Sayfo

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 World War I.

The Assyrians were divided into mutually antagonistic churches, including the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Chaldean Catholic Church. Before World War I, they largely lived in mountainous and remote areas of the Ottoman Empire and Persia, some of which were effectively stateless. The Ottoman Empire's nineteenth-century centralization efforts led to increased violence and danger for the Assyrians.

Mass killing of Assyrian civilians began during the Ottoman occupation of Azerbaijan from January to May 1915, during which massacres were committed by Ottoman forces and pro-Ottoman Kurds. In Bitlis province, Ottoman troops returning from Persia joined local Kurdish tribes to massacre the local Christian population (Armenians and Assyrians). Ottoman forces and Kurds attacked the Assyrian tribes of Hakkari in mid-1915, driving them out by September despite the tribes mounting a coordinated military defense. Governor Mehmed Reshid initiated a genocide of all of the Christian communities in Diyarbekir province, including Syriac Christians, facing only sporadic armed resistance in some parts of Tur Abdin. Ottoman Assyrians living farther south, in present-day Iraq and Syria, were not targeted in the genocide.

The Sayfo occurred concurrently with and was closely related to the Armenian genocide, although the Sayfo is considered to have been less systematic. Local actors played a larger role than the Ottoman government, but the latter also ordered attacks on certain Assyrians. Motives for killing included a perceived lack of loyalty among some Assyrian communities to the Ottoman Empire and the desire to appropriate their land. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Assyro-Chaldean delegation said that its losses were 250,000, about half the prewar population. The accuracy of this figure is unknown. They later revised their estimate to 275,000 dead at the Lausanne Conference in 1923. The Sayfo is less studied than the Armenian genocide. Efforts to have it recognized as a genocide began during the 1990s, spearheaded by the Assyrian diaspora. Although several countries acknowledge that Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire were victims of a genocide, this assertion is rejected by the Turkish government.

Terminology

There is no universally accepted translation in English for the endonym ''Suryoyo'' or ''Suryoye''. The choice of which term to use, such as ''Assyrian'', ''Syriac'', '' Aramean'', and ''Chaldean'', is often determined by political alignment. The Church of the East was the first to adopt an identity derived from ancient Assyria. The Syriac Orthodox Church has officially rejected the use of ''Assyrian'' in favor of ''Syrian'' since 1952, although not all Syriac Orthodox reject Assyrian identity.

Since the Ottoman Empire was organized by religion, Ottoman officials referred to populations by their religious affiliation rather than ethnicity. Therefore, according to historian David Gaunt, "speaking of an 'Assyrian Genocide' is anachronistic". In Neo-Aramaic, the languages historically spoken by Assyrians, it has been known since 1915 as ''Sayfo'' or ''Seyfo'' (, ), which, since the tenth century, has also meant 'extermination' or 'extinction'. Other terms used by some Assyrians include '' nakba'' (Arabic for 'catastrophe') and ''firman'' (Turkish for 'order', as Assyrians believed that they were killed according to an official decree).

Background

The people now called Assyrian, Chaldean, or Aramean are native to Upper Mesopotamia and historically spoke Aramaic varieties, and their ancestors converted to Christianity in the first centuries CE. The first major schism in Syriac Christianity dates to 410, when Christians in the Sasanian Empire formed the Church of the East to distinguish themselves from the official religion of the Roman Empire. The West Syriac church, later the Syriac Orthodox Church, was persecuted by Roman rulers for theological differences but remained separate from the Church of the East. The schisms in Syriac Christianity were fueled by political divisions between empires and personal antagonism between clergymen.

Middle Eastern Christian communities were devastated by the Crusades and the Mongol invasions. The Chaldean and Syriac Catholic Churches split from the Church of the East and the Syriac Orthodox Church, respectively, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. Each church considered the others heretical.

Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire

In its millet system, the Ottoman Empire recognized religious denominations rather than ethnic groups: Süryaniler / Yakubiler (Syriac Orthodox or Jacobites), Nasturiler (Church of the East or Nestorians), and Keldaniler (Chaldean Catholic Church). Until the nineteenth century, these groups were part of the Armenian millet. Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire lived in remote, mountainous areas, where they had settled to avoid state control. Although this remoteness enabled Assyrians to avoid military conscription and taxation, it also cemented internal differences and prevented the emergence of a collective identity similar to the Armenian national movement. Unlike the Armenians, Syriac Christians did not control a disproportionate part of Ottoman commerce and did not have significant populations in nearby hostile countries.

There were no accurate estimates of the prewar Assyrian population, but Gaunt gives a possible figure of 500,000 to 600,000. Midyat, in Diyarbekir province (vilayet), was the only town in the Ottoman Empire with an Assyrian majority (Syriac Orthodox, Chaldeans, and Protestants). Syriac Orthodox Christians were concentrated in the hilly rural areas around Midyat, known as Tur Abdin, where they lived in almost 100 villages and worked in agriculture or crafts. Syriac Orthodox culture was centered in two monasteries near Mardin (west of Tur Abdin): Mor Gabriel and Deyrulzafaran. Outside the core area of Syriac settlement, there were also sizable populations in villages and the towns of Urfa, Harput, and Adiyaman. Unlike the Syriac population of Tur Abdin, many of these Syriacs spoke non-Aramaic languages.

Under the Qudshanis-based Patriarch of the Church of the East, Assyrian tribes controlled the Hakkari mountains east of Tur Abdin (adjacent to the Ottoman–Persian border). Hakkari is very mountainous, with peaks reaching and separated by steep gorges; many areas were only accessible by footpaths carved into the mountainsides. The Assyrian tribes sometimes fought each other on behalf of their Kurdish allies. Church of the East settlement began in the east on the western shore of Lake Urmia in Persia; a Chaldean enclave was just north, in Salamas. There was a Chaldean area around Siirt in Bitlis province (northeast of Tur Abdin and northwest of Hakkari, less mountainous than Hakkari), but most Chaldeans lived farther south in present-day Iraq.

Worsening conflicts

Although the Kurds and Assyrians were well-integrated with each other, Gaunt writes that this integration "led straight into a world marked by violence, raiding, the kidnapping and rape of women, hostage taking, cattle stealing, robbery, plundering, the torching of villages and a state of chronic unrest". Assyrian efforts to maintain their autonomy collided with the Ottoman Empire's nineteenth-century attempts at centralization and modernization to assert control over what had effectively been a stateless region. The first mass violence targeting Assyrians was in the mid-1840s, when Kurdish emir Bedir Khan devastated Hakkari and Tur Abdin, killing several thousands. During intertribal feuds, the bulk of the violence was directed at Christian villages under the protection of the opposing tribe.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the Ottoman state armed the Kurds with modern weapons to fight Russia. When the Kurds refused to return the weapons at the end of the war, Assyrians—relying on older weapons—were at a disadvantage and subject to increasing violence. The irregular Hamidiye cavalry were formed in the 1880s from Kurdish tribes loyal to the government; their exemption from civil and military law enabled them to commit acts of violence with impunity.

The rise of political Islam in the form of Kurdish shaikhs also widened the divide between the Assyrians and the Muslim Kurds. Many Assyrians were killed in the 1895 massacres of Diyarbekir. Violence worsened after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, despite Assyrian hopes that the new government would stop promoting anti-Christian Islamism. In 1908, 12,000 Assyrians were expelled from the Lizan valley by the Kurdish emir of Barwari. Due to increasing Kurdish attacks which Ottoman authorities did nothing to prevent, Patriarch of the Church of the East Mar Shimun XIX Benyamin began negotiations with the Russian Empire before World War I.

World War I

Before the war, Russia and the Ottoman Empire courted populations in each other's territory to wage guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. The Ottoman Empire tried to enlist Caucasian Muslims and Armenians, as well as Assyrians and Azeris in Persia, and Russia looked to the Armenians, Kurds, and Assyrians living in the Ottoman Empire. Prior to the war, Russia controlled parts of northeastern Persia, including Azerbaijan and Tabriz.

Like other genocides, the Sayfo had a number of causes. The rise of nationalism led to competing Turkish, Kurdish, Persian, and Arab national movements, which contributed to increasing violence in the already conflict-ridden borderlands inhabited by the Assyrians. Historian Donald Bloxham emphasizes the negative influence of European powers interfering in the Ottoman Empire under the premise of protecting Ottoman Christians. This imperialism put the Ottoman Christians at risk of retaliatory attacks. In 1912 and 1913, the Ottoman loss in the Balkan Wars triggered an exodus of Muslim refugees from the Balkans.

The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) government decided to resettle the refugees in eastern Anatolia, on land confiscated from populations deemed disloyal to the empire. There was a direct connection between the deportation of the Christian population and the resettlement of Muslims in the depopulated areas. The goals of the population replacement were to Turkify the Balkan Muslims and end the perceived internal threat from the Christian populations. With local politicians predisposed to violence against non-Muslims, these factors helped generate the preconditions for genocide.

CUP politician Enver Pasha set up the paramilitary Special Organization, which was loyal to himself. Its members, many of whom were convicted criminals released from prison for the task, operated as spies and saboteurs. The Ottoman Empire ordered a full mobilization for war on 24 July 1914, and concluded the German–Ottoman alliance shortly thereafter. In August 1914, the CUP sent a delegation to an Armenian conference offering an autonomous Armenian region if the Armenian Revolutionary Federation incited a pro-Ottoman revolt in Russia in the event of war.

The Armenians refused. According to Gaunt, a similar offer was probably made to Mar Shimun in Van on 3 August. After returning to Qudshanis, Mar Shimun sent letters urging his followers to "fulfill strictly all their duties to the Turks". The Assyrians in Hakkari (like many other Ottoman subjects) resisted conscription into the Ottoman army during the mobilization, and many fled to Persia in August. Those in Mardin, however, accepted conscription.

Ethnic cleansing of Hakkari

Massacres of lowland Assyrians

In August 1914, Assyrians in nine villages near the border were forced to flee to Persia and their villages were burned after they refused to join the Ottoman army. On 26 October 1914, a few days before the Ottoman Empire entered World War I, Ottoman interior minister Talaat Pasha sent a telegram to Djevdet Bey, the governor of Van province (which included Hakkari). In a planned Ottoman attack in Persia, the loyalty of the Hakkari Assyrians was doubted. Talaat ordered the deportation and resettlement of the Assyrians who lived near the Persian border with Muslims farther west. No more than twenty Assyrians would live in each resettlement, destroying their culture, language, and traditional way of life.

Gaunt cites this order as the beginning of the Sayfo. The government in Van reported that the order could not be implemented due to the lack of forces to carry it out, and by 5 November the expected Assyrian unrest did not materialize. Assyrians in Julamerk and Gawar were arrested or killed, and Ottoman irregulars attacked Assyrian villages throughout Hakkari in retaliation for their refusal to follow the order. The Assyrians, unaware of the government's role in these events until December 1914, protested to the governor of Van.

The Ottoman garrison in the border town of Bashkale was commanded by Kazim Karabekir, and the local Special Organization branch by . Russian forces captured Bashkale and Sarai in November 1914 and held both for a few days. After their recapture by the Ottomans, the towns' local Christians were punished as collaborators, out of proportion to any actual collaboration. Local Ottoman forces consisting of gendarmerie, Hamidiye irregulars, and Kurdish volunteers were unable to mount attacks on the Assyrian tribes on the highlands, confining their attacks to poorly-armed Christian villages in the plains. Refugees from the area told the Russian army that "nearly the entire male Christian population of Gawar and Bashkale" had been massacred. In May 1915, Ottoman forces retreating from Bashkale massacred hundreds of Armenian women and children before continuing to Siirt.

Preparations for war

Mar Shimun learned about the massacre of Assyrians in lowland areas, and believed that the highland tribes would be next. Via Agha Petros, an Assyrian interpreter for the Russian consulate in Urmia, he contacted the Russian authorities. Shimun traveled to Bashkale to meet Mehmed Shefik Bey, an Ottoman official sent from Mardin to win over the Assyrians for the Ottoman cause, in December 1914. Shefik promised protection and money in exchange for a written promise that the Assyrians would not side with Russia or permit their tribes to take up arms against the Ottoman government. The tribal chiefs considered the offer, but rejected it.

In January 1915, Kurds blocked the route from Qudshanis to the Assyrian tribes. The patriarch's sister, Surma D'Bait Mar Shimun, left Qudshanis the following month with 300 men. Early in 1915, the tribes of Hakkari were preparing to defend themselves from a large-scale attack; they decided to send women and children to the area around Chamba in Upper Tyari, leaving only combatants behind.

On 10 May, the Assyrian tribes met and declared war (or a general mobilization) against the Ottoman Empire. In June, Mar Shimun traveled to Persia to ask for Russian support. He met with General Fyodor Chernozubov in Moyanjik (in the Salmas valley), who promised support. The patriarch and Agha Petros also met Russian consul Basil Nikitin in Salmas shortly before 21 June, but the promised Russian help never materialized.

In May, Assyrian warriors were part of the Russian force which was rushed to relieve the defense of Van; Haydar Bey, the governor of Mosul, was given the power to invade Hakkari. Talaat ordered him to drive the Assyrians out and added, "We should not let them return to their homelands". The ethnic-cleansing operation was coordinated by Enver, Talaat, and military and civilian Ottoman authorities. To legalize the invasion, the districts of Julamerk, Gawar, and Shemdinan were temporarily transferred to Mosul province. The Ottoman army joined local Kurdish tribes against specific targets. Suto Agha of the Kurdish Oramar tribe attacked Jilu, Dez, and Baz from the east; Said Agha attacked a valley in Lower Tyari; Ismael Agha targeted Chamba in Upper Tyari, and the Upper Berwar emir attacked Ashita, the Lizan valley, and Lower Tyari from the west.

Invasion of the highlands

The joint encirclement operation was launched on 11 June. The Jilu tribe was attacked at the beginning of the campaign by several Kurdish tribes; the fourth-century church of Mar Zaya, with historic artifacts, was destroyed. Ottoman forces based in Julamerk and Mosul launched a joint attack on Tyari on 23 June. Haydar first attacked the Tyari villages of Ashita and Sarespido; later, an expeditionary force of three thousand Turks and Kurds attacked the mountain pass between Tyari and Tkhuma. Although the Assyrians were victorious in most of the battles, they had unsustainable losses of lives and ammunition and lacked their invaders' German-manufactured rifles, machine guns, and artillery.

In July, Mar Shimun sent Malik Khoshaba and bishop Mar Yalda Yahwallah from Barwari to Tabriz in Persia to request urgent assistance from the Russians. The Kurdish Barzani tribe assisted the Ottoman army and laid waste to Tkhuma, Tyari, Jilu, and Baz. During the campaign, Ottoman forces took no prisoners. Mar Shimun's brother, Hormuz, was arrested while he was studying in Constantinople; in late June, Talaat tried to obtain the surrender of the Assyrian tribes by threatening Hormuz' life if Mar Shimun did not capitulate. The Assyrians refused, and he was killed.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the Assyrians retreated further into the high mountains without food and watched as their homes, farms, and herds were pillaged. They had no other option but fleeing to Persia, which most had done by September. Most of the men joined the Russian army, hoping to return home. During the 1915 fighting, the Assyrians' only strategic objective was defensive; the Ottoman goal was to defeat the Assyrian tribes and prevent their return.

Ottoman occupation of Azerbaijan

In 1903, Russia estimated that 31,700 Assyrians lived in Persia. Facing attacks from their Kurdish neighbors, the Assyrian villages in the Ottoman–Persian borderlands organized self-defense forces; by the outbreak of World War I, they were well armed. In 1914, before the declaration of war against Russia, Ottoman forces crossed the border into Persia and destroyed Christian villages. Large-scale attacks in late September and October 1914 targeted many Assyrian villages, and the attackers neared Urmia.

Due to Ottoman attacks, thousands of Christians living along the border fled to Urmia. Others arrived in Persia after fleeing from the Ottoman side of the border. The November 1914 proclamation of jihad by the Ottoman government inflamed jihadist sentiments in the Ottoman–Persian border area, convincing the local Kurdish population to side with the Ottomans. In November, Persia declared its neutrality; however, it was not respected by the warring parties.

Russia organized units of Assyrian and Armenian volunteers to bolster local Russian forces against Ottoman attack. Assyrians led by Agha Petros declared their support for the Entente, and marched in Urmia. Agha Petros later said that he had been promised by Russian officials that in exchange for their support, they would receive an independent state after the war. Ottoman irregulars in Van province crossed the Persian border, attacking Christian villages in Persia.

In response, Persia shut down the Ottoman consulates in Khoy, Tabriz, and Urmia and expelled Sunni Muslims. Ottoman authorities retaliated with the expulsion of several thousand Hakkari Assyrians to Persia. Resettled in farming villages, the Assyrians were armed by Russia. The Russian government was aware that the Assyrians and Armenians of Azerbaijan could not stop an Ottoman army, and was indifferent to the danger to which these communities would be exposed in an Ottoman invasion.

On 1 January 1915, Russia abruptly withdrew its forces. Ottoman forces led by Djevdet, Kazim Karabekir, and Ömer Naji occupied Azerbaijan with no opposition. Immediately after the withdrawal of Russian forces, local Muslims committed pogroms against Christians; the Ottoman army also attacked Christian civilians. Over a dozen villages were sacked and, of the large villages, only Gulpashan was left intact. News of the atrocities spread quickly, leading many Armenians and Assyrians to flee to the Russian Caucasus. Those north of Urmia had more time to flee. According to several estimates, about 10,000 or 15,000 to 20,000 crossed the border into Russia. Assyrians who had volunteered for the Russian forces were separated from their families, who were often left behind. An estimated 15,000 Ottoman troops reached Urmia by 4 or 5 January, and Dilman on 8 January.

Massacres

Ottoman troops began attacking Christian villages during their February 1915 retreat, when they were turned back by a Russian counterattack. Facing losses which they blamed on Armenian volunteers and imagining a broad Armenian rebellion, Djevdet ordered massacres of Christian civilians to reduce the potential future strength of volunteer units. Some local Kurdish tribes participated in the killings, but others protected Christian civilians. Some Assyrian villages also engaged in armed resistance when attacked. The Persian Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested the atrocities to the Ottoman government, but lacked the power to prevent them.

Many Christians did not have time to flee during the Russian withdrawal, and 20,000 to 25,000 refugees were stranded in Urmia. Nearly 18,000 Christians sought shelter in the city's Presbyterian and Lazarist missions. Although there was reluctance to attack the missionary compounds, many died of disease. Between February and May, when the Ottoman forces pulled out, there was a campaign of mass execution, looting, kidnapping, and extortion against Christians in Urmia. More than 100 men were arrested at the Lazarist compound, and dozens, including Mar Dinkha, bishop of Tergawer, were executed on 23 and 24 February. Near Urmia, the large Syriac village of Gulpashan was attacked; men were killed, and women and children were abducted and raped.

There were no missionaries in the Salmas valley to protect Christians, although some local Muslims tried to do so. In Dilman, the Persian governor offered shelter to 400 Christians; he was forced to surrender the men to Ottoman forces, however, who executed them in the town square. The Ottoman forces lured Christians to Haftevan, a village south of Dilman, by demanding that they register there, and arrested notable people in Dilman who were brought to the village for execution. Over two days in February, 700 to 800 people, including the entire male Christian population, was murdered in Haftevan. The killings were committed by the Ottoman army, led by Djevdet, and the local Shekak Kurdish tribe, led by Simko Shikak.

In April, Ottoman army commander Halil Pasha arrived in Azerbaijan with reinforcements from Rowanduz. Halil and Djevdet ordered the murder of Armenian and Syriac soldiers serving in the Ottoman army, and several hundred were killed. In several other massacres in Azerbaijan in early 1915, hundreds of Christians were killed and women were targeted for kidnapping and rape; seventy villages were destroyed. In May and June, Christians who had fled to the Caucasus returned to find their villages destroyed. Armenian and Assyrian volunteers attacked Muslims in revenge. After retreating from Persia, Ottoman forces—blaming Armenians and Assyrians for their defeat—took revenge against Ottoman Christians. Ottoman atrocities in Persia were widely covered by international media in mid-March 1915, prompting a declaration on 24 May by Russia, France, and the United Kingdom condemning them. The Blue Book, a collection of eyewitness reports of Ottoman atrocities published by the British government in 1916, devoted 104 of its 684 pages to the Assyrians.

Butcher battalion in Bitlis

A Kurdish rebellion in Bitlis province was suppressed shortly before the outbreak of war in November 1914. The CUP government reversed its previous opposition to the Hamidiye regiments, recruiting them to put down the rebellion. As elsewhere, military requisitions became pillage; in February, labor-battalion recruits began to disappear. In July and August 1915, 2,000 Chaldeans and Syriac Orthodox from Bitlis were among those who fled to the Caucasus when the Russian army retreated from Van.

Before the war, Siirt and the surrounding area were Christian enclaves populated largely by Chaldean Catholics. Catholic priest estimated that there were 60,000 Christians living in the Siirt district ( sanjak), including 15,000 Chaldeans and 20,000 Syriac Orthodox. Violence in Siirt began on 9 June with the arrest and execution of Armenian, Syriac Orthodox, and Chaldean clerics and notable residents, including the Chaldean bishop Addai Sher.

After retreating from Persia, Djevdet led the siege of Van; he continued to Bitlis province in June with 8,000 soldiers, whom he called the "butcher battalion" (). The arrival of these troops in Siirt led to more violence. District governor ( mutasarrif) Serfiçeli Hilmi Bey and Siirt mayor Abdul Ressak were replaced because they did not support the killing. Forty local officials in Siirt organized the massacres.

During the month-long massacre, Christians were killed in the streets or their houses (which were looted). The Chaldean diocese of Siirt was destroyed, including its library of rare manuscripts. The massacre was organized by Bitlis governor Abdülhalik Renda, the chief of police, the mayor, and other prominent local residents. The killing in Siirt was committed by '' çetes'', and the surrounding villages were destroyed by Kurds; many local Kurdish tribes were involved. According to Venezuelan mercenary Rafael de Nogales, the massacre was planned as revenge for Ottoman defeats by Russia. De Nogales believed that Halil was trying to assassinate him, since the CUP had disposed of other witnesses. He left Siirt as quickly as he could, passing deportation columns of Syriac and Armenian women and children.

Only 400 people were deported from Siirt; the remainder were killed or kidnapped by Muslims. The deportees (women and children, since the men had been executed) were forced to march west from Siirt towards Mardin or south towards Mosul, assaulted by police. As they passed through, their possessions, including their clothes, were stolen by local Kurds and Turks. Those unable to keep up were killed. Women considered attractive were abducted by police or Kurds, raped, and killed. One site of attacks and robbery by Kurds was the gorge of Wadi Wawela in Sawro kaza, northeast of Mardin. No deportees reached Mardin, and only 50 to 100 Chaldeans (of an original 7,000 to 8,000) reached Mosul. Three Assyrian villages in Siirt—Dentas, Piroze and Hertevin—survived the Sayfo, existing until 1968 when their residents emigrated.

After leaving Siirt, Djevdet proceeded to Bitlis

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