Assyrian genocide
The Assyrian genocide was a genocide conducted by the Ottoman Empire's Muslim ruling class and associated Kurdish tribes, where 250,000[1][2][3][4][5] to 300,000[6][7] Assyrians were killed.[8][9]
Etymology
The Assyrians call the Assyrian genocide Sayfo[a], the Aramaic word for sword.
Background
History of Assyrians
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.[8][9]
Assyrian experiences from the Assyrian Voice
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. [10]
Events
The genocide was committed against Assyrians within the Ottoman Empire during the First World War by the Young Turks.[11] 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.[8][9]
Death toll
Scholars have placed the number of Assyrian victims from 250,000[1][2][3][4][5] to 300,000.[6][7]
Concurrent genocides
The Assyrian genocide took place in the same context and period as the Armenian and Greek genocides.[8][9] 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.[8][9]
Related pages
Footnotes
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Bloxham, Donald; Gerwarth, Robert (2011-03-10). Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge University Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-1-139-50129-3.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (2019-04-24). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Harvard University Press. p. 488. ISBN 978-0-674-91645-6.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Wyrtzen, Jonathan (2022-08-09). Worldmaking in the Long Great War: How Local and Colonial Struggles Shaped the Modern Middle East. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-54657-7.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Shattuck, Gardiner H. (2022-12-09). Christian Homeland: Episcopalians and the Middle East, 1820-1958. Oxford University Press. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-19-766503-9.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Benjamen, Alda (2022-02-03). Assyrians in Modern Iraq: Negotiating Political and Cultural Space. Cambridge University Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-1-108-83879-5.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Waal, Thomas De (2019). The Caucasus: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-19-068308-5.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Robson, Laura (2017-04-18). States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Univ of California Press. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-520-29215-4.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4
- Travis, Hannibal (2011). "7. The Assyrian Genocide: A Tale of Oblivion and Denial". Forgotten Genocides. doi:10.9783/9780812204384-009. Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- Travis, Hannibal (2017). "Exile or extinction: The Assyrian genocide from 1915 to 2015". The Assyrian Genocide (1 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9781315269832. Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- Tower, Daniel J. (2017). "The Long Road Home: Indigenous Assyrian Christians of Iraq and the Politicisation of the Diaspora". Religious Categories and the Construction of the Indigenous. pp. 178–202. doi:10.1163/9789004328983_010. Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- Diamadis, Panayiotis (2017). "Controversies Around Governmental and Parliamentary Recognition of the Armenian, Hellenic, and Assyrian Genocides". Controversies in the Field of Genocide Studies (1 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9781351295000. Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- Mutlu-Numansen, Sofia; Ossewaarde, Marinus (2019). "A Struggle for Genocide Recognition: How the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean Diasporas Link Past and Present". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 33 (3): 412–428. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcz045. Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4
- Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), p. 169.
- Daisan, Bar (May 11, 2017). "New Book About the Assyrian Genocide Published". Assyrian International News Agency (AINA). Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- Isaac, Mardean (January 9, 2018). "Turkey's Genocide of the Assyrians Was an Islamist Crime". Tablet. Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- Couretas, John (September 13, 2019). "Deportation and annihilation: Turkey's genocide of Christian Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians (1894-1924)". Religion & Liberty. 29 (2). Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- Durie, Mark (2022). "Islamic Antisemitism Drives the Arab-Israeli Conflict". Middle East Quarterly. 29 (3). Retrieved February 2, 2025.
- ↑ Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die?
- ↑ Aprim, Frederick A. Syriacs: The Continuous Saga, page 40