In 1908, the Young Turk party took over Turkey. In 1914 they allied with Germany and the Central Powers in World War II, and they soon began a systematic genocide of the Armenian population. It began with the arrest and execution of Armenian intellectuals in 1915. Soon Armenian property and weapons were confiscated. From 1915-1917, death marches and executions occurred. Around 1.5 million Armenians were killed in those two years; during WWII, the Armenian population dropped from two million to fewer than 400,000.