During nearly two centuries of decline, the Ottoman Empire gradually shrank in size, military power, and wealth. It entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. During the war, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were deported and exterminated in the Armenian Genocide. The Turkish government denies that there was an Armenian genocide and claims that Armenians were only relocated from the eastern war zone.[35] Large scale massacres were also committed against the empire's other minority groups such as the Greeks and Assyrians.[Following the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, 1918, the victorious Allied Powers partitioned the Ottoman state through the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres.