Assyrian genocide

The **Assyrian genocide**, also known as the **Sayfo**, was a genocide conducted by the Ottoman Empire's Muslim ruling class and associated Kurdish tribes, where 250,000 to 300,000 Assyrians were killed.

### Ethnic violence in Azerbaijan

After their expulsion from Hakkari, the Assyrians and their herds were resettled by Russian occupation authorities near Khoy, Salmas and Urmia. Many died during the first winter due to lack of food, shelter, and medical care, and they were resented by local residents for worsening living standards. Assyrian men from Hakkari offered their services to the Russian military; although their knowledge of local terrain was useful, they were poorly disciplined. In 1917, Russia's withdrawal from the war after the Russian Revolution dimmed prospects of a return to Hakkari. About 5,000 Assyrian and Armenian militia policed the area, but they frequently abused their power and killed Muslims without provocation.

From February to July 1918, the region was engulfed by ethnic violence. On 22 February, local Muslims and the Persian governor began an uprising against the Christian militias in Urmia. The better-organized Christians, led by Agha Petros, brutally crushed the uprising; hundreds (possibly thousands) were killed. On 16 March, Mar Shimun and many of his bodyguards were killed by the Kurdish chieftain Simko Shikak, probably at the instigation of Persian officials fearing Assyrian separatism, after they met to discuss an alliance. Assyrians went on a killing and looting spree; unable to find Simko, they murdered Persian officials and inhabitants. The Kurds responded by massacring Christians, regardless of denomination or ethnicity. Christians were massacred in Salmas in June and in Urmia in early July, and many Assyrian women were abducted.

Christian militias in Azerbaijan were no match for the Ottoman army when it invaded in July 1918. Tens of thousands of Ottoman and Persian Assyrians fled south to Hamadan, where the British Dunsterforce was garrisoned, on 18 July to escape Ottoman forces approaching Urmia under Ali İhsan Sâbis. The Ottoman invasion was followed by killings of Christians, including Chaldean archbishop Toma Audo, and the sacking of Urmia. Some remained in Persia, but there was another anti-Christian massacre on 24 May 1919. Historian Florence Hellot-Bellier says that the interethnic violence of 1918 and 1919 "demonstrate[s] the degree of violence and resentment which had accumulated throughout all of these years of war and the break-up of the long-standing links between the inhabitants of the Urmia region". According to Gaunt, Assyrian "victims, when given the chance, turned without hesitation into perpetrators".

### Heydarabad and Sahin Ghal Massacre (1918)

During the journey to Hamadan, the Assyrians were harassed by Kurdish irregulars (probably at the instigation of Simko and Sayyid Taha); some died of exhaustion. Many were killed near Heydarabad, and another 5,000 during an ambush by Ottoman forces and Kurdish irregulars near the Sahin Ghal'e mountain pass. Dependent on the British for protection, they were resettled in a refugee camp in Baqubah (near Baghdad) which held fifteen thousand Armenians and thirty-five thousand Assyrians in October 1918. Conditions at the camp were poor, and an estimated 7,000 Assyrians died there. Although the United Kingdom requested that Assyrian refugees be allowed to return, the Persian government refused.

In 1920, the camp in Baqubah was shut down and Assyrians hoping to return to Azerbaijan or Hakkari were sent northwards to Midan. About 4,500 Assyrians were resettled near Duhok and Akre in northern Iraq. They worked as soldiers for the British rulers of Mandatory Iraq, which backfired when the British did not follow through with their repeated promises to resettle Assyrians in areas where they would be safer. After the end of the mandate, Assyrians were killed in the 1933 Simele massacre. After the massacre, France allowed 24,000 to 25,000 Assyrians to resettle along the Khabur in northeastern Syria. Other Assyrians were exiled in the Caucasus, Russia, or Lebanon, and a few immigrated to the United States, Canada, South America, and Europe.

### Assyrians in Turkey

A few thousand Assyrians remained in Hakkari after 1915, and others returned after the war. Armed by the British, Agha Petros led a group of Assyrians from Tyari and Tkhuma who wanted to return in 1920; he was repulsed by Barwari chieftain Rashid Bek and the Turkish army. The remaining Assyrians were driven out again in 1924 by a Turkish army commanded by Kazim Karabekir, and the mountains were depopulated. In Siirt, Islamicized Syriacs (primarily women) were left behind. Their Kurdified (or Arabized) descendants still live there.

The survivors lost access to their property, becoming landless agricultural laborers, or later, an urban underclass. The depopulated Christian villages were resettled by Kurds or Muslims from the Caucasus. During and after the genocide, more than 150 churches and monasteries were demolished. Others were converted to mosques or other uses. Many manuscripts and cultural objects were destroyed.

After 1923, local politicians went on an anti-Christian campaign which negatively impacted the Syriac communities (such as Adana, Urfa or Adiyaman) unaffected by the 1915 genocide. Many were forced to abandon their property and flee to Syria, eventually settling in Aleppo, Qamishli, or the Khabur region. Despite its effort to court the Turkish nationalists, including denying that Syriac Orthodox had been persecuted during the war, the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate was expelled from Turkey in 1924. Unlike the Armenians, Jews, and Greeks, Assyrians were not recognized as a minority group in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

The remaining population lived in submission to Kurdish aghas, subject to harassment and abuse which drove them to emigrate. Turkish laws denaturalized those who had fled and confiscated their property. Despite their citizenship rights, many Assyrians who remained in Turkey had to re-purchase their property from Kurdish aghas or risk losing their Turkish citizenship. A substantial number of Assyrians continued to live in Tur Abdin until the 1980s. Some scholars have described the ongoing exclusion and harassment of Assyrians in Turkey as a continuation of the Sayfo.

### Paris Peace Conference

In 1919, Assyrians attended the Paris Peace Conference and attempted to lobby for compensation for their war losses. Although it has been labeled "the Assyrian delegation" in historiography, it was neither an official delegation nor a cohesive entity. Many attendees demanded monetary reparations for their war losses and an independent state, and all emphasized that Assyrians could not live under Muslim rule. Territory claimed by the Assyrians included parts of present-day Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.

Although there was considerable sympathy for the Assyrians, none of their demands were met. The British and the French had other plans for the Middle East, and the rising Turkish nationalist movement was also an obstacle. The Assyrians recalled that the British had promised them an independent country in exchange for their support, although it is disputed if such a promise was ever made; many Assyrians felt betrayed that this desire was not fulfilled.

## Etymology

The Assyrians call the Assyrian genocide _Sayfo_, the Aramaic word for _sword_.

#### Ancient times

Since ancient times, during their conquest by the Babylonians, the Assyrians have not have had their own nation and have had a diaspora that has spread over the world to many different countries.

#### Ottoman Empire

The Ottomans oppressed the Assyrians, took away their independence and forced them to assimilate to their empire. Those who have survived keep their common unity, especially in their deep Christian faith. Many Assyrians were considered "impure" by the Ottoman Turks and were massacred for refusing to renounce Christianity to become Muslims.

Assyrians lost their homes and possessions to the Red Sultan, Abdul Hamid II. Even before the genocide, they had been persecuted and forced to pay high taxes. Most killings happened between 1915 and 1917.

## Events

The genocide was committed against Assyrians within the Ottoman Empire during the First World War by the Young Turks. The Assyrian population of northern Mesopotamia included the Van, Siirt, Tur Abdin and Hakkari regions of present-day southeastern Turkey and the Urmia region of present-day northwestern Iran.

The Assyrians were forcibly relocated and massacred by Ottoman and Kurdish forces between 1914 and 1920 under the regime of the Young Turks. Under leadership of Djevdet Bey, the Ottoman governor, at least 55,000 Assyrian Christians were martyred. He is considered responsible for the massacres of Armenians and Assyrians in and around Vilayet of Van province.

## Death toll

Scholars have placed the number of Assyrian victims from 250,000 to 300,000.

## Concurrent genocides

The Assyrian genocide took place in the same context and period as the Armenian and Greek genocides. But unlike the last two, no official national or international recognition of the Assyrian genocide has been made, and many accounts discuss the Assyrian genocide only as a part of the larger events subsumed under the Armenian genocide.

## Related pages

- The Holocaust
- Bosnian genocide
- Assyrian continuity
- Rwandan genocide
- Cambodian genocide

## Infobox (civilian attack)

- **title**: Assyrian Genocide
- **partof**: World War I
- **image**: Assyrian Jilu mother and child.png
- **image size**: 300
- **alt**: see caption
- **caption**: An Assyrian mother and her child, fleeing the genocide.
- **location**: Ottoman Empire
- **date**: 1914-1918
- **type**: Genocide, death marches, Forced conversion, forced Islamization
- **target**: Assyrians
- **fatalities**: 250,000-300,000
- **perps**: Ottoman Empire, Kurdish forces