Using a broad theoretical framework on the definition of “genocide”, the current research is aiming to provide a clear picture of whether the massacres of 1915 on Armenians of Ottoman empire were a case of genocide or not. Consequently, the aim is also to demonstrate that the concept of genocide is not synonymous to the case of the Jewish holocaust. The UN convention on genocide is presented and followed by a range of different researchers’ points of view on both the convention and the term itself in the theoretical background. Through a comparative multiple case study on the massacres of 1915 and the Holocaust the similarities and differences are found and result in a conclusion that the case of 1915 was a genocide, viewed both through a broad and narrow definitions of the concept of genocide.