Armenian genocide remembered as Assyrians fight for acknowledgement of their plight
Overshadowed by the Armenian genocide that cost the lives of some 1,5 million people, and which is commemorated on 24 April, the experience of other minorities that were targeted by the Ottoman Empire is often forgotten. Yet a smaller group, which was almost wiped out is now trying to gain recognition for its plight.
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"A lady, a relative of mine, escaped with her two daughters. Soon after, they were recaptured, and the two girls were carried away to slavery. Their mother died," writes Yonan Shahbaz, a Persian Baptist minister in his harrowing, 1918 diary.
His is one of the rare eyewitness accounts of the genocide of Oriental Christians - Assyrians - by Ottoman and Kurdish troops in 1915 and the years that followed in Urmia in present-day Iran.
"A neighbor of mine was soaked in oil and burned. A minister, more than eighty years of age, had his legs and arms sawed off. Another minister was murdered in the most horrible and revolting manner while his wife was compelled to witness the foul deed from the roof of their home. She died from the shock a little later.
"My own home was looted, then burned. The intruders burned all of my books, my most valued treasure," Shahbaz added.
Protected by an American passport, he managed to escape the onslaught unleashed on Armenians, Assyrians (Oriental Catholics and Orthodox Christians as well as Nestorians and Protestants) and Pontic Greeks, whom the Turks, fighting WW1 at the side of the Germans, suspected of being disloyal to the Ottoman government.
He got out with his wife and one of his two children. The other one disappeared in the chaos and was never heard of again.
Similar accounts - the gruesome and detailed descriptions by French Dominican father Jacques Rhétoré and the diary of then US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau - substantiate the reports.
But memories of the mass killing of Oriental Christians, or "Seyfo" ("Sword") as the Assyrian genocide is called, quickly faded.
When talking about Oriental Christians, "Assyrian," "Syriac," "Chaldean" and "Aramean" or combinations like "Assyro-Chaldean" are being used, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes in reference to specific characteristics.
Assyrians
Refers to the Assyrian People who trace their roots back to the Assyrian Empire, which is currently in northern Iraq, eastern Syria, south-eastern Turkey, and Urmia in Iran. Religion: the Nestorian Assyrian Church of the East.
Arameans
An ethnic group originating in an area straddling southwest Syria, northern Israel, and northern Jordan. They can be traced back to the Kingdom of Aram (ca 3000 BC) and speak Aramaic.
Chaldeans
Descendants of the Neo-Babylonian who are currently linked to the Chaldean Catholic Church with its See in Baghdad.
Syriac
1. a liturgical language spoken by Assyrians, Arameans, and Chaldeans. It can refer to all of these ethnicities jointly, to make Arameans and Chaldeans,
2. Christians who are from an area between the western edge of Assyria and the eastern edge of Aram, in what is currently central Syria.
3. identifies Syriac Catholic or Orthodox Churches that use a liturgy in the Syriac language
The Armenian genocide
Today, many countries around the world recognise the "Armenian genocide," where, according to figures published by the Yerevan-based Genocide Museum/Institute Foundation, some 1,5 million people died.
France recognised the Armenian massacre in a law in 2001, and designated 24 April as day of yearly commemoration in 2019.
Less, though, is known to the outside world, of the Oriental Christians who also lost some 250,000 people, or 75 percent of the total population.
Why didn't they speak out?
"It was fear," Professor Efrim Yildiz, founder of the Niniveh Chair of Salamanca University, told RFI. "Assyrians in the diaspora were aware that the small part that has survived and stayed on (in Turkey) would be victimised."
Unlike Armenia, which has its own country and a diaspora that is unified and well established in many western countries, the Assyrians don't have their own place, and are divided in factions that don't always go along.
Today things are changing. According to Yildiz, there are only around 2,000 Assyrians left in Turkey, while the diaspora established the "Seyfo Center," which raises awareness about the Assyrian genocide.
Then in 2015 Oriental Christians stepped into the limelight when reports appeared of persecution by the Islamic State of Christian Yazidis in Iraq. Currently, France is at the forefront of pushing for an official recognition of the Assyrian genocide.
Why France?
Paris feels a special responsibility for the Oriental Christians, who are also called "Assyrians," "Assyro-Chaldeans" or "Syriacs," depending on which group you talk to.
By1916, the UK and France had divided the Ottoman empire between them under the then secretive Sykes-Picot agreement. The region where most of the Oriental Christians lived was under the French governorship.
After the end of WW1, lobbying was carried out by a number of minority groups (Kurds, Assyrians, Circassians, Armenians) in an attempt to establish or expand their own territory. The Assyrians presented a map and were later promised a degree of autonomy in the Sèvres Treaty, signed in 1920.
The Sèvres Treaty stated that a combined French-English-Italian commission would travel to the region and draft a "scheme of local autonomy" containing "full safeguards for the protection of the Assyro-Chaldeans and other racial or religious minorities within these areas," which largely fitted the demands of the Assyrian delegation.
The treaty also provided for a large extension westwards of Armenia. Large parts of the west-coast, including Izmir were allotted to Greece, and Russia took control of Constantinople.
But the Sèvres Treaty was never ratified after major power shifts within Turkey which brought to power Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who solidified Turkey's present borders with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, that nullified the Sèvres document. The Assyrians, but also the Kurds and the Armenians, were left in limbo.
Today, France is home to some 30,000 Assyrians. The first arrived in Marseille France in the 1920s as refugees from the “Seyfo” and the town still has the largest concentration in France.
On 11 March 2015, at the request of the Association of Assyrian-Chaldeans in France (AACF), the then UMP lawmaker (and Marseille-based) Valerie Boyer and 14 others submitted a bill recognising the Assyrian genocide and asked for the 24 April to be designated as a date of commemoration - coinciding with the commemoration of the Armenian genocide which became official in 2019.
"The inclusion of Assyrians shows that there is now a consciousness in France that what happened in 1915 not only concerned Armenians, but also other Pontic Greeks and Assyrians," says Christophe Premat, a former lawmaker for France's Socialist Party and now an Assistant Professor with Stockholm University.
"The war in Iraq had an effect on this consciousness because people saw the issue of Oriental Christians. And that's why they wanted to enlarge the focus on the victims by naming the others. So that's a strong step forward.
France's "special responsibility"
The bill noted that the Syria/Iraq-based Islamic State armed group started persecuting local Christians, giving them the choice to convert to Islam, pay a special tax for non-Muslims, flee and abandon everything or "stay and be executed 'by the sword.'"
It then digs deep into history, citing France's "special responsibility" going back to the 1535 alliance between French Emperor François I with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, when the Ottoman empire helped the French to fight Austria-Hungary, while protecting Christians under Ottoman rule.
Boyer's bill demands that "France publicly recognises the Assyrian genocide perpetrated during the First World War" and that 24 April be appointed as a day of commemoration.
POLITICS: France recognizes Seyfo Genocide of 1915
— The Morningside Post (@morningsidepost) February 27, 2023
On Feb. 8, an Assyrian-Chaldean Genocide recognition bill was approved shortly after presentation to the French Senate.
🖊️: Maryam Ishaya (MIA ‘23)
📷: Senator Valérie Boyerhttps://t.co/V9gvrPWP7x
In January 2023, the French Senate adopted the bill with 300 for and two votes against. One month later, MP Raphael Schellenberger (LR) presented the Assemblée Nationale with a bill, which, curiously, and unlike the first Boyer bill which cites the Lausanne Treaty, quotes the -now defunct- Sèvres treaty.
The bills are backed by -mainly right-wing- heavy weight politicians suchs as former Prime Minister François Fillon and ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Meanwhile, the discussions on the 1915 genocide repeatedly lead to frictions between Paris and Ankara. Turkey consequently talks about the “events of 1915” and rejects any criticism of the genocide as “null and void".
After the introduction of one of the French bills, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tanju Bilgic remarked that the claims "lacking legal and historical basis" and that "Turkey does not need to take history lessons from anyone."
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