Sayfo
Sayfo
Sayfo
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.
Sayfo
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.
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