Understanding the Assyrian Genocide

It seems impossible that we would forget genocides of entire people. But events like the Assyrian genocide show us how fickle human memory can be. Also called Disypho, meaning the sword, the Assyrian genocide was one of three mass campaigns of extermination waged by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Alongside the more famous Armenian genocide and that of the Greeks, hundreds of thousands of Assyrians lost their lives in racially and religiously motivated atrocities at the command of the Ottoman government between 1914 and 1918. The struggle of the Assyrians is easily overlooked, but it contains tales of incredible brutality and of admirable resistance. Today, on A Day in History, we look at how the atrocities of the Saifo unfolded, the deplorable ways that the Ottomans deceived their victims, and the stories of the men who took up arms and arms. to defend themselves from those who would exterminate them. Don't forget to like this video to show your support and subscribe for more dives into overlooked historical events like this. The Assyrians are an ethnic group united by their shared languages which derive from ancient Aramaic. They are also thoroughly Christian, although split between several denominations, of which the largest are the Orthodox Assyrian Church of the East and Syrian Orthodox Church and the Chaldean Catholic Church. Unlike the Armenians, the Assyrians have never been politically unified, and they were treated as a loose ethnic group with no fixed territory. Like other Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire, they faced sporadic violence and persecution for decades before the genocide. In 1895, Assyrians were among the victims of the waves of violence that killed thousands of Christians across the empire, and they faced regular discrimination in law and public life. Violence from Turkish authorities and Kurdish raiders continued throughout the early 20th century, with land seizures, forced conversion, and mob violence becoming regular features of life. Things changed with the rise of Turkish ethno-nationalism in the First World War. The empire's new ruler, Talat Pasha, envisioned an ethnically Turkish empire, where minorities were excluded or eliminated. The Ottomans also saw the Assyrians as a security risk, fearing that they would side with Russia once the fighting began. In October 1914, Talat Pasha issued a decree, ordering the deportation and expulsion of Assyrians away from border territories with Russia and Iran. due to their predisposition to be influenced by foreigners. These deportations were more than resettlements. They were designed to destroy the culture, language, and social structure of the Assyrians by splitting up communities and isolating Assyrians in more easily managed locations. No more than 20 Assyrians would be settled together in these new settlements, and Talat declared, we should not let them return to their homelands. Ottoman forces began rounding up villages often without even telling the assyrians what was happening many of these assyrians joined their armenian counterparts on the infamous death marches grueling treks through inhospitable terrain where thousands died from exhaustion starvation dehydration and massacres along the route for more information on the death marches see our video on the armenian genocide Many Assyrians fled across the border to Iran in the face of this new wave of persecution. But Ottoman forces violated Iranian territory to hunt down fleeing Assyrians along the border. In response, Russia began organizing arms and support for Assyrians and Armenians, who would then fight alongside Russian soldiers when the Russian campaigns in the region began later that year. Russian forces managed to capture several Assyrian towns from the Ottomans in November, but when an Ottoman counter-attack recaptured them, they took revenge on their residents. At least 12 villages were wiped out by the returning Ottomans, regardless of whether they'd personally collaborated with the Russians. A fresh Ottoman army entered Azerbaijan in April 1915, but Russian forces, supported by desperate Armenian and Syrian escapees, managed to repel them. The retreating Ottoman forces were furious, and were quick to blame all Assyrians and Armenians for their defeat. They massacred Assyrian villages as they retreated, and commander Helil Bey ordered every Assyrian and Armenian soldier in his army to be executed. Meanwhile, the Ottoman authorities authorized the attack on the Assyrian army, even harsher crackdowns on Assyrians and Armenians. The governor of one province said that he'd been given a simple three-word order. Yak, vor, oldur. Burn, demolish, kill. One survivor of these massacres was Judad Abradova, who gave her testimony years later. Her husband was the headman of a small Assyrian village called Ardshe. When Ottoman forces arrived in her village, they burned her house down. and took her husband and sons into the village square. They were beaten mercilessly as their captors ordered them to convert to Islam. When they refused, Judad was forced to watch as the soldiers executed her children one by one. Judad threw herself over her husband to protect him, but the soldiers simply kicked her off and shot him anyway. Intense violence occurred in the Hakkiade Mountains and around Lake Urmia in Van province, where Assyrian tribesmen controlled many of the villages. Here, as elsewhere, the scattered Assyrian villages were attacked without mercy. the few survivors escaped were tales of inhuman cruelty. In the village of Adichai, on the shores of Lake Urmia, for example, a group of terrified women tried to escape the soldiers by running into the water. When they refused to come back out, the Ottomans shot them and left their bodies floating in the lake. The Assyrian and Armenian Genocides occurred side by side in Van province. One of the most egregious episodes of both atrocities came from Governor Jevdet Bey in the town of Haftavan. In spring 1915, he instructed all local adult Christian men to assemble in Haftavan under the pretense of distributing food. Instead, they were arrested and executed. executed. However, the war meant that the Ottomans had to be economical with their bullets. Rather than spend precious ammunition on the prisoners, Jevdet's troops beat them to death with tools, farming equipment, and pickaxes. Before long, it was impossible to hide the events from the rest of the world. Western media printed harrowing accounts of massacres, and the Iranian government expressed disgust at the war. as the Christians who were violated and mercilessly massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. One distraught Russian consul, who had personally visited some of the massacre sites, wrote in his report, I have investigated 20 villages. Everywhere there is complete ruin and devastation. Churches, schools and libraries have only walls remaining. The villages are full of corpses of the poor victims of massacres. The brutality shocked even the Ottoman High Command, who officially blamed the violence in Van province on Cevdet's out-of-control troops. Still, Cevdet himself faced no punishment and his men proudly embraced their new nickname, the Butcher Battalion. The Assyrians had only three choices, submit, flee, or fight. Those who chose to submit were almost entirely killed or deported. Some would manage to flee, but their escape often relied upon those who had chosen to fight. In the Hakkiada mountains, that fight was led by the Catholicos, patriarch of the Church of the East, more Shimon. Shimon had already negotiated with the Russians for aid in 1914, and he had previously written to Jevdet Bey begging for him to stop his persecutions. When that failed, and with no existing Assyrian military or political organizations, the church leader, became a figurehead of Assyrian resistance. Thousands of Assyrians in the Hakkiai mountains took up arms and did their best to oppose their would-be genociders. By April 1915, Cevdet Bey was raining artillery shells on every Assyrian village he could find. Any Assyrian, fighter or not, was punished. The Ottomans even tracked down Murshimun's brother in Constantinople and wrote to Murshimun with a choice, tell every Assyrian to lay down their weapons or they promised to execute him. My people are my family, Shimon wrote in reply. They are many and my brother is just one. Let him give his life for his nation. The Ottomans kept their word. Despite their defiant spirit, a renewed Ottoman assault in June 1915 drove the Assyrians further up into the mountains. Shimon appealed to his Russian allies for aid. which never came. With no other options, the surviving Assyrians of Akhiyar province abandoned their homes and made a dangerous trek into Russia, through difficult mountains with the Ottomans on their tail. Thousands died in the escape, but Shimon and about 30,000 Assyrian refugees managed to safely make it to Russian territory. Some of the worst violence occurred in the province of Diyarbakir by the command of Mehmed Rezhid Bey. Rezhid was an eager murderer and one of the most feared perpetrators of the Assyrian and Armenian genocides. It justified his persecution of Christians by accusing them of sheltering military deserters and hiding weapons. Reshid's forces would conduct mass raids on Christian homes or churches, and drag accused dissidents away to prison. They ordered Christians to turn over their weapons, and when they complied, he used these weapons as proof that the Christians were a threat, and justified even more persecution. Within two months of arriving in Diyarbakirsh, he had over 1600 Christians in jail. Reshid seemed to have no sense of morality or decency whatsoever. On May 25, 1915, he informed hundreds of imprisoned Christians that they would be spared execution and instead be deported to Mosul until the war was over. It was presented as a merciful alternative and it seems the prisoners agreed. A week later, even though they were still in chains, The Christians sang as they were marched through the streets to boats that waited to take them away. Before stepping on board, Reshid's soldiers took their possessions and promised they'd be given back to them at Mosul. Except they were never going to Mosul. Reshid's troops carried them downriver to the valley of Besvan, where every single one was killed. Reshid's authorities even wrote letters to the families of the prisoners, claiming that that they'd made it to Mosul safe and sound. Hundreds more men were massacred in this way. The women and children who remained behind faced a similarly grim fate. Many of them ended up on the infamous death marches, where sexual violence and random executions were a part of daily life, and many would never reach their supposed destinations. One German diplomat who met some of those who reached their destinations wrote how the misery of these people cannot be described. Their clothes fall from their bodies, daily women and children die of hunger. If you want to learn more about the horrors of the death marches, check out our video on the Armenian Genocide. In other cases, Reshid's men took a more direct approach. Reshid organized volunteer militias to act as death squads across his province, exterminating whole towns and villages in one go. At its worst, tens of thousands were killed every month, and thousands might die on a single day when a large town was targeted. Reshid's actions were extreme, even for the Ottomans. On July 12, 1915, Talat Pasha himself wrote to Reshid demanding that he restrict his killing only to the Armenians, and leave the Assyrians alone for now. Reshid simply ignored him. Barely a week later, his forces killed 7,000 more at Midyat, their crime, shooting back when his death squads marched into their village. Historians estimate that up to 200,000 Christians were killed in Diyarbakir under Rezhit's command, including at least 60,000 Assyrian Orthodox Christians, and the rest from other Assyrian, Armenian and Greek denominations. Amidst all of the suffering, the Assyrians managed a few episodes of astounding resistance. The Tur Abdin region of Turkey saw two successful efforts by Assyrians to repel their attackers. The first was in the town of Ayınvardo in July 1915. Refugees had flooded into the village in early 1915 to escape attacks by Ottoman forces. The village's ancient walls were a formidable defense. and the village organized a militia to defend themselves from incoming soldiers. For almost two months, the Assyrians fended off a much larger number of Kurdish raiders and Ottoman troops, with little more than bolt-action rifles and determination. Their resistance forced the Ottomans to the negotiating table, but when the Assyrians still refused to lay down their weapons, the Ottomans withdrew and never returned. A similar successful resistance occurred in the town of Azar. between August and November of 1915. Barely a thousand poorly armed Assyrian militia soldiers calling themselves the Jesus Fidai defended the town from a much larger coalition of Ottoman and Kurdish soldiers. They mounted a bitter resistance against the attackers, and forced the Ottoman military to reassign troops from elsewhere to support taking this tiny town. The Ottomans even considered calling their German allies to help, but the Germans were skeptical that this town was truly a rebel base, and were uncomfortable with the widespread reports of anti-Christian atrocities, so they refused to help. In early November, a replenished Ottoman force mounted a furious assault on the village, but were beaten back. A week later, the Assyrian defenders snuck out of the town and attacked the Ottoman positions, killing officers and stealing modern military equipment before slipping back into Azar. Humiliated and with hundreds dead, the Ottomans retreated, and Talat Pasha gave the order to leave the Assyrians where they were. Thanks in large part to the resistance of these two towns, the Ottomans never completed their genocide in the Turabdin region, and it remains one of the only Christian majority regions of Turkey. There was no single moment where the Assyrian genocide ended. With thousands deported and the provinces of Diyarbakir-Shinvan almost completely purged of Assyrians, the genocide was mostly complete by late 1915. Those who hadn't been killed or deported had fled, or among the tiny few able to resist the Ottomans in their fortified villages. Assyrians were still being killed after 1915. Morshimun himself was killed by an assassin in 1918. only a few months before the collapse of the Ottoman government. However, most of the genocide's victims had been claimed. Only with the end of the First World War and the fall of Talat Pasha's government could Assyrians begin to reflect on everything they had endured. As with all genocides, the exact death toll is debatable. In Diyarbakir, as many as 200,000 Christians died, of which at least 60,000 were Assyrian. There had been 100,000 Assyrians in the Hakkiade Mountains and the surrounding area. But even with more Shimon's escapees, little more than one-third of the population was accounted for after the war. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Assyrian representatives estimated 250,000 dead overall, amounting to about half of the known pre-war Assyrian population. Modern scholarship pushes this number closer to 300,000. The only thing as rare as certainty for a genocide is accountability. Talat Pasha and his government escaped responsibility and only a handful of people ever faced charges, let alone conviction. One person who was charged was Mehmed Reshid, who was arrested immediately after the Ottoman surrender. But he escaped from prison in January 1919 and took his own life before the government could recapture him. For Assyrians today, the Saifo is the height of the historic persecution. Many of the areas depopulated by the genocide are still empty of Assyrians today. But, although Assyrians around the world continue to push for recognition of the atrocities committed against them, Turkey insists that its predecessors did nothing wrong. In 2023, President Erdogan said, the Saifo lacks legal and historical basis, and proudly asserted, that Turkey does not need to take history lessons from anyone. Turkey might not learn, but a growing number of people are becoming aware of this forgotten tragedy. Still, just four countries, Armenia, France, Germany and Sweden, officially recognize the genocide. Without a state of their own and being so few in number, the Assyrian fight for the recognition of their history continues to be a difficult one. Hopefully this video has helped you to recognize what happened in the Seifel. If you appreciated this video, don't forget to leave a like and subscribe as we explore more of history's most fascinating and disturbing secrets.

Alongside the more famous Armenian genocide and that of the Greeks, hundreds of thousands of Assyrians lost their lives in racially and religiously motivated atrocities at the command of the Ottoman government between 1914 and 1918. The struggle of the Assyrians is easily overlooked, but it contains tales of incredible brutality and of admirable resistance. Today, on A Day in History, we look at how the atrocities of the Saifo unfolded, the deplorable ways that the Ottomans deceived their victims, and the stories of the men who took up arms and arms. to defend themselves from those who would exterminate them. Don't forget to like this video to show your support and subscribe for more dives into overlooked historical events like this.

The Assyrians are an ethnic group united by their shared languages which derive from ancient Aramaic. They are also thoroughly Christian, although split between several denominations, of which the largest are the Orthodox Assyrian Church of the East and Syrian Orthodox Church and the Chaldean Catholic Church. Unlike the Armenians, the Assyrians have never been politically unified, and they were treated as a loose ethnic group with no fixed territory.

Like other Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire, they faced sporadic violence and persecution for decades before the genocide. In 1895, Assyrians were among the victims of the waves of violence that killed thousands of Christians across the empire, and they faced regular discrimination in law and public life. Violence from Turkish authorities and Kurdish raiders continued throughout the early 20th century, with land seizures, forced conversion, and mob violence becoming regular features of life.

Things changed with the rise of Turkish ethno-nationalism in the First World War. The empire's new ruler, Talat Pasha, envisioned an ethnically Turkish empire, where minorities were excluded or eliminated. The Ottomans also saw the Assyrians as a security risk, fearing that they would side with Russia once the fighting began.

In October 1914, Talat Pasha issued a decree, ordering the deportation and expulsion of Assyrians away from border territories with Russia and Iran. due to their predisposition to be influenced by foreigners. These deportations were more than resettlements. They were designed to destroy the culture, language, and social structure of the Assyrians by splitting up communities and isolating Assyrians in more easily managed locations. No more than 20 Assyrians would be settled together in these new settlements, and Talat declared, we should not let them return to their homelands.

Ottoman forces began rounding up villages often without even telling the assyrians what was happening many of these assyrians joined their armenian counterparts on the infamous death marches grueling treks through inhospitable terrain where thousands died from exhaustion starvation dehydration and massacres along the route for more information on the death marches see our video on the armenian genocide Many Assyrians fled across the border to Iran in the face of this new wave of persecution. But Ottoman forces violated Iranian territory to hunt down fleeing Assyrians along the border. In response, Russia began organizing arms and support for Assyrians and Armenians, who would then fight alongside Russian soldiers when the Russian campaigns in the region began later that year.

Russian forces managed to capture several Assyrian towns from the Ottomans in November, but when an Ottoman counter-attack recaptured them, they took revenge on their residents. At least 12 villages were wiped out by the returning Ottomans, regardless of whether they'd personally collaborated with the Russians. A fresh Ottoman army entered Azerbaijan in April 1915, but Russian forces, supported by desperate Armenian and Syrian escapees, managed to repel them.

The retreating Ottoman forces were furious, and were quick to blame all Assyrians and Armenians for their defeat. They massacred Assyrian villages as they retreated, and commander Helil Bey ordered every Assyrian and Armenian soldier in his army to be executed. Meanwhile, the Ottoman authorities authorized the attack on the Assyrian army, even harsher crackdowns on Assyrians and Armenians.

The governor of one province said that he'd been given a simple three-word order. Yak, vor, oldur. Burn, demolish, kill. One survivor of these massacres was Judad Abradova, who gave her testimony years later.

Her husband was the headman of a small Assyrian village called Ardshe. When Ottoman forces arrived in her village, they burned her house down. and took her husband and sons into the village square.

They were beaten mercilessly as their captors ordered them to convert to Islam. When they refused, Judad was forced to watch as the soldiers executed her children one by one. Judad threw herself over her husband to protect him, but the soldiers simply kicked her off and shot him anyway. Intense violence occurred in the Hakkiade Mountains and around Lake Urmia in Van province, where Assyrian tribesmen controlled many of the villages. Here, as elsewhere, the scattered Assyrian villages were attacked without mercy.

the few survivors escaped were tales of inhuman cruelty. In the village of Adichai, on the shores of Lake Urmia, for example, a group of terrified women tried to escape the soldiers by running into the water. When they refused to come back out, the Ottomans shot them and left their bodies floating in the lake. The Assyrian and Armenian Genocides occurred side by side in Van province.

One of the most egregious episodes of both atrocities came from Governor Jevdet Bey in the town of Haftavan. In spring 1915, he instructed all local adult Christian men to assemble in Haftavan under the pretense of distributing food. Instead, they were arrested and executed.

executed. However, the war meant that the Ottomans had to be economical with their bullets. Rather than spend precious ammunition on the prisoners, Jevdet's troops beat them to death with tools, farming equipment, and pickaxes. Before long, it was impossible to hide the events from the rest of the world.

Western media printed harrowing accounts of massacres, and the Iranian government expressed disgust at the war. as the Christians who were violated and mercilessly massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. One distraught Russian consul, who had personally visited some of the massacre sites, wrote in his report, I have investigated 20 villages.

Everywhere there is complete ruin and devastation. Churches, schools and libraries have only walls remaining. The villages are full of corpses of the poor victims of massacres.

The brutality shocked even the Ottoman High Command, who officially blamed the violence in Van province on Cevdet's out-of-control troops. Still, Cevdet himself faced no punishment and his men proudly embraced their new nickname, the Butcher Battalion. The Assyrians had only three choices, submit, flee, or fight.

Those who chose to submit were almost entirely killed or deported. Some would manage to flee, but their escape often relied upon those who had chosen to fight. In the Hakkiada mountains, that fight was led by the Catholicos, patriarch of the Church of the East, more Shimon. Shimon had already negotiated with the Russians for aid in 1914, and he had previously written to Jevdet Bey begging for him to stop his persecutions.

When that failed, and with no existing Assyrian military or political organizations, the church leader, became a figurehead of Assyrian resistance. Thousands of Assyrians in the Hakkiai mountains took up arms and did their best to oppose their would-be genociders. By April 1915, Cevdet Bey was raining artillery shells on every Assyrian village he could find. Any Assyrian, fighter or not, was punished. The Ottomans even tracked down Murshimun's brother in Constantinople and wrote to Murshimun with a choice, tell every Assyrian to lay down their weapons or they promised to execute him.

My people are my family, Shimon wrote in reply. They are many and my brother is just one. Let him give his life for his nation. The Ottomans kept their word.

Despite their defiant spirit, a renewed Ottoman assault in June 1915 drove the Assyrians further up into the mountains. Shimon appealed to his Russian allies for aid. which never came.

With no other options, the surviving Assyrians of Akhiyar province abandoned their homes and made a dangerous trek into Russia, through difficult mountains with the Ottomans on their tail. Thousands died in the escape, but Shimon and about 30,000 Assyrian refugees managed to safely make it to Russian territory. Some of the worst violence occurred in the province of Diyarbakir by the command of Mehmed Rezhid Bey.

Rezhid was an eager murderer and one of the most feared perpetrators of the Assyrian and Armenian genocides. It justified his persecution of Christians by accusing them of sheltering military deserters and hiding weapons. Reshid's forces would conduct mass raids on Christian homes or churches, and drag accused dissidents away to prison.

They ordered Christians to turn over their weapons, and when they complied, he used these weapons as proof that the Christians were a threat, and justified even more persecution. Within two months of arriving in Diyarbakirsh, he had over 1600 Christians in jail. Reshid seemed to have no sense of morality or decency whatsoever. On May 25, 1915, he informed hundreds of imprisoned Christians that they would be spared execution and instead be deported to Mosul until the war was over.

It was presented as a merciful alternative and it seems the prisoners agreed. A week later, even though they were still in chains, The Christians sang as they were marched through the streets to boats that waited to take them away. Before stepping on board, Reshid's soldiers took their possessions and promised they'd be given back to them at Mosul.

Except they were never going to Mosul. Reshid's troops carried them downriver to the valley of Besvan, where every single one was killed. Reshid's authorities even wrote letters to the families of the prisoners, claiming that that they'd made it to Mosul safe and sound. Hundreds more men were massacred in this way.

The women and children who remained behind faced a similarly grim fate. Many of them ended up on the infamous death marches, where sexual violence and random executions were a part of daily life, and many would never reach their supposed destinations. One German diplomat who met some of those who reached their destinations wrote how the misery of these people cannot be described. Their clothes fall from their bodies, daily women and children die of hunger. If you want to learn more about the horrors of the death marches, check out our video on the Armenian Genocide.

In other cases, Reshid's men took a more direct approach. Reshid organized volunteer militias to act as death squads across his province, exterminating whole towns and villages in one go. At its worst, tens of thousands were killed every month, and thousands might die on a single day when a large town was targeted. Reshid's actions were extreme, even for the Ottomans.

On July 12, 1915, Talat Pasha himself wrote to Reshid demanding that he restrict his killing only to the Armenians, and leave the Assyrians alone for now. Reshid simply ignored him. Barely a week later, his forces killed 7,000 more at Midyat, their crime, shooting back when his death squads marched into their village.

Historians estimate that up to 200,000 Christians were killed in Diyarbakir under Rezhit's command, including at least 60,000 Assyrian Orthodox Christians, and the rest from other Assyrian, Armenian and Greek denominations. Amidst all of the suffering, the Assyrians managed a few episodes of astounding resistance. The Tur Abdin region of Turkey saw two successful efforts by Assyrians to repel their attackers. The first was in the town of Ayınvardo in July 1915. Refugees had flooded into the village in early 1915 to escape attacks by Ottoman forces.

The village's ancient walls were a formidable defense. and the village organized a militia to defend themselves from incoming soldiers. For almost two months, the Assyrians fended off a much larger number of Kurdish raiders and Ottoman troops, with little more than bolt-action rifles and determination. Their resistance forced the Ottomans to the negotiating table, but when the Assyrians still refused to lay down their weapons, the Ottomans withdrew and never returned.

A similar successful resistance occurred in the town of Azar. between August and November of 1915. Barely a thousand poorly armed Assyrian militia soldiers calling themselves the Jesus Fidai defended the town from a much larger coalition of Ottoman and Kurdish soldiers. They mounted a bitter resistance against the attackers, and forced the Ottoman military to reassign troops from elsewhere to support taking this tiny town.

The Ottomans even considered calling their German allies to help, but the Germans were skeptical that this town was truly a rebel base, and were uncomfortable with the widespread reports of anti-Christian atrocities, so they refused to help. In early November, a replenished Ottoman force mounted a furious assault on the village, but were beaten back. A week later, the Assyrian defenders snuck out of the town and attacked the Ottoman positions, killing officers and stealing modern military equipment before slipping back into Azar. Humiliated and with hundreds dead, the Ottomans retreated, and Talat Pasha gave the order to leave the Assyrians where they were.

Thanks in large part to the resistance of these two towns, the Ottomans never completed their genocide in the Turabdin region, and it remains one of the only Christian majority regions of Turkey. There was no single moment where the Assyrian genocide ended. With thousands deported and the provinces of Diyarbakir-Shinvan almost completely purged of Assyrians, the genocide was mostly complete by late 1915. Those who hadn't been killed or deported had fled, or among the tiny few able to resist the Ottomans in their fortified villages. Assyrians were still being killed after 1915. Morshimun himself was killed by an assassin in 1918. only a few months before the collapse of the Ottoman government.

However, most of the genocide's victims had been claimed. Only with the end of the First World War and the fall of Talat Pasha's government could Assyrians begin to reflect on everything they had endured. As with all genocides, the exact death toll is debatable.

In Diyarbakir, as many as 200,000 Christians died, of which at least 60,000 were Assyrian. There had been 100,000 Assyrians in the Hakkiade Mountains and the surrounding area. But even with more Shimon's escapees, little more than one-third of the population was accounted for after the war. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Assyrian representatives estimated 250,000 dead overall, amounting to about half of the known pre-war Assyrian population.

Modern scholarship pushes this number closer to 300,000. The only thing as rare as certainty for a genocide is accountability. Talat Pasha and his government escaped responsibility and only a handful of people ever faced charges, let alone conviction. One person who was charged was Mehmed Reshid, who was arrested immediately after the Ottoman surrender.

But he escaped from prison in January 1919 and took his own life before the government could recapture him. For Assyrians today, the Saifo is the height of the historic persecution. Many of the areas depopulated by the genocide are still empty of Assyrians today.

But, although Assyrians around the world continue to push for recognition of the atrocities committed against them, Turkey insists that its predecessors did nothing wrong. In 2023, President Erdogan said, the Saifo lacks legal and historical basis, and proudly asserted, that Turkey does not need to take history lessons from anyone. Turkey might not learn, but a growing number of people are becoming aware of this forgotten tragedy.

Still, just four countries, Armenia, France, Germany and Sweden, officially recognize the genocide. Without a state of their own and being so few in number, the Assyrian fight for the recognition of their history continues to be a difficult one. Hopefully this video has helped you to recognize what happened in the Seifel. If you appreciated this video, don't forget to leave a like and subscribe as we explore more of history's most fascinating and disturbing secrets.

Transcript for:Understanding the Assyrian Genocide

Transcript for:
Understanding the Assyrian Genocide