During the 1910s, Kurdish-Ottoman relations were complex as some Kurds had sided with the Committee of Union and Progress against the Christian minorities for opportunistic reasons, while others had positioned themselves against the Ottomans and sided with the Christians. Kurdish manpower had also been used in the Caucasus campaign against the Russian Empire, but the Ottomans did not consider the Kurds as loyal, believing that they would cooperate with the Armenians and the Russians to further their own nationalist aspirations. On this, historian and genocide expert Üngör points at the memoirs of Commander Ahmed İzzet Pasha: