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The article examines the diplomatic maneuverings among the Great Powers over the Armenian Question in the Ottoman Empire in the years leading up to the genocide. Topics discussed include tensions between Christians and Muslims, role of Germany in the proposal for reforms in Eastern Anatolia from June 1913 to February 1914, and reason a diplomatic intervention or bargaining in order to rescue Christian lives was not possible.

The article presents information on the proceedings of a conference entitled "Ottoman Cataclysm: Total War, Genocide and Distant Futures in the Middle East (1915-1917)" that was held in Zurich, Germany during October 28-31, 2015. It discussed the demise of the Ottoman Empire which is a breaking moment in the history of the Middle East and Europe taking its ethnic, religious and social fabric in the 1910s into consideration.

On 8 February 1914, Ottoman Grand Vizier Said Halim and the Russian chargé d'affaires Konstantin Gulkevich signed a reform project for seven Ottoman eastern provinces that covered roughly half of Asia Minor. This international Reform Agreement differed considerably from a first Russian draft the year before. Though little known by most World War I historians in the West, this agreement was a central but fragile piece for the future of Ottoman coexistence in egalitarian terms in Asia Minor on the eve of World War I. Often called ‘Armenian Reforms’, it was also a last seminal, more or less consensual project of European diplomacy before the latter's breakdown in the July crisis of 1914. Important Ottoman and non-Ottoman protagonists then chose the road towards cataclysm instead of efforts for Ottoman coexistence, reform and international consensus building. The cataclysm of greater Europe in World War I produced various seminal outcomes. One main result in the Levant was a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor that excluded Asia Minor's Christians and tried to assimilate non-Turkish Muslims, above all Kurds, into ‘Turkdom’. This article argues that the agreement of 1914 had opened for a short time a completely different perspective and that it played a crucial role on the road that led to genocide in spring 1915. Its postulates are still topical. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]