Assyrian Genocide



The Assyrian Genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo) refers to the mass slaughter of the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac population of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The Assyrian population of northern Mesopotamia (the Tur Abdin, Hakkari, Van, Siirt regions of present-day southeastern Turkey and the Urmia region of northwestern Iran) was forcibly relocated and massacred by Ottoman (Turkish) and forces between 1914 and 1920. Estimates on the overall death toll have varied. Contemporary reports placed the figure at 270,000, although recent estimates have revised that figure to as many as 500–750,000.

Almost three million Assyrian, Armenian and Greek Christians were murdered by the Islamic Ottoman Turks during World War I because of their ethnicity and faith.

The Assyrian genocide took place in the similar context and time-period as the Armenian and Pontic Greek genocides. However, modern scholarship on the Assyrian Genocide is relatively nascent, and studies on its aspects have largely been overshadowed by those on the Armenian Genocide.

In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars reached a consensus that "the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks." The President of Genocide Watch endorsed the "repudiation by the world's leading genocide scholars of the Turkish government's ninety-year denial of the Ottoman Empire's genocides against its Christian populations, including Assyrians, Greeks, and Armenians."

Terminology
The Assyrian genocide is sometimes also referred to as Sayfo or Seyfo in English language sources, based on the Aramaic designation Saypā (ܣܝܦܐ), "sword", pronounced as Seyfo, and as Sayfo in the Western dialect (the term abbreviates shato d'sayfo "year of the sword"). The Aramaic name Qeṭlā ḏ-‘Amā Āṯûrāyā (ܩܛܠܐ ܕܥܡܐ ܐܬܘܪܝܐ), which literally means "killing of the Assyrian people", is used by some groups to describe these events. The word Qṭolcamo (ܩܛܠܥܡܐ) which means Genocide is also used in Assyrian diaspora media. The term used in Turkish media is Süryani Soykırımı.

In countries where significant Assyrian diaspora communities exist, the designation "Assyrian" has become controversial, notably in Germany and Sweden, alternative terms such as Assyriska/syrianska/kaldeiska folkmordet "Assyrian/Syriac/Chaldean genocide" are employed.

Background
The Assyrian population in the Ottoman Empire numbered about one million at the turn of the twentieth century and was largely concentrated in what is now Iran, Iraq and Turkey. There were significantly large communities located in the regions near Lake Urmia in Persia, Lake Van (specifically the Hakkari region) and Mesopotamia, as well as the eastern Ottoman provinces of Diyarbekir, Erzerum and Bitlis. Like other Christians residing in the empire, they were treated as second-class citizens and denied public positions of power. Violence directed against them prior to the First World War was not new. Many Assyrians were subjected to Kurdish brigandage and even outright massacre and forced conversion to Islam, as was the case of the Assyrian community of Diyarbekir during the 1895-96 Hamidian Massacres.

Outbreak of war
The Ottoman Empire declared war against the Allies on October 29, 1914. For geographic reasons, it was important for the British to gain the support of the Assyrians. This was done by promising the persecuted Assyrians their own homeland.

Because of large oil fields, Britain wanted to insure that the Mosul region would be part of the newly-colonized Iraq instead of the future state of Turkey. The Assyrians promised loyalty to the British in return for an independent state in the future. After the invasion of Mosul by the Young Turks, the Assyrian army, led by General Agha Petros, fought intensively and successfully against the Ottoman army and their Kurdish allies, and pushed them out of Mosul and the whole area, leading to Britain's control of the region. The battles are described in detail by surviving letters of Petros and British officials.

Diyarbekir
The earliest programs of extermination took place in the southern province of Diyarbekir, under the leadership of Reshid Bey.

Van
Jevdet Pasha 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, Jevdet Bey, Military Governor of Van Province, upon entering Siirt (or Seert) with 8,000 soldiers whom he himself called "The Butchers' Battalion" (Kasap Taburu), 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: The village of Sa'irt/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. The eyewitness Hyacinthe Simon wrote that 4,000 Christians died in Seert.

Assyrian military retaliation in Turkey
On March 3, 1918, the Ottoman army led by Kurdish soldiers assassinated one of the most important Assyrian leaders at the time. This resulted in the retaliation of the Assyrians. Malik Yosip Khoshaba of the Bit Tiyari tribe led a successful attack against the Ottomans. Assyrian forces in the region also attacked the Kurdish fortress of Simku, the leader who had assassinated Mar Shimun XIX Benyamin, they successfully stormed it, defeating the Kurds, however Simku escaped and fled.

Assyrians were involved in a number of clashes in Turkey with Ottoman forces, including Kurds and Circassians loyal to the empire. When armed and in sufficient numbers they were able to defend themselves successfully. However, they were often cut off in small pockets, vastly outnumbered and surrounded, and unarmed villagers made easy targets for Ottoman and Kurdish forces.

Assyrian military retaliation in Iran
The Assyrians in Persia armed themselves under the command of General Agha Petros, who had been approached by the Allies to help fight the Ottomans.

The Assyrians proved to be excellent soldiers, and Agha Petros' volunteer army had quite a few successes over the Ottoman forces and their Kurdish allies, notably at Suldouze where 1500 Assyrian horsemen overcame the far larger Ottoman force of over 8000, commanded by Kheiri Bey [5]. Agha Petros also defeated the Ottoman Turks in a major engagement at Sauj Bulak and drove them back to Rowanduz.

A number of smaller encounters with Ottoman and Kurdish forces also proved successful.

Assyrian forces in Persia were greatly affected by the withdrawal of Russia from the war and the collapse of Armenian armed resistance in the region. They were left cut off, with no supplies, vastly outnumbered and surrounded.

Khoi, Iran
In early 1918, many Assyrians started to flee present-day Turkey. Mar Shimun 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:

Iranian villages
Ottoman forces learned of the withdrawal of Russian forces from Persia in late 1914. In response, the 36th and 37th divisions of the Ottoman army were sent westward and entered the northwestern part of Persia. Before the end of 1914, Turkish and Kurdish troops had successfully entered the villages in and around Urmia. 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. However, on February 22 the remaining 41 were executed, having their heads cut off at the stairs of the Charbachsh Gate. The dead included bishop Mar Denkha.

These villages 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 the entire village of Golpashan, of a population of 2,500, were massacred. In Salamas about 750 Armenian and Assyrian refugees were protected by Iranian civilians in the village. The commander of the Ottoman division stormed the houses despite the fact that Iranians lived in them, and roped all the men together in large 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 local Persian/Iranian civilians is also confirmed in the 1915 British report: "Many 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 villages of Urmia.

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. Some died of exposure, hunger or disease, other civilians fell prey to attacks from armed bands of Kurds and Arabs. At Baquba, Assyrians were forced to defend themselves from further Arab raids.

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, where there was already an ancient Assyrian community established over 5000 years. In 1933 a massacre of thousands of unarmed Assyrians took place at Simele and other areas in Iraq at the hands of the Iraqi Army and Kurdish irregulars. In 1961 many Assyrian villages were razed in Iraq, and further widespread destruction was wrought during the Al Anfal Campaign by Saddam Hussein in 1988. To this day Assyrians in Iraq make up an important Iraqi minority group.

Death toll
Scholars have summarized events as follows: specific massacres included 25,000 Assyrians in Midyat, 21,000 in Jezira-ibn-Omar, 7,000 in Nisibis, 7,000 in Urfa, 7,000 in the Qudshanis region, 6,000 in Mardin, 5,000 in Diyarbekir, 4,000 in Adana, 4,000 in Brahimie, and 3,500 in Harput. In its December 4, 1922, memorandum, the Assyro-Chaldean National Council stated that the total death toll was unknown. It estimated that about 275,000 "Assyro-Chaldeans" died between 1914 and 1918. The population of the Assyrians of the Ottoman Empire was about one million before the genocide, and 100,000 to 250,000 after.

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.

Documented accounts of the genocide
Assyrians in what is now Turkey primarily lived in the provinces of Hakkari, Şırnak, and Mardin. These areas also had a sizable Kurdish population.

The following newspaper articles documented the Assyrian genocide as it occurred:


 * Assyrians Burned in Church, Lowell Sun (Massachusetts), 1915
 * Assyrians Massacred in Urmia, San Antonio Light (Texas), 1915
 * Assyrians Massacred in Urmiah, Salt Lake Tribune (Utah), 1915
 * Chaldean Victims of the Turks, The Times (United Kingdom), 22 November 1919, p 11
 * Christian Massacres in Urmiah, The Argus (Australia), 1915
 * Extermination of the Armenian Race, The Manchester Guardian (United Kingdom), 1915
 * Many Assyrian Perish, Winnipeg Free Press (Canada), 1915
 * Massacred by Kurds; Christians Unable to Flee from Urmia Put to Death, Washington Post, 14 March 1915, p10
 * Massacres of Nestorians in Urmia, The New York Times (New York), 1915
 * Massacres Kept Up, The Washington Post (USA), 26 March 1915, 1.
 * Native Christians Massacred; Frightful Atrocities in Persia, Los Angeles Times, 2 April 1915, p I-1
 * Nestorian Christians Flee Urmia, The New York Times (New York), 1915
 * Syrian Tells of Atrocities, Los Angeles Times (California), Dec. 15, 1918, at I–1.
 * The Assyrian Massacres, Manchester Guardian (United Kingdom), Dec. 5, 1918, at 4
 * The Suffering Serbs and Armenians, The Manchester Guardian (United Kingdom), 1915, p5
 * Turkish Horrors in Persia, The New York Times (New York), 11 October 1915
 * Turks Kill Christians in Assyria, Muscatine Journal (Iowa), 1915
 * Turkish Troops Massacring Assyrians, Newark Advocate (New Jersey), 1915
 * Turkish Horrors in Persia, The New York Times (New York), 1915
 * The Total of Armenian and Syrian Dead, Current History: A Monthly Magazine of the New York Times, November 1916, 337–38

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, after a number of failed Kurdish attempts, Ottoman Troops 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 center in Bashkala 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.

Eyewitness accounts and quotes
Statement of German Missionaries on Urmia.

Recognition
On 11 March 2010, the Genocide of the Assyrians was officially recognized by the Parliament of Sweden, alongside that of the Armenians and Pontic Greeks.

The Assyrian genocide is recognised by the New South Wales (NSW) Local Government in Australia.

The Assyrian Genocide is officially recognised by the South Australia State Parliament.

The Assyrian Genocide has also been recognized by the last three governors of the state of New York.

This is in contrast to the Armenian Genocide, which has been recognized by many countries and international organizations. Assyrian historians attribute the limited recognition to the small number of Assyrian survivors, whose leader Mar Shimun XIX Benjamin was killed in 1918. For example, there are one million Armenians living in the United States alone, but even they were unable to persuade Congress to pass a United States resolution on Armenian genocide. In addition, the widespread massacres of all Ottoman Christians in Asia Minor is sometimes referred to by Armenian authors as an "Armenian 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 favor was 83%.

Monuments
The only governments that have allowed Assyrians to establish monuments commemorating the victims of the Assyrian genocide are France, Australia, 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 three monuments in the U.S., one in Chicago, one in Columbia and the newest in Los Angeles, 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.

A monument to the victims of the Assyrian genocide has been built in Fairfield in Australia, a suburb of Sydney where one in ten of the population is of Assyrian descent. The statue is designed as a hand of a martyr draped in an Assyrian flag and 4.5 meters tall. It was designed by Lewis Batros. The memorial is placed in a reserve to be named the Garden of Nineveh. The memorial statue and the name for the reserve were proposed in August 2009 by the Assyrian Universal Alliance. After consultation with the community, Fairfield Council received more than 100 submissions for the memorial, including some from overseas, and two petitions. The proposal has been condemned by the Australian Turkish community. The Assyrian Genocide has been recognised by the NSW Local Government and South Australia state. On the 30th of August 2010, twenty-three days after it was unveiled, the Australian monument was vandalised.

There are also Assyrian genocide monuments in Paris, France and in Russia.

School institutions
In Canada, the Assyrian Genocide, along with the Armenian Genocide, are included in a course covering historical genocides. Turkish organizations, along with other non-Turkish Muslim organizations, have reacted to this and protested.