Assyrian Genocide

[Assyria]

August 7, 1933, The remembrance of the victims of the Assyrian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, When 750,000 Assyrians were massacred by the Ottoman Turks with the assistance of several Kurdish tribes during 1914-1918 & August 7, 1933 (During Jewish Holocaust). Some Kurds were prisoners in Turkey, and they were released only to slaughter the Assyrians, and the Turks promised them a Kurdistan. The number of the casualties is unknown, because Assyrians suffered numerous genocides from 448 A.D. - 1999 A.D. The world turned its head while a nation was being exterminated. This is the tragedy that happend, but history cannot be hidden or rewritten. Their memories will serve as a reminder of what prejudice can do if not confronted. By 1300 A.D Assyrians have lost control of their ancestral lands. After World War I they were betrayed by the League of Nations, which had promised them a homeland. Also Assyrians were killed in the Armenian Genocide when 1.5 Million Armenians as well as Assyrians were killed by the Ottoman Empire on April 24, 1915. Here you can discuss things like the Genocide, and other related issues. The genocide has til this day has not been recognized by Turkey or any government in the world.

[Kharpert]

Welcome to the forums, Assyria.

Searches on Assyrian Genocide

[Armeni]

Yes, the Turks killed the Assyrians too. My great grandmother was half-Assyrian.

There should be a country for Assyrians as well. If Sevres was realized, that would have happened. Everything would have been so much better.

[Gavur]

The Assyrian in the Christian Asia Minor Holocaust

by Panayiotis Diamadis, Delivered at University of Sydney, Australia


We have repeatedly heard today the terms “Assyrian Genocide” and “Assyrian Holocaust”. Other speakers have dealt with the responsibility of Germany in the decimation of the Assyrian nation, with the way the Christian Assyrians were abandoned by the so-called ‘Great Powers’ in their hours of greatest need, when one would expect a modicum of Christian solidarity and compassion, as well as with the issue of the identity of the Assyrian people. I will be examining the reason we are here today: do the numerous and repeated persecutions and massacres of the Assyrian people constitute a case of genocide? I hope that by the end of my presentation, you will have formed an opinion based on evidence rather than emotion.

The deportation of the Armenians, in some localities of the Greeks, and in Syria of some of the Arabs, was used inside and outside the empire as a source of attack on the Turkish Government. First of all, I wish to inform the public that the rumours of desortation and assassination were exceedingly exaggerated. … As to the deportation of the Greeks and the Arabs, this charge is based more on propaganda than on real fact. … As to the Arabs of Syria, we confined ourselves to the application of martial law, and punished only those who promoted a revolution to overthrow the Turkish authority in Syria.

These are the words of Talaat Pasha, Minister of the Interior in the Young Turk government. Talaat was not a Turk, but was of Pomak[1] descent. These extracts come from his memoirs, published posthumously in the New York Times current affairs journal “Current History” in November 1921. The “Arabs” that Talaat wrote about are almost certainly references to the Assyrians as only Christians, and in Palestine Jews, were subject to the deportation laws. This is how one of the 20th century’s worst mass murderers attempted to excuse the orgy of death and destruction that engulfed east Thrace and Asia Minor between 1914 and 1924.

The Armenian Genocide is relatively well-known throughout the world. Less well known is the Hellenic Genocide of eastern Thrace, Ionia, Pontos and Kappadokia. Virtually unknown is the Assyrian Genocide.

As we heard at last year’s Portraits of Christian Asia Minor Conference at Macquarie University, the events that led to the disappearance of Christianity from the lands where it thrived for some 1900 years, can collectively be called the Christian Asia Minor Holocaust. In the space of one decade, the Christian population of the regions that now constitute the Republic of Turkey went from some five million souls to less than 700 000. This figure has since fallen to less than 200 000. The question that presents itself today is does Christianity have a future in Asia Minor in the 21st century?

The most widely quoted and referred to definition of genocide is that included in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Genocide. This document was drafted by Raphael Lemski, a Polish lawyer, in 1945 at the request of the newly-formed United Nations’ Organisation. The Convention was adopted by the United Nations’ General Assembly as Resolution 96 on December 11 1946.

ARTICLE I: The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

ARTICLE II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a)killing members of the group;

(b)causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d)imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e)forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The key words in this legal definition of what constitutes genocide are “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part”.

How does this genocide occur? How does one group of people arrive at the decision to murder en masse another group of people? Scholars of the Shoah (the Jewish Holocaust of the 1940s) have developed a theoretical framework for beginning to answer this question. Professor Colin Tatz, Founder and Director of the Centre of Genocide Studies at Macquarie University, has named this framework “The Four Building Blocks of Genocide”.

Firstly, there must exist an ancient hatred between the perpetrators and the victims. Secondly, there must exist the means and opportunity to execute the plan, usually but not always, under the cover of a war situation. Thirdly, the organisational and technological capability to execute the plan. Fourthly, the actual killings.

ANCIENT HATRED. Since the rise of Islam in the 600s Christian Era, the mountains and valleys of historic Assyria have constituted the “border lands” between the Christian and Islamic Worlds. The Syriac-speaking inhabitants of the Mardin, Tur Abdin, Hakkari and Mosul regions have consequently been the “meat” in the Christian-Muslim “sandwich”. Their homeland has been dominated by various Islamic dynasties for the last thirteen centuries. Being Christians in a predominantly Islamic society, they were seen as “giavour” (infidels) by their Muslim Turkish overlords.

As we heard earlier from Dr Erica Hunter during the presentation of her paper “The Conversion of the Turkic Tribes”, it was Assyrian missionaries who brought Christianity to the Turkic tribes of Central Asia centuries before their arrival in Asia Minor. How ironic then, that the ‘civilisers’ of the Turkic tribes were to become their victims.

During the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Orhan (1326-1362), the first recorded mass kidnapping of male Christian children occurred. The abductees were imprisoned, converted to Islam and Turkified; they formed the infamous Janissary (from the Turkish words Yeni Ceri, New Troops) corps. Young girls were also taken, converted to Islam and kept as harem girls in the palaces of senior military and civil officials. The “lucky” ones were married to their abductors after being forcibly converted to Islam. The children of these girls were subsequently raised as Muslim Turks.

Initially, the mass abductions occurred every five years. It was soon stepped up to every two or three years. A policy of systematic Islamization and Turkification of the Christian subject peoples, often by violent means, was introduced. This had the effect of rapidly boosting the Muslim population, strengthening Ottoman power and undermining the native Christian peoples. In the 1670s, the policy of forced Islamization reaches its zenith. Entire districts of Asia Minor, Pontos and the Aimos (Balkan) Peninsula were given the choice of adopting Islam or being killed.

Following a mutiny in June 1826 against the formation of a Western-style army, the Janissary Corps was formally abolished. Most of the Janissaries were killed during the mutiny. Those who were captured alive were executed. The regular paedomazoma (child-gathering) was also ended. The official policy of forced Islamization was not ended until November 2 1839 when the Great Powers forced Sultan Abdul Mejid to issue the Hatt-i-Sherif decree, guaranteeing freedom of religion guaranteed for all the peoples of the Empire.

In the 1700s, Orthodox Russia conducted a series of wars against the Islamic states of the Crimean Peninsula and the Caucasus. Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Abkhaz and other Caucasian Muslims streamed into the territory of the Ottoman Empire. By the autumn of 1829, Russian armies had reached Argyroupolis (Gumushane) in eastern Pontos and Theodosioupolis (Erzerum) in western Armenia.

Following the Russian defeat in the war of 1829-1830, these regions were given back to the Ottoman Empire. The retreating Russian troops were followed by many Christians fearful of Turkish reprisals. The Crimean War of (1853-56), the Russian conquest of Abkhazia (1875), the RussoTurkish War of 1877-78, the Kretan Uprising of 1894-98 (which resulted in the autonomy of Krete and the expulsion of all Muslims from the island) and most importantly, the Balkan Wars (1912-13), continued this “exchange” of Christian and Muslim populations. The Muslim population of Asia Minor was greatly increased by the influx of some 200 000 refugees as the Christians continued to reduce in number.

This war (the Balkan Wars) was one of the greatest calamities Turkey ever suffered. It was a sign of the impending collapse of the Empire. … But the land loss was not the whole picture. More than one million refugees streamed in from Bulgaria towards Istanbul. They were settled in Rumeli (east Thrace) and in Anatolia (Asia Minor). … After this date, Turkish refugees became a common sight until the end of the Ottoman Empire. They started leaving the Balkans in droves. … Tens of thousands of Turkish civilians were put to the sword. Large cities like Adrianople and Istanbul overflowed with refugees. For months, they slept in mosques and courtyards. For thousands of Turkish families, the wounds of the war are still not forgotten.[2]

Yakup Hidirsah wrote the following about events in historic Assyria during this period:

The main problem starts after the year of 1842. There are Armenian sources indicating that Bedirhan Bey adopted an assimilation policy in religious sense because he started to have ‘khutbah’ (a plain sermon) delivered in the mosques after he declared “his emirate” and had coins minted under his name. Bedirhan Bey was considering himself as the spiritual leader of the areas liberated from the Turkish sovereignty. (15)

After placing its “Sacred Unification” on strong foundations, for Bedirhan the period of dragging the Kurds into “sacred war” against the Christian peoples in the region would begin. Soon he started to display his real face and with the call he made to the peoples of the Syriac, Nestorian, Chaldean and even Armenian Christians, he required them to increase the tributes they had been paying to the Ottomans by a few times. At the same he sought the ways of to send them away from their homes and seize their possessions and lands. In fact his real intention that was his real aim and tax was only an excuse.

It was not possible for Syriac, Nestorian and other non-Muslim communities which strove to survive with difficulty to accept these harsh conditions put forward by Bedirhan the Ruler. Therefore, they replied a negative answer to Bedirhan.

This was what Bedirhan the Ruler was expecting for and he called the Kurdish Muslims to fight “a sacred war” against Christian Syriac, Nestorian, Chaldean and Armenian people and ordered to massacre and annihilate them....

We will try to summarize what happened after that according to the historical documents and sources. We can also find information in the Kurdish sources concerning the wild massacre perpetrated by Bedirhan Bey against the Christian peoples. Kurdish writers and historians also admit this massacre carried out by Bedirhan Bey.

On this subject, the Kurdish historian M.Emin Zeki states that:

“The Nestorian people who were living in the district of Botan over which Bedirhan Bey had dominance did not pay their taxes and rebelled against him. Bedirhan Bey had to dispatch troops and control them. The Nestorian people were inflicted on heavy losses and great damage.” [3]

Also the Kurdish writer Dr. Celilé Celil admits the following on the issue:

“...the Kurdish troops attacked the Assyrians and started slaughters. Consequently, a few Assyrians were killed, their villages were destroyed and set into fire... For the second time, in 1846, the Assyrians residing at the Thuma region have been massacred. Mar Semun hardly survived fleeing to Urmiyah.”[4]

Kurdish writer M. Kalman almost approves the liquidation of Nestorians and Syriacs whom some writers mention that they have been massacred on the pretext of their not “paying the taxes”: “Who, for what reason should clash with the communities paying taxes and providing troops”.[5] M. Kalman also adds to his words:

“The rights of the Christian community expanded following the Tanzimat Fermany (The Imperial Decree on Reformation in the Ottoman period) in 1838... The missionaries were willing to disseminate Christianity in Kurdistan...The Assyrians were trying to make the efforts to disseminate Christianity, beneficial for their own nationalistic interests. Naturally, such understandings were not pleasing for Yezidis and the Muslims.”[6]

These sentences obviously reveal the fact that the only reason for the massacres against the Syriacs, Nestorians and the Chaldeans by the Kurds was not the “taxes”. As a matter of fact, M Kalman makes a confession and says:

“Nurullah Bey and Bedirhan Bey, attacked the Assyrians to prevent their being influential in the region as a result of the Assyrians’ being alleged defended by the West. Killed many people. The villages were burned down and booted. One of the reasons of this attack was that, the Assyrians refused to pay taxes to Bedirhan.”[7]

So, the reason for the massacre was not “tax”, but the bigotry of the fanatical Muslim Kurds against Christian belief. Just at this point we would like to cite the remarkable and eloquent words of the British writer William Eagleton:

“In 1843 and 1846, Bedirhan started a massacre and booting campaign against the Christian Assyrians (Nestorians) he was anxious about whose getting stronger and independent through becoming able to rule themselves. It was intolerable for Bedirhan to see the Assyrians living on his own territories getting stronger. Thus he killed ten thousand Assyrians. Even though Bedirhan was a feudal tribal leader, he was expressing the aspirations of the Kurdish nationalism.” [8]

Many of the resources confirm that the Kurds under the command of Bedirhan massacred more than ten thousand Nestorian, Chaldean and Syriac Christians. The Kurdish writers, for an unknown reason, keep the number of victims of this savageness secret. For example, M. Kalman, in his words we have cited above, takes the massacre as a simple, ordinary incident and says “killed many people” and tries to keep the truth as a secret. The Armenian writer Garo Sasuni, expresses his views on Bedirhan as follows:

“It is true that some of the Jazira (Cizre) Emirs had the reputation of ‘bandit’. It is also true that Bedirhan was violent, biting and cruel ....There was an semi-independent Syriac region in Çulamerk (Hakkari)...Pashaliks of Cezire, Zaho, Hakkari and Amadiye, having this or that way a kinship with Bedirhan, have become his Allies. After gathering all these forces around himself, Bedirhan focused on Çulamerk (Hakkari) and on the independent Syriac thresholds at the northern region. Previously, these thresholds had been able to resist against the Emir of Hakkari. The Syriacs relying on the strong thresholds, had not intended to make concessions. Thus Bedirhan resorted violence against the Syriacs. Bedirhan had been successful. Occupied Çulamerk, killed many Syriacs, (Rafi, in his book ‘The Western Armenia’ mentions the number of the Syriacs as 10 000), forced many to convert to Islam and recruited some to his army.”[9]

This then was the socio-political climate in Asia Minor on the eve of World War One. The existing long-standing enmity between the politically and militarily dominant Muslims and the economically dominant Christians was at exploding point by January 1914. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees were roaming Asia Minor, resentful of anything that reminded them of the Christians who had forced them out of their homes. These ‘Rumeli’ refugees (‘Rumeli’ means ‘land of the Rum, the Orthodox Christians) would play a key role in the Christian Asia Minor Holocaust.

[Gavur]

Cont...

THE PLAN.
For a case of mass murder to be genocide, the intent to exterminate an entire group of people must exist. The Young Turks came to power in the Ottoman Empire in a coup d’etat in 1908, which effectively deposed Sultan Abdul Hamid II. At the Ittihad ve Terakke I Cemiyati (Committee for Union and Progress) Annual Congress in Thessalonike in late September - early October 1910, the Congress’ President remarked that “it was impossible to recruit Christians” to the police force as “no reliance could be placed” upon them.

“as Europe always regarded the affairs of Turkey through Christian spectacles every effort must be made to crush the propaganda of the Empire’s Christian nationalities, which might attract the attention of European politicians. The policy of disarmament and the boycott of Greek commerce had contributed largely to the achievement of this object, but it was necessary to strengthen further the Musulman element. ... A report of the work of the Central Committee was then presented. ... The Congress next proceeded to the election of various officers. ... A number of resolutions prepared by the Central Committee were then adopted without discussion. ... Musulmans generally should retain their arms, and where they are in a minority arms should be distributed to them by the authorities. ... Emigration from the Caucasus and Turkestan must be encouraged, land provided for the immigrants, and the Christians prevented from purchasing property. ... Turkey was essentially a Moslem country, and Moslem ideas and influence must preponderate. All other religious propaganda must be suppressed, as no reliance could be placed on Christians, who were always working for the downfall of the new regime. ... Sooner or later the complete Ottomanization of all Turkish subjects must be effected, but it was becoming clear that this could never be achieved by persuasion, and recourse must be had to force of arms.” [10]

At the following year’s Congress, again held in Thessalonike, chaired by Talaat Pasha, one of the Young Turks’ chief ideologues, Dr Behaeddin Sakir told the assembly “The nations that remain from the old times in our empire are akin to foreign and harmful weeds that must be uprooted. To clear our land…”

This use of biological terms like “harmful weeds” and “bacillus” which is how the Nazis referred to Jews is common in hate literature. In order to kill on the scale we are talking about, a degree of dehumanisation is required. The victims must cease being human. They must stop being people in the minds of the perpetrators, so that the majority of the population will accept the plans for mass murder of the leadership. So the indigenous Christian peoples of Asia Minor, including the Assyrians became “foreign and harmful weeds that must be uprooted” from their own homelands.

Once the Young Turks seized power, they proceeded to systematically replace the old Ottoman bureaucrats with young, educated and uneducated, Muslims fired with the passion to create Turan, a Turkic state stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the Great Wall of China. By 1914, the extreme wing of the Ittihadists were in complete control of the bureaucracy and the military. So the plan and the means to implement it existed. What remained, was the opportunity to execute these plans.

In January 1914, the populations of Hellenic villages in east Thrace began being deported to Hellas (those who still had money after the repeated looting and extortions of the Ottoman officials) or to Asia Minor (those who did not). On May 14, Talaat Pasha sent the following telegram to the Governor of Smyrne, Rahmi Bey:

Yildiz 14-5-1914

To the governor of Smyrna, Rahmi Bey.

The Hellenes, Ottoman citizens, of your area constitute a majority, which could possibly prove dangerous. Generally, all of them living on the coast of Asia Minor, including those in your Province, must be compelled to abandon their homes and be transported to the provinces of Erzerum, Erzincan and elsewhere. This is imposed by political and military reasons. If they refuse to evacuate their districts, give instructions to our Muslim brothers to force them using, toward this end, every means and every kind of deviation. The Hellenes must also be compelled to sign declarations, in which they state that they leave and abandon their homes of their own will and initiative. These declarations are necessary so as political issues will not be created.

Talaat, Minister for the Interior and Hilme, Director, Ministry of the Interior [11]

Even before World War One had begun, the Ottoman Government was planning and ordering the uprooting and destruction of its Christian population.

THE OPPORTUNITY. This came in the form of World War One, which began in late July 1914. The Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers almost immediately, declaring war on the Triple Entente on July 20. What was the Assyrian reaction to this turn of events?

The Assyrian Patriarch Mar Benyamin Shimun initially sought the protection of the Ottoman Government from Kurdish assaults in return for the neutrality of the Assyrian people, a people with a fierce warrior tradition.

“On June 23, 1915, Haidar Beg, the Vali of Mosul advances his Turkish forces along with the Kurdish irregulars and attacks the Upper and the Lower Tiari, forcing the Assyrians further into the mountains. Casualties are heavy on both sides. …on the third day of August 1914, Patriarch Mar Benyamen Shimun meets with the Vali of Van, Tahisan Pasha. The outcome of this meeting calls for the support of the Assyrians in Turkey. They are granted all necessary assistance from the Turkish government. However, this assistance is conditional. The Assyrian people's neutrality in the advent of war, is stipulated. Assyrians must refrain from forming any alliances with Russia. The Patriarch’s advice to Van was that the Assyrian ‘attitude would be conditioned by that of the Turks towards the Christians in general and the Assyrian nation in particular.’ [12]

What followed soon after, was to mark a turning point in our nation’s history. Violent raids on Assyrian villages in Turkey - Shamsdin, Norduz, Albaq, Mar Bishu, Iyel and Gavar. Men and women in their attempt to flee their attackers, were captured, tortured and brutally slain. These assaults left the Patriach, Mar Benyamen Shimun, with little or no alternative.

The Assyrians of Persia were fairing no better than their brothers and sisters in Turkey. Russia's withdrawal from Persia, unbeknown to the Assyrians, was a cause for concern. The Assyrians ‘enjoyed’, a somewhat protective existence, while Russia was in occupation of the north-western areas of Persia.

With the advent of Russia’s re-deployment of her forces, between December 20 and 24 1914, the Muslim authorities of Urmia, having secretly organised a Holy War or Jehad, on the Christians, began to push the Assyrians out of their homes and villages. Some twelve thousand refugees braved the cold winter snow. Many dying on the roadside from exhaustion, starvation and other tragic circumstances.

Having finally reached the Persian border and upon entering Russian soil, the Assyrians discovered that one third of their fleeing populace had perished on the way, and that the total of the remainder, taken by the authorities, were more than 50 000 souls, including the Christians of Salmas and Khoi for Khoy)’.[13]

Several weeks earlier an assembly of Assyrian delegates, from the surrounding tribes in Turkey, under the leadership of the Patriach Mar Benyamen Shimun, decided to enter an understanding with the triple Entente. (the Allies - Great Britain, France and Russia), on April 12, 1915. A formal notification was dispatched on April 16 1915, whereby the Vali (Governor) of Van, Tahisan Pasha, was informed that owing to the recent needless attacks on Assyrian villages and the oppressive enviromnent that the villagers continued to live in, the Assyrian nation here and now proclaims herself to be ‘the smallest Ally of the Democratic nations’.[14]

Genocide is only possible when extensive resources are devoted to the destruction of the victim group, in our case the Assyrians. The entire Ottoman state was utilised in the undeclared war of the Young Turks against the Christians of the Ottoman Empire. Talaat Pasha, Minister of the Interior, and Enver Pasha, Minister of War, set up the Teskilati Mahsusa (Special Organisation). Its purpose was to gather, organise and co-ordinate the foot-soldiers of the Christian Asia Minor Holocaust: bands of ‘Rumeli’ refugees, violent criminals released from prison especially for this purpose and Kurdish tribesmen lured by the promise of loot. This disparate group constituted the infamous chetas (bandits).

The head of the Special Organisation was a man named Eshref Kushtsubashi. His deputy was Celal Bayar, the Provincial Responsible Secretary of the Committee, later to become President of the Republic of Turkey. From the Evros river in Thrace and the Aegean Sea to the Caspian Sea and Mesopotamia, the chetas, directed, controlled and organised from Constantinople, spread death and destruction throughout Asia Minor, indiscriminately deporting and butchering Assyrians, Armenians and Hellenes. Religious denomination did not matter: Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Oriental were all force marched from their towns and villages and either killed outright or left to die of hunger, thirst, disease or exhaustion.

Exactly as the world saw during the 1940s, in the middle of a world war, the Ottoman Empire devoted enormous resources to the massacre of nearly half the population of Asia Minor. At one stage, the Empire was fighting on no less than four separate battle fronts: the Gallipoli Peninsula, the Caucasus Mountains, Mesopotamia and Palestine.

Every available man, weapon, automobile and rail car was required for war effort. Yet we have Australian prisoners-of-war reporting trainloads of Armenian deportees coming from north-east Asia Minor to the Taurus Mountains. Soldiers needed to fight at the fronts were instead sent to escort columns of Pontian Hellenes on death-marches hundreds of kilometres in length and sent to the mountains of historic Assyria to burn Assyrian villages and kill every Assyrian they could lay their hands on.

The city of Edessa (Urfa/Urhai) did not lie anywhere near any of the battle-fronts. In January 1915, two German officers commanded units of the Ottoman Army (including heavy artillery) in attacking and destroying this ancient centre, massacring many of the Assyrian inhabitants.

In April that year, the Armenian Genocide began. Armenians were deported to the deserts of northern Syria and either massacred or left to die. A few months later, Djendet Bey, the Military Governor of Van, entered the city of Sairt, commanding a force of 8000 troops. He ordered his Kassab Tabouri (Butchers’ Battalions) to massacre all the Christians of the district: Assyrian and Armenian alike.

Nor were the massacres restricted to the territory of the Ottoman Empire. In Persia’s Urmiah region and in the Russian Caucasus, Ottoman troops slaughtered and destroyed everywhere they went. It was the assasination of Patriarch Mar Benyamin Shimun on March 3 1918 at the hands of the Kurdish chieftain Simko (also written as Symyko) that led to the epic exodus of the Assyrians from their mountain homeland to the marshes of Ba’quba in southern Mesopotamia.

“Notwithstanding their resistance throughout a difficult and unconventional war, their condition in Persia at the onset of summer 1918 had become untenable, and they had no alternative but to retreat towards the British forces in Mesopotamia. Travelling some 300 miles south-easterly in helter-skelter panic, with their families, their livestock and their possessions, they [the Assyro-Chaldeans] finally reached Hamadan, having been decimated by unremitting attacks on all flanks by Turks, Kurds and Persians. Scorched by the heat of summer, and ravaged by Typhus, dysentery, smallpox and cholera, children and elderly alike fully spent by fatigue and fever were abandoned along the route, the dead and dying dotting the path of theirflight. Finally, 20 000 of them were lost to the ordeal. The survivors reached Hamadan where they made contact with the British troops.”[15]

The First Wolrd War formally ended with the Armistice signed on November 11 1918. The Ottoman Empire had surrendered to the Allies twelve days earlier. By this time, some two million Christians had been either massacred or forcibly converted to Islam. The end of the ‘Great War’ did not mean the end of the Christian Asia Minor Holocaust. The killing of the region’s indigenous Christians went on for almost another four years, culminating in the destruction of Smyrne (Izmir) in September 1922.

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, that finally brought peace to Asia Minor, did not include the Assyrians as an official minority. The result is that to this day, the Turkish state describes Assyrians as “Turco-Semites”, “Christian Kurds”, “Semitic Turks” anything but Assyrians. This is part of the homogenisation process Drs Deniz and Donef referred to in their presentations: everyone in Turkey is a Turk.

Kurdish and Arab attacks on Assyrians escalated, culminating in the August 1933 Simele Massacres across northern Mesopotamia. An estimated 3000 Assyrians perished in that single month alone. Since then, Assyrians have endured massacre, discrimination and persecution. They have endured forced Turkification and Arabisation. Their churches are bombed, their schools closed, their men killed and their villages relocated.

For those who believe deportations and executions of Assyrians are things of a distant past, let me mention Anfil. On September 24 1988, 250 Assyrians and Yezidis were ordered to report to the police station at Baharka, northern Mesopotamia. Those who did so were arrested, put on a military bus and never seen again.

On Wednesday evening (June 28), we saw a video on the villages and monasteries of Tur Abdin in south-east Asia Minor, filmed by Dr George Kiraz. Village after village was either deserted or had recently become Kurdish. One image in particular has stuck in my mind. Two villages (one Christian, the other Kurdish) sit side-by-side in the foothills of the mountains where guerrillas of the Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK) are active, fighting for an independent Kurdish state. On the pretext of this guerrilla activity, the Turkish Army deported the population of the Christian village to another settlement in the valley, further away from the mountains. As Dr Kiraz told us with more than a hint of bitterness in his voice, the Kurdish village was left untouched. This is a familiar story across historic Assyria.

The Syrian Orthodox Federation of Australia made a submission to the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade hearings on “Australia’s Efforts to Promote and Protect Freedom of Religion and Belief” in mid-1999. In it SOFA listed no less than 44 unsolved murders of Syrian Orthodox faithful in the Mardin and Hakkari regions of south-east Asia Minor between June 1987 and September 1997 alone.

[Gavur]

Cont..

CONCLUSION.
In closing, let us return to the United Nations definition of what constitutes genocide.

Killing members of the group. The majority of people in this room today would have lost at least one family member in the Christian Asia Minor Holocaust 1914-1924 or in the numerous pogroms and persecutions in Turkey and Iraq since then. The Ottoman, the Turkish and the Iraqi authorities have repeatedly organised the deportation and mass murder of Assyrian men, women and children in the 20th century, with the express aim of eliminating them as a cohesive group. Not simply force them out of the territory of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey or the Kingdom, now Republic, of Iraq, but wipe them out completely.

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. The Assyrian people have endured, and continue to endure the terrorism of the governments of Turkey and Iraq. Where someone is shot to death by a Turkish or Iraqi soldier in the streets of Van or Simele, or is left by Turkish or Iraqi guards to die of starvation in the desert is irrelevant. The intent to exterminate the victim group remains. Only the methods change. Murders of Assyrian men and women in Turkey and Iraq continue to go on unsolved. Churches are seized by the state and converted into mosques or animal pens. Teaching of one of the world’s oldest spoken languages is effectively forbidden in the land where it thrived for centuries. The official administrative and psychological pressure to become a Turk or an Arab has forced the indigenous people of south-east Asia Minor and northern Mesopotamia, the Assyrian people, to emigrate to lands where an Assyrian can freely be an Assyrian.

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. What is the difference between being shot, stabbed, burned alive in your home, slaughtered in your fields to being made to walk to death? Whether the state leaves deportees to die in the desert or in the mountains or orders its soldiers to shoot to kill, the result and the responsibility for the ensuing deaths remain the same.

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. Deportation, endless forced marches, hunger, thirst, exposure and disease brought on by various Ottoman, Turkish and Iraqi regimes deliberately left little room for pregnancy and birth, to replace those who were lost. This is not to say Assyrian refugees did not have babies. They did. Bringing forth life in the face of such death is the ultimate act of resistance.

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. This has been a practice of the Turks in Asia Minor since the 1300s. We will probably never know just how many Christian boys and girls were kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam and raised as Turks. The boys became Jannissaries. The girls concubines and wives. To this day, Assyrian girls in particular, are abducted by Turks and Kurds in historic Assyria, a practice aimed at forcing their marriage to Muslims.

The United Nations Convention states that any of these acts, committed with the intent to destroy a certain group, in whole or in part, constitute genocide. The Assyrian people have suffered not only one, but all, of these acts. The Assyrian Genocide, indeed the Christian Asia Minor Holocaust continue to this day.

Bibliography

___, “The Salonika Congress; The Young Turks and their Programme” The Times October 3 1911 p.3

___, «Prominent Syrians Executed by Turks» New York Times July 10 1916 p.3

___, «Relief for Syria and Mesopotamia» The Times December 5 1918 p.16

___, “The Posthumous Memoirs of Talaat Pasha” Current HistoryNovember 1921 p.287-295

___, «Killing By Turks Has Been Renewed; American Says They Plan To Exterminate the Christians in Asia Minor; They Have Deported Major Yowell and Associate From Harpoot» New York Times May 6 1922 p.2

Shimon, P. «Assyrian Immigration» (Letter to the Editor) New York Times June 4 1922 Section 7 p.16

Cecil, Lord R. “History’s Greatest Massacre: A Premeditated Crime” Current History Jan. 1916 p.723-724

David, S. “Assyrian Universal Alliance (A.U.A) Submission to the Working Group on Minorities of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities” Geneva 30 April 1996 - 3 May 1996 Second Session” The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal March 1997: Vol. II p.19-58

Hanna, R., Shalalo, D. and Iesho, A. “A Cloudy Horizon” The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal March 1997: Vol. II p.3-12

Hidirsah, Yakup Massacre of Christians in Mesopotamia and Kurds (Syriacs, Nestorians, Chaldeans, Armenians) Hannover Germany 1997

Koumakis, Leonidas The Miracle: A True Story Athens 1996

Northcote, Dudley S. “Saving Forty Thousand Armenians” (and Assyrians) Current History February 1921 Vol.XV p.788-792

O’Connor, T.P. “History’s Greatest Massacre: A Policy of Murder” Current History January 1916 p.722-723

V.P. “Repression of Turkey’s Christians” News Weekly (Australia) July 6 1991 p.10

Rockwell, W.W. “The Total of Armenian and Syrian Dead” Current History November 1916 p.337-338

Syrian Orthodox Federation of Australia Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade - “Australia’s Efforts to Promote and Protect Freedom of Religion and Belief” 1999

Williams, A. “History’s Greatest Massacre: The Armenian Woe” Current History January 1916 p.719-721


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] The Pomaks are the indigenous inhabitants of the mountain regions of Thrace (now divided between Hellas and Bulgaria) who converted from Christianity to Islam in the 1600s. [2] Oztuna (1967): p. 117
[3] M.Emin Zeki, op.cit., p. 142 as quoted by Hidirsah (1997) [4] Dr. Celilê Celil, , op.cit., pp. 142-143 as quoted by Hidirsah (1997) [5] M.Kalman, Osmanli-Kürt Iliskileri ve Sömürgecilik (Ottoman-Kurdish Relations and Imperialism), Istanbul 1994, p. 118 as quoted by Hidirsah (1997) [6] M. Kalman, op.cit., p. 118 as quoted by Hidirsah (1997) [7]M.Kalman, op.cit., p. 119 as quoted by Hidirsah (1997) [8] William Eagleton, Mahabad Kürt Cumhuriyeti 1946 (The Mahabad Kurdish Republic of 1946) (Translated by Mehmet Emin xxxarslan), Istanbul 1976, p.26-27 as quoted by Hidirsah (1997) [9] Garo Sasuni, Kürt Ulusal Hareketleri ve 15.Yüzyildan Günümüze Ermeni Kürt Iliskileri (Kurdish National Movements and Armenian Kurdish Relations From 15th Century Till Today), Istanbul 1992, p. 70-71 as quoted by Hidirsah (1997) [10] ___, “The Salonika Congress; The Young Turks and their Programme” The Times October 3 1911 p.3 [11] Le Temps July 29 1916 as quoted by Koumakis (1996): p.80 [12]Dooman 1942 p.11 as quoted in in Hanna, Shalalo and Iesho “A Cloudy Horizon” The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal March 1997: Vol. II p.3-12 [13] Dooman 1942 p.14-15 as quoted in Hanna, Shalalo and Iesho “A Cloudy Horizon” The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal March 1997 [14]Dooman 1942 p.12 as quoted in Hanna, Shalalo and Iesho “A Cloudy Horizon” The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal March 1997

[15]League of Nations, The JAAS Journal Vol VIII No 2 p.64 as quoted by Hanna, R., Shalalo, D. and Iesho, A. “A Cloudy Horizon” The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal March 1997 p.12

[Gavur]

Holy war made in Germany by Dr. Gabriele Yonan

Holy war made in Germany: New light on the Holocaust against the Christian Assyrians during World War I
by Dr. Gabriele Yonan


The Assyrians used to hold the British responsible for the destruction of their homelands in Turkey and Persia during WW I. This responsibility was always misplaced, however.

As a consequence of post-war negotiations in the years 1919 to 1925, beginning with the Conference of Paris (1919) and the unratified treaty of Sèvres (1920) and ending with the Conference of Lausanne (1925) which confirmed the Curzon Line, except for the areas of former Assyrian settlements the Assyrians were never able to reclaim their homeland in Turkey but instead were scattered all over the world. It is useless to speculate about what would have happened to the Assyrians had they been successful in garnering enough political support for resettlement and for achieving political autonomy. The area was (and still is) populated by a majority of their old enemies, the Muslim Kurds, and it is not far fetched to compare the situation of that time with today’s ethnic conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo.

Undoubtedly the post-war negotiations finally led to new atrocities against the Assyrians, due to the fact that from the 1920s they settled in the North of Iraq (on the other side of the Curzon Line) among Arabs and Kurds, where on August 7, 1933, a year after Iraq became independent from the British mandate, they were massacred in Semile by Arab forces. The British still maintained a presence in the area but were neither able nor willing to protect their former "smallest ally" from the murderous Arab troops under the command of a Kurdish general. The disaster of Semile resulted in the deaths of about 1000 people, mainly women, and old men (according to the statistics given by the Patriarch Mar Shimon to the League of Nations).

Though for the Assyrians Semile became a national tragedy, today Assyrian organizations all over the world still observe August 7 as the Day of Assyrian Martyrs. It remains uncertain why the Assyrians did not, like the Armenians, declare a special day (April 24, 1915, the beginning of the siege against the Assyrians in Turkey) to commemorate the great massacres that took place between 1914 and 1918 in which approximately 100,000 Christian Assyrians perished by the "sword" of Islamic aggressors. Undoubtedly the Assyrians are conscious of being victims of this genocidal treatment--not for political reasons but due solely to their Christian beliefs. In many publications written by Assyrians these events are referred to as the Great Massacres, or ”The Year of the (Islamic) Sword.” But it was the massacre of Semile in the context of British post-war policy in the Middle East that became a key factor in shaping an Assyrian national movement. The Assyrian writer Yusef Malik, who was a former assistant of the British Mandatory administration service in Iraq (and who therefore had access to confidential documents), published a well documented book in 1935 under the title, "The British Betrayal of the Assyrians," which is still used as a textbook for modern Assyrian history. It might be a matter of opinion whether it was a "betrayal" or a tribute to the shift of power and changes in international policies that finally prevented the Assyrians, Armenians and Kurds from reclaiming any of their previous territory.

But is there any justification for blaming the British for the destruction of roughly two-thirds of the Christian Assyrians during WW I?

When one is interviewing Assyrians of the older generation about responsibility for the massacres, the answer usually is: it was done by the Muslims. The more accurate answer would be: it was done by the Kurds, Turks and Persians. But the British are typically exenorated entirely. American, English and French archives now report that the Turkish army attacked the Assyrian villages and, using Kurdish auxiliary troops from the Assyrian neighbourhood, who supplied the Turkish forces with arms and equipment, destroyed the Assyrians by seizing their land, livestock and possessions. In Northwest Persia the Persian and Azeri Muslim population joined the Turkish army to loot and slaughter the Assyrian Christians.

The genocide carried out by the Muslim forces against Assyrians and Armenians would never have been possible without the declaration of Holy War (jihad), by which the Muslims sought to destroy all Christian peoples in the name of the prophet Mohammed. It is well known that Islam is a religio-political concept; thus the political and religious elements were equally at work, especially in the case of the onslaught against the Armenians, who were seeking independence. By contrast, the Christian Assyrians were an ethno-religious group under the leadership of their Patriarch. They lived living as a tribal and clan society, with absolutely no secular political aims. On 12 November 1914, the sultan-caliph unveiled a decree of war, signed by the Turkish ministers, and shortly thereafter he addressed an imperial declaration to the army and navy, demanding their participation in the jihad. Nevertheless, the very idea of “Holy War,” it should be noted, at least in the WW I setting, originated not with the Turks but with the Germans, who encouraged the Turks to slaughter the Assyrians as well as many other people groups. Thus the responsibility for destruction of the Assyrians and their homeland during WW I rests not with the British, nor even primarlily with the Turks, but ultimately with the Germans.

This paper is a summary of the activities of the “Intelligence Service for the Orient" of the German Foreign Office in Berlin, which, with the assistance of German scholars and the German Propaganda Machine, and under the able leadership of the German Ambassador in Constantinople, put forth the “Holy War” idea and pressed it upon the Turks, which of course was to result in the destruction of millions of human lives across the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere during WW I .

Introduction

It remains a difficult task to link an event in world history like the First World War with the little-known historical facts about the genocide of a people largely unknown in the West, the Assyrians. While the genocide was perpetrated at the same time as the war occurred, it hardly left any traces in historical writings. The backdrop to this drama includes the World War , 1914-1918 the emergence of the German-Turkish alliance on the basis of 19th-century policy-making in the Orient, and the course of the war in the Middle East. It is in the context of these events we must seek out Assyrian strands of evidence in what the West has inadequately termed the “genocide of the Armenians“.

Vast documentation exists on the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Young Turks, headed by the murderous triumvirate of Enver, Talaat and Jamal. But the numerous volumes provide few clues about the annihilation and expulsion of the Christian Assyrians in the same area at the same time. Numerically much smaller than the Armenians, two-thirds of the Assyrians were killed. Research and analysis are rendered more difficult by the fact that the word “Assyrian“ is rarely found in the title of the various reports and documents treating the question.

This fact can be illustrated on the basis of two important works of documentation. The first one was edited by James Bryce: The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (London 1916, 684 pp.). This documentation was published during the war by the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, James Bryce. It consists of eye-witness reports to the genocide, and includes 21 documents substantiating the crimes committed against the Assyrians in Turkey and in Persia. The material was assembled for the Foreign Office by Bryce’s assistant, Arnold Toynbee, later a distinguished historian. The original title of the Toynbee papers was “The Treatment of the Armenians and the Assyrian Christians in the Ottoman Empire“. Bryce was co-founder of the English-Armenian Society, and when he published this collection in late 1916, he changed the title to mention only the Armenians, although the work still contained more than one hundred pages of detailed reports on the Assyrians. The French translation presented at the Paris Peace Conference (1920) omitted the documents on the Assyrians altogether. A new and complete English edition of the documentation was only published in 1972 (in Beirut). There have been no translations into other languages, but the collection of materials has been used by many historians researching the Armenian genocide.

The second work was edited by Johannes Lepsius: Report on the condition of the Armenian People (Potsdam 1916 and Germany and Armenia 1914-1918; Collection of Diplomatic Files; Potsdam 1919). The German theologian, missionary and founder of the German Mission to the Orient (Deutsche Orient-Mission), Johannes Lepsius, produced two publications containing unique documentary material about the political links between imperial Germany and the extermination policy of the Young Turks. A considerable number of the reports and documents concern the Assyrians. (I published a selection of these in 1980, in pogrom, No. 72/73). Because the focal point of his efforts and his life-long mission was to rescue the Armenians, it is not out of the question that, hitherto unpublished documents exist in German material archives, though ignored by Lepsius. In any case, his documentation and reporting are representative enough to support the thesis that the Armenians and the Assyrians suffered the same fate.

In addition to these two works of documentation, added evidence of the forgotten genocide can be seen in the founding of the American Committee of Armenian and Syrian Relief (ACASR). The committee was created in the wake of the terrible news from American missionaries who worked among the Assyrians in Northwest Persia. Under siege at their mission for four months beginning in January 1915, they experienced inhuman conditions alongside 18,000 Assyrians, while 25,000 to 30,000 Assyrians fled towards Russia to escape from the Turkish army. It was not until the summer of 1915 that the American missionaries were able to send extensive reports to their mission committee in Boston. Their letters, reports and diary entries would later be included in the Toynbee papers.

Persecution of the Assyrians on Turkish territory began as early as December 1914, reaching its first high point between January and April 1915. It would be several months before the start of actual deportations from the Armenian provinces, where parishes of Syrian Christians also resided. The Armenian uprising in Van (May 1915) occurred at the same time as the Assyrian tragedy in the Hakkari highlands, barely 100 kilometers south. Only half of the 160,000 people in question managed to escape to Persia.

In 1916, and again in 1917, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson appealed to his countrymen to donate to both of these needy Christian people.

The American relief organization ACASR, for which two Assyrians also worked (Paul Shimmon and Abraham Yohannan), published several works on the annihilation and expulsion of the Assyrians in Turkey and Persia.

In his extensive report on refugees (The Refugee Problem: A Report of a Survey, London 1939, John H. Simpson, High Commissioner of Refugees for the League of Nations, would devote Chapter IV to the Assyrian refugees. His predecessor, Fridjof Nansen, fails to even mention the Assyrian tragedy in his well-known book A People Deceived - a Study Trip through Georgia and Armenia as High Commissioner of the League of Nations, Leipzig 1928, which was translated into several languages.

A number of shorter texts and articles on the fate of the Christian Assyrians was published during and following the First World War. The Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian mission was committed to awakening a sense of political responsibility in the consciousness of the English public. Influential politicians such as Lord Curzon presented the Assyrian question to Parliament and to the press. Lord Curzon made every effort to ensure that Assyrian representatives would be admitted to the Paris Peace Conference.

At the same time, books by Assyrians were also published in English and French; personal experiences were described and collections of eye-witness reports were published (see, inter alia, Bibliography: J. Naayem, Paris 1920; Y. H. Shabaz, Philadelphia 1918; P. Shimmon, London 1916; Surma d-Bet Mar Shimun, London 1920; A. Yohannan, London 1916). Politicians and important personages in England, France and America encouraged Assyrian authors to write and sponsored the publication of such works. These acts were motivated by political interests, linked with upcoming decisions on how territory would be divided and who would influence regions of strategic and economic interest in the Near and Middle East, including areas of settlement from which the Assyrians had been expelled. After these decisions were made in the years that followed, Assyrian publications were completely forgotten; they can now be found in only a few of the world's libraries.

Writings by the German Lutheran mission from Hermannsburg and other small German aid societies which had contact with the Assyrians between the turn of the century and the First World War had disappeared. During a research visit in 1983, I discovered the complete collection of these materials as well as unpublished correspondence in the archives of the Hermannsburg mission. A portion of this has been included in the present documentation.

On the other hand, a source which would otherwise have been very difficult to get hold of, an Assyrian war diary containing detailed reports on the regional events in the First World War's most out-of-the-way sites, the Hakkari Highlands and the border area between Turkey and Persia, was available in German. Rudolf Macuch published a translation of this diary in summary form in his History of Late and Modern Syriac Literature (Berlin, 1976). It forms the basis of the excerpt included here, along with the original Assyrian text which appeared in Teheran in 1964.

Unfortunately, that valuable documentary material in the state archives of the former Soviet Union was inaccessible until recent years.

The documentary material in Turkey is still not accessible for historical evaluation. The Turkish government announced in 1989 that it was ready to open up and grant access to the Ottoman archives for international science and historical research. Turkey has not yet come to terms with its past with reference to the annihilation and expulsion of the Christian population during the First World War.

The Question of German Culpability

To date, neither German nor Turkish historians have reappraised the question of shared guilt or responsibility for the catastrophe of the annihilation and expulsion of two million Christians (Armenians and Assyrians) in Turkey during the First World War. Memoirs by German diplomats and military officers, as well as contemporary political writings by German pacifists, are no substitute for careful and precise historical research on this period.

Ulrich Trumpener researched this issue using U.S. archival material. In his book Germany and the Ottoman Empire 1914-1918 (Princeton, 1968), he exonerates the German political and military leadership from shared responsibility in the formulation or implementation of the extermination policy pursued by the Young Turks. In Germany's attitude to these events, Trumpener perceives only moral indifference and an inability by German officials to make a balanced judgement about the reports provided by responsible diplomats and personages.

In fact, even Johannes Lepsius, the most important observer, had come to the same conclusion. In his own overwhelming collection of evidence collected on behalf of the Foreign Office shortly after the war, he would discern only “inadvertent German shared guilt.“ He was reproached by many for his ambivalent approach: it was said he used the collection of diplomatic files only to morally exonerate the imperial German government.

It is indeed true that there is no evidence which incontrovertibly implicates the German government. No German soldier participated personally in the annihilation campaigns executed by Turks and Kurds. No German general issued any field orders, nor received any orders from the Turkish Minister of War. The German army headquarters, which had reorganized the Turkish Army, had no political say in decision making and no influence on decisions made in Berlin and Constantinople. They were - like all armies - an amoral institution used as an instrument of power.

But none of this can exonerate the imperial German government, where the emperor pursued autocratic colonial policies against the judgement of many. Nor can one overlook the significance of the fact that Germany's Oriental Propaganda Department in Berlin counselled and urged the government of the Young Turks to declare a “Holy War.“ Certainly the attitude of the German government and its Foreign Office, once the extent of the Turkish annihilation of the Christians became known, hardly argues acquittal or exoneration from shared responsibility. This attitude consisted of maintaining silence, rationalizing the events, and denying them altogether. German public opinion was manipulated according to government instructions, while a standard of “blind obedience“ was expected of German diplomats and generals in Turkey. Those who spoke up for the victims were recalled or publicly defamed as “traitors to their own country.“ Whether the Young Turk government could have been deterred from their annihilation plans if the German allies had exerted pressure is mere speculation, and not the task of historical analysis.

We judge the events of that time based on our knowledge of ensuing German history. Thus, the fact that Adolf Hitler mentioned in passing in 1939 the Young Turks’ policy of extermination while seeking to legitimize his own plans can be related to Germany’s refusal to pass moral judgement on the first genocide of the 20th century. By now, of course, the annihilation and expulsion of the Armenians and Assyrians between 1915 and 1918 has been overshadowed by Hitler Germany’s genocide of the Second World War.

Today, tens of thousands of Christian Assyrians live in the four corners of the globe, having fled in recent decades from the various parts of the former Ottoman Empire. They are descendants of the survivors of a genocide that still is not part of our historical consciousness. This documentation is offered in honor of these unknown victims. It is also intended to serve as a link in the history of repression, persecution and expulsion of the Assyrians in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Persia, a process which continues to date.

[Joseph]

Assyria-

Armenians are guilty of not working with/ including Assyrians, Pontic Greeks, and Chaldeans when they work towards Genocide recognition...I think we should call it a "Christian Genocide". Indeed, that is what happened. I want to let you know that I am aware what has befallen the Assyrians and others alongside the Armenians. Assyrians lost at least One Million during WWI and I know that the Assyrians who did survive only did so because they fought bravely against the Turkish slaughter.

[Gavur]

The Ottoman Genocide of Christian Minorities

In a paper presented at the Assyrian New Year's Convention held in Hengelo

(The Netherlands) on 19-20 April 2003, Human Rights Without Frontiers Int. urges the new Turkish government to recognise the genocide in which two-thirds of the Assyrians were massacred.



Willy Fautré (*)

Ladies and gentlemen,

Do you think the European Union would have accepted the membership of Germany if this country had denied the existence of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews? Certainly not. About 90 years after the so-called Armenian genocide, Turkey persists in denying it has ever taken place. In the aftermath of the move initiated by the recent recognition of this genocide by France and Sweden, it would be worth making Turkey’s adhesion to the EU conditional to its recognition of the genocide committed not only against the Armenians but also against all other Christian minorities (Assyrians, Chaldeans, Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Orthodox Syriacs) by the Ottoman Empire with the complicity of the Kurds.



The first genocide of the 20th century took place in present-day Turkey. It is usually said to have covered the period extending from 1915 to 1919 but mass-scale massacres already started with the “red sultan,” Abdul-Hamid II, in 1895-1896, continuing with the Young Turks and then even were still on going in the aftermath of WWI. About two million people lost their lives between 1915 and 1919 in the genocide which was masterminded by the “Young Turks”, Enver Bey and the Minister of Interior, Talat Pasha.



The genocide, a taboo issue



In Turkey, the genocide is still a taboo issue almost 90 years after it took place and there is no sign of change in sight. Those who want to combat revisionist and negationist theses and who want to rewrite history risk losing their freedom and even their lives in Turkey.



In 2000, Father Yusuf Akbulut, a Syriac Orthodox priest, was arrested, jailed and prosecuted on the grounds of treason because he had told a journalist that the “Armenian genocide” was a reality but that other Christian minorities had also been massacred. On 4 October 2000, the newspaper “Hurryiet” entitled the interview “A traitor among us”. Two days later, Turkish military security agents arrested the priest.



The position of the successive Turkish governments has always been that during WW I Armenians and other Christian minorities were displaced because they were traitors who had taken sides with the enemies of the Ottoman Empire: Russia, France and UK.



The Armenian thesis, shared and supported by many independent historians and academics, is that the so-called war deportations were only a pretext for some nationalistic masterminds in Istanbul to plan the extermination and the systematic execution of the Armenian people, and more widely of the Christian populations living in the eastern provinces, so as to achieve an ethnically homogeneous Turkish state.



As strange as it may be, the supporters of the recognition of the genocide have so far been unable to agree on a fixed name to qualify it. It may be said, then, that the events of 1915-1918 remain an “unnamed genocide” in search of an identity.



An unnamed genocide in search of an identity



Most of the victims of the genocide were Armenian Christians, thereby giving it the name of the Armenian genocide and for 85 years Armenian survivors have provided a huge contribution to its history. Thousands of testimonies have been collected, filed and preserved in the monastery of San Lazzaro in Italy and published in the media around the world. They have given a face to that horrendous genocide. Here is an excerpt from one among many that was published in the Boston Globe on 19 April 1998.



I saw my father killed when I was nine years old. We lived in Palou, in the mountains. My father was a businessman. He would go into the country selling pots and pans, butter and dairy products. One day, the Turks came to our region and herded all the men together into a church. When they came out, they all had their hands tied behind their backs. Then, the Turks slaughtered them, like sheep, with long knives.



Twenty-five people died in my family. The man who became later my husband saw his mother’s head cut off.



But does it mean that this genocide was an exclusively Armenian genocide? Nothing is less sure. A Greek Orthodox lady, named Maria Katsidou-Symeonidou, who was another survivor passed away in November 1997 but her testimony did not get lost. Here is what she says:



In 1918, I was about four years old. A Turk came to our village and said that all the young man should leave because Topal Osman would be coming on the next day. Those who left saved their lives but not those who stayed. Topal Osman and his men killed fifteen people, including the mayor of the village, the priest and the teacher. They caught 350 men from neighbouring villages, bound them and shot them. Those who tried to flee were thrown into the river that ran through our village. I still remember the echo of the shots. For nine days, they hauled the bodies on ox-carts to bury them. Most of them were unrecognisable because their heads had been cut off.



The Greeks also had their share in the genocide and the event is still remembered every year in Greece.



Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs paid a heavy toll in the genocide. Numerically much smaller than the Armenians, two-thirds of the Assyrian population was killed. Statistics range between 500,000 and 750,000 dead.



In 1990, Rev. Joel Werda republished a book called The Flickering Light of Asia (1924) in which he reproduced a testimony about the Assyrian massacre of Khoi.



The Assyrians were assembled into one caravan and all shot to death. (…) The place was too small to hold all those who had to be executed. They were brought in groups of ten or twenty. Each new group was compelled to stand up over the heap of the still bleeding bodies and was shot to death in the same manner. The fearful place became literally a human slaughter house, receiving its speechless victims for execution. (…)



From these testimonies, it can be deduced that the Armenians were not the only victims of the genocide as there were also Greek Orthodox, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, etc. among the victims. From a purely linguistic point of view, talking about a so-called Armenian genocide can be ambiguous as the Armenians could be seen as the authors of the genocide and not the victims. The perpetrator of the genocide was the Ottoman State and the victims to be targeted then were all Christians of various denominations. The executioners did not make any distinction between the various Christian minorities and killed them all in the same brutal way.



For these reasons and others, we propose to call that genocide “The Ottoman Genocide of Christian Minorities”. In international law, the concept of genocide was defined in 1948 and can, therefore, be used in debates with the present-day Turkish authorities and academics who still deny there has ever been a genocide committed by the Ottoman State. The concept of “minorities” is now present in many international instruments and can thus be invoked to protect ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities in Turkey, now and in the future. The various Christian minorities that were decimated at the beginning of the 20th century are still alive, though on the verge of extinction. Only international instruments can save them.



Let us now go into details about the definition of genocide in international law, the recognition of that genocide, the ongoing cultural genocide of minorities in Turkey and the protection minorities in international law.



Genocide in international law



The word genocide is sometimes abused in media language and does not always correspond to the reality of the facts. So, what is a genocide? The United Nations answered that question in 1948 in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, art. 2:



“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as:



(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.



Numerous experts have abundantly illustrated the aforementioned criteria with concrete examples (3). There is no doubt that the mass-scale massacre of Christian minorities was a genocide.



Moral recognition of the 1915-1919 genocide



Of course, the U.N. Convention cannot be applied retroactively although Turkey has signed it and ratified it. But Turkey could recognise the genocide, point at its masterminds, condemn them at least morally, apologise for it and pay damages under one form or another to the minority groups that have been exterminated. One form of compensation could be to recognise those groups as national minorities and to grant them rights that are enshrined in the Framework Convention on National Minorities which Turkey has, up to now, failed to sign and to ratify.



‘Cultural’ genocide



Unfortunately, in the last decades, Ankara has chosen another way and has pursued its policy of extinction of the Christian communities in the south-east of the country through means of a cultural genocide. The war against the Kurds was a good pretext to put the Christian minorities under pressure, to make their lives unbearable and to push them to emigration. In the last 30 years, 90% of the Christians have emigrated from Turkey. All the methods listed in the U.N. definition of the genocide were used against them. Villages were burnt down and evacuated. Fields and vineyards were damaged and rendered useless for cultivation. Graveyards and houses were destroyed. A number of Christians were deprived of their Turkish citizenship. Young girls were abducted and forcibly married to Muslims while others were released in exchange for a ransom. Christians were arrested on the ground of alleged collaboration with the Kurdish fighters; others disappeared, were killed or are still missing. Churches and monasteries became derelict and beyond repair. Everything was done in order to prevent the survival of their language and their culture.



The Turkish state either carried out that cultural genocide or turned a blind eye to the exactions committed by the Kurdish Muslims against the Christian populations.



The only tools that can be used to protect minorities’ rights are international instruments.



Turkey and International Instruments Safeguarding Minority Rights



Minority affairs have never ceased to be an issue of controversy in international for a but it has become more of a priority in later years. The traditional opposing arguments remain, and, hardly surprising, the more deviation between the nation and state the firmer state opposition against promoting minority rights. In the 1990s only, nonetheless, a number of international minority rights instruments were set up, such as



- the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (proclaimed in 1992);

- the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

- the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe;

- the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, adopted by the CoE in 1995

- the Copenhagen 1990 Human Dimension Document and the 1991 Report of the Geneva Meeting of Experts on National Minorities of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).



In Istanbul in 1999, the President of Turkey, Suleyman Demirel, signed the OSCE Charter for European Security thereby undertaking the commitment to ensure full respect for human rights including the rights of persons belonging to national minorities and to build a pluralistic society where all, regardless of their ethnic origin, enjoy full equality of opportunity.



Although there is no consensus on the definition of what a minority is, the proposal for an additional protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms concerning persons belonging to national minorities defines a ‘national minority’ as “a group of persons in a state who

- reside on the territory of that state and are citizens thereof;

- maintain longstanding, firm and lasting ties with that state;

- display distinctive ethnic, cultural, religious or linguistic characteristics;

- are sufficiently representative, although smaller in number than the rest of the population of that state or of a region of that state;

- are motivated by a concern to preserve together that which constitutes their common identity, including their culture, their traditions, their religion or their language.”



Candidates to the title of “minority” are certainly a number of ethnic, linguistic and religious communities such as the Alevis, the Armenians, the Jews, the Greeks, the Assyrians.



The Assyrians have never benefited from the rights laid out in the Lausanne Treaty and has never had strong legal protection of their rights as do the Jewish, Greek Orthodox and Armenian communities. However, under the new international instruments, they qualify to get official religious minority status. As there are only about 4,000 Assyrians left in Turkey, Human Rights Without Frontiers urgently recommends to the Assyrian diaspora to make the advocacy of Turkey’s signature and ratification of the relevant international instruments a priority.



Recommendations



The only way the current Turkish government can repair the damage caused by the Ottoman Empire is to sign, ratify and implement the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe, which is the first legally binding multilateral instrument for the protection of national minorities.



Considering the aforementioned facts, Human Rights Without Frontiers recommends to the Turkish state



- to recognise the genocide perpetrated against the Christian minorities in 1915-1919;

- to set up an international enquiry commission on the genocide which would comprise independent academics from various countries;

- to revise the history of Turkey in schoolbooks;

- to sign and ratify international instruments protecting national minorities such as the Framework Convention on national minorities drafted by the Council of Europe;

- to correct the mistakes of the past and to guarantee the present and the future of the Christian minorities by recognising them as national minorities

- to authorise the Christian minorities;

to protect, use and promote their respective languages and religions;

to build new churches and monasteries;

to restore architectural monuments and various places of worship;

to open schools, social institutions and cultural associations;

to restore the names of villages, towns and places in their original language;

- to allow members of Christian minorities in exile to go back to Turkey and to regain their property;

- to guarantee the economic development of the areas where those Christian minorities are rooted;

- to guarantee the life and property of people belonging to those Christian minorities;

- to promote tolerance:

- to prosecute any individual or organisation which would spread ethnic or religious hatred.



By doing this, the present-day Turkish government would show its willingness to make up for the damages and losses inflicted to a number of its minorities under previous rules, and would improve its moral profile on the international scene thereby further removing a major obstacle to EU membership…



(*) Willy Fautré, director

Human Rights Without Frontiers International

Ave Winston Churchill 11/33, B-1180 Brussels

Phone: 32 2 3456145 – Fax: 32 2 3437491

Email: [email protected]

Website: http://www.hrwf.net





(1) See Sébastien de Courtois, Le génocide oublié. Chrétiens d’Orient, les derniers araméens, Paris, 2002, 297 p., Ellipses Ed., 32 rue Bargue, 75740 Paris Cedex 15 – http://www.editions-ellipses.com

(2) Anti-Christian massacres had already started in the 1880s, long before WW1. See Georges Brezol, Les Turcs ont passé là…, Paris, 1911, 398 p. (Recueil de documents, dossiers, enquêtes, et suppliques. Récit des massacres d’Adana en 1909).

(3) See Gabriele Yonan, Ein Vergessener Holocaust. Die Vernichtung der christlichen Assyrer in der Türkei. Göttingen und Wien 1989, 422 p. - See Eugène Griselle, Syriens et chaldéens, leur martyr, leur espérance, Paris, 1918, n°115-116, 123 p. – Jean Naayem, Les Assyro-Chaldéens et les Arméniens massacrés par les Turcs, Paris, Bloud & Gay, 1920, 170 p. (Témoignages sur les massacres d’Urfa, de Seert, de Kharpoût et Diyarbakir) – Joseph Yacoub, Les réfugiés assyro-chaldéens de Turquie, Forcalquier, CEDRI -

[Gavur]

Assyrian Author Testifies Before House Committee on Condition of Assyrians in Iraq

Posted GMT 6-30-2006 19:8:54
(AINA) -- Rosie Malek-Yonan, an Assyrian and author of The Crimson Field, testified before the House Committee on International Relations today on the condition of Assyrians in Iraq.

http://www.aina.org/news/20060630140854.htm