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Assyrian genocide
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The Assyrian Genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo) was committed against the Assyrian/Syriac population of the Ottoman Empire near the end of the First World War by the Young Turks.
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Encyclopedia
The Assyrian Genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo) was committed against the Assyrian/Syriac population of the Ottoman Empire near the end of the First World War by the Young Turks. The Assyrian population of northern Mesopotamia (Tur Abdin, Hakkari, Van, Siirt region in modern-day southeastern Turkey and Urmia region in northwestern Iran) was forcibly relocated and massacred by Ottoman (Turkish and Kurdish) forces between 1914 and 1920 under the regime of the Young Turks.
Scholars have placed the number of Assyrian victims at 500,000 to 750,000.
The Assyrian genocide took place in the same historical context as the Armenian and Greek genocides. But unlike these, no official national or international recognition of the Assyrian genocide has been made, and many accounts discuss the Assyrian genocide as a part of the larger events subsumed under the Armenian genocide.
Terminology
The Assyiran genocide is sometimes also referred to as Sayfo or Seyfo in English language sources, based on the Aramaic designation Saypa , "sword", pronounced as Seyfo, and as Sayfo in the Western dialect (the term abbreviates shato d'sayfo "year of the sword"; compare the use of Shoah in English based on the Hebrew ha-oah).
Contemporary sources usually speak of the events in terms of a massacre of Christians by the Ottoman Empire, listing the Greek Orthodox, Syriac Christian and Armenian Christian victims together.
The Aramaic name , which literally means "killing of the Assyrian people", is used by some groups to describe these events. The word Q?olcamo which means Genocide is also used in Assyrian diaspora media. The term used in Turkish media is Süryani Soykirimi.
In countries of the Assyrian diaspora where the designation "Assyrian" has become controversial, notably Germany and Sweden, alternative terms such as Assyriska/syrianska folkmordet "Assyrian/Syriac genocide".
Reasons
Reasons suggested for the genocide vary.
The Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians were the subject of forced relocations and barbaric executions, a possible cause being religious persecution of the Christian community of Anatolia. The Assyrians were included as a subsection of the Armenians.
The Ottoman government, as well as others, claim that the Assyrians and Armenians sought autonomy from the Ottoman Empire and joined the invading Russian army in the east. The Ottoman government saw the Assyrian and Armenian communities as a threat, so it relocated them to the Syrian Desert. Many deaths occurred during the relocation "Death Marches" from starvation and dehydration.
The Assyro-Chaldean National Council stated in a December 4, 1922, memorandum that the total death toll was unknown, but it estimated that about 275,000 "Assyro-Chaldeans" died between 1914 and 1918.
Political situation before World War I
Before the war approximately one half of the Assyrian population lived in what is today Southern Turkey. The Young Turks took control of the Ottoman Empire only five years before the beginning of World War I. The Ottomans planned to join the side of the Central Powers. In 1914, knowing that it was heading into the war, the Ottoman government passed a law that required the conscription of all young males into the Ottoman army to support the war effort.
Assyrians in what is now Turkey primarily lived in the provinces of Hakkari, Sirnak, and Mardin. These areas also had a sizable Kurdish population. The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on October 29, 1914.
Documented accounts of the massacre
Hannibal Travis, Assistant Professor of Law at Florida International University, wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal that:
In April 1915, Ottoman Troops easily invaded Gawar, a region of Hakkari, and massacred the entire population. Prior to this, in October 1914, 71 Assyrian men of Gawar were arrested and taken to the local government centre in Bashkalla and killed. Also in April, Kurdish troops surrounded the village of Tel Mozilt and imprisoned 475 men (among them, Reverend Gabrial, the famous red-bearded priest). The following morning, the prisoners were taken out in rows of four and shot. Arguments rose between the Kurds and the Ottoman officials on what to do with the women and orphans left behind.
Massacres at Van
Cevdet Pasa the governor of Van, is reported to have held a meeting in February 1915 at which he said, "We have cleansed the Armenians and Syriac [Christian]s from Azerbaijan, and we will do the same in Van".
In late 1915, Cevdet Bey, Military Governor of Van Province, upon entering Siirt (or Seert) with 8,000 soldiers whom he himself called "The Butchers' Battalion" , ordered the massacre of almost 20,000 Assyrian civilians in at least 30 villages. The following is a list documenting the villages that were attacked by Cevdet's soldiers and the estimated number of Assyrian deaths:
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| Sairt - 2,000 | Sadagh - 2,000 | Mar-Gourya - 1,000 | Guedianes - 500 | Hadide - 1,000 | Harevena - 200 | |
| Redwan - 500 | Dehok - 500 | Ketmes - 1,000 | Der-Chemch - 200 | Piros - 1,000 | Der-Mar-Yacoub- 500 | |
| Tentas - 500 | Tellimchar - 1,500 | Ketmes - 1,000 | Telnevor - 500 | Benkof - 200 | Bekend - 500 | |
| Altaktanie - 500 | Goredj - 500 | Galwaye - 500 | Der-Mazen - 300 | Der-Rabban - 300 | Charnakh - 200 | |
| Artoun - 1,000 | Ain-Dare - 200 | Berke - 500 | Archkanes - 500 |
The village of Sairt/Seert, was populated by Assyrians and Armenians. Seert was the seat of a Chaldean Archbishop, the orientalist Addai Scher who was murdered by the Kurds.
On March 3, 1918, the Ottoman army led by Kurdish soldiers, assassinated one of the most important Assyrian leaders at the time, Mar Shimun XIX Benyamin. This resulted in the only retaliation of the Assyrians during all of World War I. Malik Khoshaba led an attack against the Ottomans. During the attack, some 30 soldiers were killed or wounded.
Massacres in Persian villages
The Ottomans were notified about the withdrawal of Russian forces from Persia in late 1914.
The 36th and 37th divisions of the Ottoman army were sent westward to the northwestern part of Persia.
Before the end of 1914, Turkish and Kurdish troops had successfully invaded the villages in and around Urmaya. On February 21, 1915 the Turkish army in Urmia seized 61 leading Assyrians from the French missions as hostages, demanding large ransoms. The mission had enough money to convince the Ottomans to let 20 of the men go. On February 22, the remaining 41 were executed, having their heads cut off at the stairs of the Charbachsh Gate. Among them was the bishop Mar Denkha.
These villages, unlike the Assyrian villages of present-day Turkey, were completely unarmed. The only protection they had was when the Russian army finally took control of the area, years after the presence of the Ottoman army had been removed.
On February 25, 1915, Ottoman troops stormed their way into the villages of Gulpashan and Salamas. Almost all of the men of the village of Golpashan were shot. In Salamas about 750 Armenian and Assyrian refugees were protected by Turkish civilians in the village. The commander of the Ottoman division stormed the houses despite the fact that Turks lived in them, and roped all the men together in big groups and forced them to march in the fields between Khusrawa and Haftevan. The men were shot or killed in other ways. The protection of Christians by Turkish civilians is also confirmed in the 1915 British report:
Many of the Moslems tried to save their Christian neighbours, and offered them shelter in their houses, but the Turkish authorities were implacable.
During the Winter of 1915, 4,000 Assyrians died from disease, hunger, and exposure, and about 1000 were killed in the village of Urmia.
Massacre of Khoi, Persia
In early 1918, many Assyrians started to flee present-day Turkey. Mar Shimon Benyamin had arranged for some 3,500 Assyrians to reside in the district of Khoi. Not long after settling in, Kurdish troops of the Ottoman Army massacred the population almost entirely. One of the few that survived was Reverend John Eshoo. After escaping, he stated:
Baquba camps
By mid-1918, the British army had convinced the Ottomans to let them have access to about 30,000 Assyrians from various parts of Persia.
The British decided to deport all 30,000 from Persia to Baquba, Iraq. The transferring took just 25 days, but at least 7,000 of them had died during the trip.
A memorandum from American Presbyterian Missionaries at Urmia During the Great War 16 to British Minister Sir Percy Cox had this to say:
Capt. Gracey doubtless talked rather big in the hopes of putting heart into the Syrians and holding up this front against the Turks. [Consequently,] We have met all the orders issued by the late Dr. Shedd which have been presented to us and a very large number of Assyrian refugees are being maintained at Baquba, chiefly at H.M.G.'s expense.
In 1920, the British decided to close down the Baquba camps. The majority of Assyrians of the camp decided to go back to the Hakkari mountains, while the rest were dispersed throughout Iraq.
In 1933 a number of Assyrians were killed in Iraq. To this day Assyrians in Iraq make up an important Iraqi minority group.
Massacres in the late Ottoman Empire
The Assyrians were not going to be an easy group to deport, as they had always been armed and were as ferocious as their Kurdish neighbors.
| Christian population in Diyarbakir Province before and after World War I | | Sect | Before WWI | Disappeared | After WWI |
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| Armenians | Gregorians (Apostolic) | 60,000 | 58,000 | 2,000 |
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| Armenian Catholics | 12,500 | 11,500 | 1,000 | | Assyrians | Chaldean Catholics | 11,120 | 10,010 | 1,110 |
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| Syrian Catholic | 5,600 | 3,450 | 2,150 | | Syrian Jacobite | 84,725 | 60,725 | 24,000 | | Total | 173,945 | 143,685 | 30,260 |
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| Christian population in Mardin province before and after World War I | | Sect | Before WWI | Disappeared | After WWI |
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| Armenians | Catholics | 10,500 | 10,200 | 300 |
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| Assyrians | Chaldean Catholics | 7,870 | 6,800 | 1,070 |
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| Syrian Catholic | 3,850 | 700 | 3,150 | | Syrian Jacobite | 51,725 | 29,725 | 22,000 | | Total | 73,945 | 49,875 | 24,070 |
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Eyewitness accounts and quotes
Statement of German Missionaries on Urmia.
Recognition
The genocide of Assyrians is not officially recognized by any government.
This is in contrast to the Armenian Genocide, which has been recognized by many countries and international organizations. Assyrian historians state the primary reason for this lack of recognition is that Assyria has been deprived of real political power throughout the 20th century. In addition, the massacre of Christians in Asia Minor is usually linked solely to the Armenian Genocide (and less to the Greek genocide and the Assyrian genocide). On April 24, 2001, Governor of the US state of New York, George Pataki, proclaimed that "killings of civilians and food and water deprivation during forced marches across harsh, arid terrain proved successful for the perpetrators of genocide, who harbored a prejudice against ... Assyrian Christians."
In December 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the world's leading genocide scholars organization, overwhelmingly passed a resolution officially recognizing the Assyrian genocide, along with the genocide against Ottoman Greeks. The vote in favour was 83%. The full text of the resolution reads:
In June 2008, Yilmaz Kerimo and Ibrahim Baylan both from the Swedish Social Democratic Party, brought a bill to the Swedish parliament for the recognition of a genocide. The parliament resoundingly voted against it, 37 to 245.
Monuments
The only governments that have allowed Assyrians to establish monuments commemorating the victims of the Assyrian genocide are France, Sweden, and the United States. Sweden's government has pledged to pay for all the expenses of a future monument, after strong lobbying from the large Assyrian community there, led by Konstantin Sabo. There are two monuments in the U.S., one in Chicago and the newest in Tarzana, California.
There have been recent reports indicating that Armenia is ready to create a monument dedicated to the Assyrian genocide, placed in the capital next to the Armenian genocide monument.
School institutions
In Canada, the Assyrian Genocide, along with the Armenian Genocide, are included in a course covering historical genocides. Turkish organisations, along with other non-Turkish Muslim organisations, have reacted to this and protested.
See also
Literature
See also
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