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The Assyrian Genocide (Assyrian: ܩܛܠܐ ܕܥܡܐ ܐܬܘܪܝܐ or ܣܝܦܐ, Turkish: Süryani Soykırımı) was committed against the Assyrian population of the Ottoman Empire near the end of the First World War by the Young Turks.^[1] 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.^[2]

The Syriac 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. Other groups, especially those that do not wish to use the ethnic identifier Assyrian, refer to the genocide as Saypā (ܣܝܦܐ), pronounced Sayfo in the West Syriac dialect, meaning "sword". In total, 750,000 Assyrians were killed at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, aided by the Kurds.^[3]

Contents 1 Reasons for the genocide 2 Political situation before World War I 3 Documented accounts of the massacre 3.1 Massacres at Van 3.2 Massacres in Persian villages 3.2.1 Massacre of Khoi, Persia 3.3 Baquba camps 4 Massacres in the late Ottoman Empire 5 Reports from the U.S. and Europe 6 Eyewitness accounts and quotes 7 Recognition 7.1 Monuments 8 See also 9 Literature 10 External links 11 References

[edit] Reasons for the genocide

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.^[4]

“

"One day the Moslems assembled all the children of from six to fifteen years and carried them off to the headquarters of the police. There they led the poor little things to the top of a mountain known as Ras-el Hadjar and cut their throats one by one, throwing their bodies into an abyss." [5]

”

[edit] 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, Şırnak, and Mardin. These areas also had a sizable Kurdish population. The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on October 29, 1914.

[edit] 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:

Numerous articles in the American press documented the genocide of Assyrians by the Turks and their Kurdish allies. By 1918, The Los Angeles Times carried the story of a Syrian, or most likely an Assyrian, merchant from Urmia who stated that his city was ‘‘completely wiped out, the inhabitants massacred,’’ 200 surrounding villages ravaged, 200,000 of his people dead, and hundreds of thousands of more starving to death in exile from their agricultural lands. In an article entitled ‘‘Native Christians Massacred,’’ the Associated Press correspondent reported that in the vicinity of Urmia, ‘‘Turkish regular troops and Kurds are persecuting and massacring Assyrian Christians.’’ Close to 800 were confirmed dead in Urmia, and another 2,000 had perished from disease. Two hundred Assyrians had been burned to death inside a church, and the Russians had discovered more than 700 bodies of massacre victims in the village of Hafdewan outside Urmia, ‘‘mostly naked and mutilated,’’ some with gunshot wounds, others decapitated, and still others carved to pieces.

Other leading British and American newspapers corroborated these accounts of the Assyrian genocide. The New York Times reported on 11 October that 12,000 Persian Christians had died of massacre, hunger, or disease; thousands of girls as young as seven had been raped or forcibly converted to Islam; Christian villages had been destroyed, and three-fourths of these Christian villages were burned to the ground. The Times of London was perhaps the first widely respected publication to document the fact that 250,000 Assyrians and Chaldeans eventually died in the Ottoman genocide of Christians, a figure which many journalists and scholars have subsequently accepted....

As the Earl of Listowel, speaking in the House of Lords on 28 November 1933, stated, ‘‘the Assyrians fought on our side during the war,’’ and made ‘‘enormous sacrifices,’’ having ‘‘lost altogether by the end of the War about two-thirds of their total number.’'....

About half of the Assyrian nation died of murder, disease, or exposure as refugees during the war, according to the head of the Anglican Church, which had a mission to the Assyrians.^[6]

In April 1915, Ottoman Troops easily invaded Gawar, a region of Hakkari, and massacred the entire population.^[7] Prior to this, in October of 1914, 71 Assyrian men of Gawar were arrested and taken to the local government centre in Bashkalla and killed.^[8] 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. In the end, the army decided to kill them as well.^{[citation needed]}

Cevdet Paşa 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".^[9]

[edit] Massacres at Van

In late 1915, Djeudet 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 Djeudet's soldiers and the estimated number of Assyrian deaths:

Sairt - 2,000[10]	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.

[edit] 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:^[11]

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.

[edit] 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:

You have undoubtedly heard of the Assyrian massacre of Khoi, but I am certain you do not know the details."

These Assyrians were assembled into one caravansary, and shot to death by guns and revolvers. Blood literally flowed in little streams, and the entire open space within the caravansary became a pool of crimson liquid. The place was too small to hold all the living victims waiting for execution. They were brought in groups, and each new group was compelled to stand over the heap of the still bleeding bodies and shot to death. The fearful place became literally a human slaughter house, receiving its speechless victims, in groups of ten and twenty at a time, for execution.

At the same time, the Assyrians, who were residing in the suburb of the city, were brought together and driven into the spacious courtyard of a house [...] The Assyrian refugees were kept under guard for eight days, without anything to eat. At last they were removed from their place of confinement and taken to a spot prepared for their brutal killing. These helpless Assyrians marched like lambs to their slaughter, and they opened not their mouth, save by sayings "Lord, into thy hands we commit our spirits. [...]

The executioners began by cutting first the fingers of their victims, join by joint, till the two hands were entirely amputated. Then they were stretched on the ground, after the manner of the animals that are slain in the Fast, but these with their faces turned upward, and their heads resting upon the stones or blocks of wood Then their throats were half cut, so as to prolong their torture of dying, and while struggling in the agony of death, the victims were kicked and clubbed by heavy poles the murderers carried Many of them, while still laboring under the pain of death, were thrown into ditches and buried before their souls had expired.

The young men and the able-bodied men were separated from among the very young and the old. They were taken some distance from the city and used as targets by the shooters. They all fell, a few not mortally wounded. One of the leaders went to the heaps of the fallen and shouted aloud, swearing by the names of Islam's prophets that those who had not received mortal wounds should rise and depart, as they would not be harmed any more. A few, thus deceived, stood up, but only to fall this time killed by another volley from the guns of the murderers.

Some of the younger and good looking women, together with a few little girls of attractive appearance, pleaded to be killed. Against their will were forced into Islam's harems. Others were subjected to such fiendish insults that I cannot possibly describe. Death, however, came to their rescue and saved them from the vile passions of the demons. The death toll of Assyrians totaled 2,770 men, women and children.^[12]

[edit] 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.^[13]

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.

[edit] 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.^[14]

Christian population in Diyarbakır Province before and after World War I[15]
	Sect	Before WWI	Disappeared	After WWI
Armenians	Gregorians (Apostolic)	60,000	58,000	2,000
	Armenian Catholics	12,500	11,500	1,000
Assyrians	Chaldean Catholics	11,120	10,010	1,110
	Syriac Catholic	5,600	3,450	2,150
	Syriac Jacobite	84,725	60,725	24,000
	Total	173,945	143,685	30,260

Christian population in Mardin province before and after World War I[15]
	Sect	Before WWI	Disappeared	After WWI
Armenians	Catholics	10,500	10,200	300
Assyrians	Chaldean Catholics	7,870	6,800	1,070
	Syriac Catholic	3,850	700	3,150
	Syriac Jacobite	51,725	29,725	22,000
	Total	73,945	49,875	24,070

[edit] Reports from the U.S. and Europe

The New York Times's editor V. Rockwell published an article in 1916, with the title "The Number of Armenian and Assyrian Victims". In the article, he stated:

Not only the Armenians are unfortunate: the Assyrians were also wiped out and each tenth was murdered. [...] A lot of Assyrians perished but no one knows how many exactly....within six months the Young Turks managed to do what the "Old Turks" were not able to do during six centuries. [...] Thousands of Assyrians vanished from the face of the earth.^{[citation needed]}

In November 1919 the periodical French Asia wrote:

the Assyrian massacres resembled the Armenian slaughters. And as about this nation, which had 250 thousand victims, has been spoken much less, it is necessary to inform the world about it.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Eyewitness accounts and quotes

Statement of German Missionaries on Urmia.

There was absolutely no human power to protect these unhappy people from the savage onslaught of the invading hostile forces. It was an awful situation. At midnight the terrible exodus began; a concourse of 25,000 men, women, and children, Assyrians and Armenians, leaving cattle in the stables, all their household hoods and all the supply of food for winter, hurried, panic-stricken, on a long and painful journey to the Russian border, enduring the intense privations of a foot journey in the snow and mud, without any kind of preparation… It was a dreadful sight,… many of the old people and children died along the way."^[16]

The latest news is that four thousand Assyrians and one hundred Armenians have died of disease alone, at the mission, within the last five months. All villages in the surrounding district with two or three exceptions have been plundered and burnt; twenty thousand Christians have been slaughtered in Armenia and its environs. In Haftewan, a village of Salmas, 750 corpses without heads have been recovered from the wells and cisterns alone. Why? Because the commanding officer had put a price on every Christian head… In Dilman crowds of Christians were thrown into prison and driven to accept Islam."^[17]

[edit] Recognition

The genocide of Assyrians has yet to be officially recognized by any country. 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.^{[citation needed]} 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."^{[18][unreliable source?]}

[edit] 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.^[19]

[edit] See also

• Newspaper documentation of the Assyrian Genocide
• Armenian Genocide
• Assyrian independence
• List of Assyrian settlements
• Pontic Greek Genocide
• Simele massacre
• Yusuf Akbulut

[edit] Literature

• Joel Euel Werda. The Flickering Light of Asia: Or, the Assyrian Nation and Church
• Abraham Yohannan The Death of a Nation: Or, The Ever Persecuted Nestorians Or Assyrian Christians ISBN 0524062358
• Salahi Ramadan Sonyel (2001). The Assyrians of Turkey: Victims of Major Power Policy (in English). Turkish Historical Society Printing House. ISBN 9751612969. OCLC 49378769. 
• W. A. Wigram (2002). The Assyrians and Their Neighbours (in English). Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 1931956111. OCLC 49825930. 
• David Gaunt (2006). Massacres, resistance, protectors: Muslim-Christian relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (in English). Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 1593333013. OCLC 85766950. 
• Ronald Sempill Stafford (2006). The Tragedy of the Assyrians (in English). Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 1593334133. OCLC 173087158. 

[edit] External links

• http://i-cias.com/e.o/assyrian_gc.htm
• http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/facts/gen_bib1.html
• http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/yv544142p5rnx055/
• http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/1915/bryce/a06.htm
• http://www.bethsuryoyo.com/images/Articles/AframBarsom/AfBarsom7.html
• http://www.aina.org/news/20070307112641.htm
• http://www.aina.org/news/20060131141429.htm
• http://www.aina.org/news/20040806203553.htm
• http://www.aina.org/releases/20040805022140.htm
• http://www.aina.org/news/20071025121003.htm
• http://lalettre.hayway.org/protected/en/communique000100b8.html
• http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1915/bryce/a16.htm
• http://www.zyworld.com/Assyrian/The%20Assyrian%20Genocide.htm
• http://www.nineveh.com/Assyrian%20Genocide%20Victims%20Discovery.html
• Video clip 1918-Urmia Exodus
• The Assyrians in the Christian Asia Minor Holocaust
• The last Assyrians in Urmia, During the World War one Massacres
• Chronology of the Seyfo Genocide (1915-1923)
• Seyfo Denial - From Within?
• Turkey Should Recognize the Assyrian Genocide 1915
• Mr. Stallone, Don't Forget the Assyrian Genocide
• Assyrians - the Forgotten People, Part I
• Assyrians - the Forgotten People, Part II
• Assyrians - the Forgotten People, Part III
• Assyrian Tragedy

[edit] References

v • d • e World War I
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Prelude: Causes Sarajevo assassination July Ultimatum Theatres: Western Front Eastern Front Italian Front Middle Eastern Theatre Balkan Theatre Atlantic Theatre African Theatre Pacific Theatre General timeline: WW I timeline See also: Female roles Literature Total war Veterans	1914: Battle of Liège Battle of Tannenberg Invasion of Serbia First Battle of the Marne First Battle of Arras Battle of Sarikamis 1915: Mesopotamian Campaign Battle of Gallipoli Italian Campaign Conquest of Serbia 1916: Battle of Verdun Battle of the Somme Battle of Jutland Brusilov Offensive Conquest of Romania Great Arab Revolt 1917: Second Battle of Arras (Vimy Ridge) Battle of Passchendaele Capture of Baghdad Conquest of Palestine 1918: Spring Offensive Hundred Days Offensive Meuse-Argonne Offensive Armistice with Germany Armistice with Ottoman Empire	Military engagements Naval warfare Air warfare Cryptography People Poison gas Railways Technology Trench warfare Civilian impact and atrocities: Armenian Genocide Assyrian Genocide Pontic Greek Genocide Aftermath: Aftermath Casualties League of Nations Paris Peace Conference Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire Spanish flu Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Treaty of Lausanne Treaty of Neuilly Treaty of St. Germain Treaty of Sèvres Treaty of Trianon Treaty of Versailles	Entente Powers Russian Empire French Empire   » France   » Vietnam British Empire   » United Kingdom   » Australia   » Canada   » India   » New Zealand   » Newfoundland   » South Africa Italy Romania United States Serbia Portugal Republic of China Japan Belgium Montenegro Greece Armenia more… Central Powers German Empire Austria-Hungary Ottoman Empire Bulgaria	Contemporaneous conflicts: Mexican Revolution (1910-20) First Balkan War (1912-13) Second Balkan War (1913) Maritz Rebellion (1914-15) Easter Rising (1916) Russian Revolution (1917) Russian Civil War (1917-21) Finnish Civil War (1918) North Russia Campaign (1918-19) Wielkopolska Uprising (1918-19) Estonian War of Independence (1918-1920) Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) Polish-Soviet War (1919-21) Polish-Lithuanian War (1920) Irish War of Independence also known as the Anglo-Irish War (1919-21) Turkish War of Independence including the Greco-Turkish War (1919-23) Irish Civil War (1922-23) More information on World War I: World War I from Wiktionary WWI Textbooks from Wikibooks WWI Quotations from Wikiquote WWI Source texts from Wikisource WWI Images & media from Commons WWI News stories from Wikinews