Haftevan () is a village in

Zulachay Rural District Zulachay Rural District () is in the Central District of Salmas County, West Azerbaijan province, Iran. Its capital is the village of Malham. Demographics Population At the time of the 2006 National Census, the rural district's population wa ...

of the Central District of

Salmas County Salmas County () is in West Azerbaijan province, Iran. Its capital is the city of Salmas. Demographics Ethnicity The county is populated largely by Kurds and a smaller minority of Azerbaijanis. Also a few hundred Assyrians live in the dis ...

West Azerbaijan West Azerbaijan province () is one of the 31 provinces of Iran, provinces of Iran, whose capital and largest city is Urmia. It is in the Azerbaijan (Iran), northwest of the country, bordered by Turkey (Ağrı Province, Ağrı, Hakkâri Pr ...

province,

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

Haftevan massacre

In early 1915, the village was occupied by the

Ottoman Army The Military of the Ottoman Empire () was the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire. It was founded in 1299 and dissolved in 1922. Army The Military of the Ottoman Empire can be divided in five main periods. The foundation era covers the years ...

, whose commander required local Christians to register for food rations. Instead, 700 Christians were executed in the village on the orders of

Djevdet Bey Djevdet Bey or Cevdet Tahir BelbezSait Çetinoğlu"Bir Osmanlı Komutanının Soykırım Güncesi", ''Birikim'', 09.04.2009. (1878 – January 15, 1955)Selcuk Uzun"1915 „Van İsyanı“ ve Vali Cevdet (Belbez) Bey" ''Küyerel'', 30.12.2011. wa ...

. Kurdish tribesmen under the command of

Simko Shikak Ismail Agha Shikak (, ), also known as Simko (, ; 1887–1930), was a Kurds, Kurdish chieftain of the Shekak (tribe), Shekak tribe. He was a nationalist warlord who controlled significant land and led thousands of Kurdish rebels who defeated th ...

also took part in this massacre.

Russian Army The Russian Ground Forces (), also known as the Russian Army in English, are the Army, land forces of the Russian Armed Forces. The primary responsibilities of the Russian Ground Forces are the protection of the state borders, combat on land, ...

commander K. Matikyan reported seeing "with my own eyes hundreds of mangled corpses in pits, stinking from infection, lying in the open. I saw headless corpses, chopped off by axes, hands, legs, piles of heads, corpses crushed under rocks from fallen walls". According to historian

David Gaunt David Gaunt (born 1944 in London) is a historian and professor at Södertörn University's Centre for Baltic and East European Studies and Member of Academia Europaea. Gaunt's book about the Assyrian genocide The Sayfo (, ), also known as t ...

, "This was where the Ottoman soldiers learned to execute unarmed noncombatant Christians", leading to the

Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily t ...

and

Assyrian genocide The Sayfo (, ), also known as the Seyfo or the Assyrian genocide, was the mass murder and deportation of Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan province by Ottoman forces and some Kurdish tribes during ...

Demographics

Ethnicity

In 1930, the village was populated by

Armenians Armenians (, ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the Armenian highlands of West Asia.Robert Hewsen, Hewsen, Robert H. "The Geography of Armenia" in ''The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiq ...

Azerbaijanis Azerbaijanis (; , ), Azeris (, ), or Azerbaijani Turks (, ) are a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group living mainly in the Azerbaijan (Iran), Azerbaijan region of northwestern Iran and the Azerbaijan, Republic of Azerbaijan. They are predomin ...

and

Kurds Kurds (), or the Kurdish people, are an Iranian peoples, Iranic ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to Kurdistan, which is a geographic region spanning southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syri ...

Population

At the time of the 2006 National Census, the village's population was 6,313 in 1,216 households. The following census in 2011 counted 7,995 people in 1,796 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 8,203 people in 1,935 households. It was the most populous village in its rural district.

Notes

References