Factbox: Turkey condemns, Armenia hails U.S. panel vote

(Reuters) - A congressional panel voted on Thursday to label as "genocide" the World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador from Washington.

Armenia described the U.S. vote as a boost for human rights.

Here are some details of the troubled history between the two countries, which share a border in the Caucasus.

NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Turkey closed its land border with Armenia in 1993 in protest at Yerevan's backing for ethnic Armenian rebels fighting for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan populated mainly by ethnic Armenians.

Turkey is a close ally of Muslim Azerbaijan and the two countries share close cultural and linguistic ties.

Some 30,000 people were killed in the war, which ended in 1994 with Armenian forces occupying Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan.

CONFLICT

In the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire's 2 million Armenians began to assert nationalist aspirations.

Repression by Ottoman irregulars, mainly Kurds, led to the massacre of 30,000 Armenians in eastern Anatolia in 1894-1896. Several thousand more were killed in Constantinople in August 1896 after Armenian militants seized the Ottoman Bank.

As the Ottomans fought Russian forces in eastern Anatolia in World War One, many Armenians formed partisan groups to assist the invading Russian armies.

On April 24, 1915, Turkey arrested and killed hundreds of the Armenian intelligentsia.

In May, Ottoman commanders began mass deportation of Armenians from eastern Anatolia. Thousands were marched toward Syria and Mesopotamia and Armenians say some 1.5 million died, either in massacres or of starvation and exhaustion in the desert.

DIFFERING VIEWS

In a series of accords signed in Zurich last October, Turkey and Armenia agreed to establish diplomatic relations and open their border. The accords call for the creation of a commission of international experts to study the events of the early 20th century.

Armenia insists they should be declared a genocide. President Serzh Sarksyan said in a speech to mark Armenia's annual Genocide Day last year that securing international condemnation of the killings was a priority for his administration.

Ankara strongly rejects the "genocide" description, saying large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks were killed during the chaotic break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Use of the term genocide has led to court cases under a law which forbids insulting the Turkish state.

Sources: Reuters/Dictionary of Twentieth Century History.

(Writing by Istanbul bureau and David Cutler in London)