How did resistance in Van become a pretext for harsher Ottoman actions against Armenians?

In April 1915, Armenians in Van barricaded themselves within the city’s Armenian neighborhood to defend against Ottoman troops. This act of resistance provided the Young Turk government with a pretext to implement increasingly severe measures against the Armenian population, which they characterized as a national security threat and a conspiracy with foreign powers.12

Citing the events in Van and other instances of resistance, Talat Paşa ordered the arrest of approximately 250 Armenian intellectuals and political leaders in Istanbul on April 24, 1915. Most of these individuals were subsequently killed. This escalation was part of a broader, systematic campaign of deportation and mass murder that the Ottoman government justified by claiming that Armenian civilians near the front lines of World War I endangered the state. These actions ultimately led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people in what is recognized as one of the first genocides of the 20th century.213