean that nation's culture. A culture that includes religion, ethnicity, language background, and political ideals. When nationalism takes hold of political power it entails the inclusion of that one belief because that is what is being pushed foward to be the strongest sense of prowlesness, it places a nationality over anything else as something to unite. As history has played out, it has been evident that this sense of nationalism leads to a level of radicalism. This radicalism is the ideology that nationalism needs to be what is pushing that sense, and that sense needs to be the only belief system evident in that particular society. This is what leads to genocide. Genocide is the killing off of one specific ethnicity or culture. In Armenia and Yugoslavia, the two examples I will be using to prove my statement, genocide went hand in hand with the nationalism that occurred during changes in political power and culture.

In Armenia, nationalism began uprising during the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The nationalism was being created to rebuild the empire in hopes that it would not collapse. The Ottoman leaders, in the hopes to save the Turkish state, the only opinion that was decided on was to reduce the non-Muslim populations, particulary the Christian population. Under this belief, The Armenians were the Christian group that were seen to be the main cause of an Turkish difficulties. Four reasons resided within the Turkish hopful that would gain the rest of the emprie on their side, both political people and the remaining Muslim population. One was to increasing national consciousness of the Armenians. The Turkish hopeful wanted to make it known to the public that these Armenians were the cause of bringing down the Ottoman Empire. Two, due to the Ottoman government’s failure to provide security of life and property for the Armenians, they seeked reforms that would improve their conditions. This seeking of hope caused the Armenians to turn to European powers, to possible bring help to their fellow Christian faithfuls. This action, in particular, caused the Ottomans to grow even more hateful of the Armenians, because European intervention could bring a possible immediate downfall to the Ottoman Empire because much of the Empire was already under scrutiny by Western Europe for conquest. This worry about Europeans was also due to the weakness of military power the Ottoman's posessed. Therefore, to maintain order and rule the Empire had to result to terror and inhumane brutality as a method of containing those who could bring about possible uprising and trouble to the political nature of the Ottoman Empire. This desire to keep the Empire alive caused these nationalist to seek out these out of place Armenians, leading to a massive genocide to have them removed in order to maintain a strict Muslim turkish state that the nationalists thought to be the only Ottoman style of life. This sense of nationalism was the cause for the genocide of the Armenian people because it was the method to have this nationality removed from the nationalist beliefs of the Ottoman Empire.

In Yugoslavia, the same sense of nationalist beliefs increased as new powers came into the political scheme. You see, Yugoslavia was a nation composed of many different nationalities, beliefs, and ideas. Prior to the disturbing time period that I will discuss in a moment, Yugoslavia was united under the government style of communism, the ruler who was Josip Broz Tito placed this above anything