The Unknown Tragedy
By:
Sergei Mikhailov
(New
Babylon, No.1, 1996)
I
This year will be the 81st anniversary of
one
of the most ferocious crimes of the 20th century, that is the phisical
destruction of C
I~
over
two millions of Christians who lived in the eastern Osman empire, namely, 1.5
mil- lions Armenians and half a million Assyrians. cc If the .tragedy of the
Armenian people is more or less known to the at large public, then only a few
know of the Assyrian massacre.
Practically
all national minorities had a hard li ving in the Osman Turkey, and Chris- tians
had it even much worse. It so happened that Turks were the first Islamic people
who after many centuries of opposition to Chris- tians in Balkans, Minor Asia
and elsewhere had long developed a kind of phobia towards them. Christian
subject to Turkey were obvi- ~. ously discriminated and humiliated. Islamiza- ~;
tion was more than once attempted, or occa-
sional
persecution was organized to frighten \:- them. Sometimes Turks turned to
massive killing of thousands. For instance, even in the mid 1890s Sultan Abdul
Hamid 2nd under- took a massive killing of 300000 Armenian and 35000 Assyrian
subjects to the Osman empire.
Around
100000 were forced to adopt Is- lam. Yet as many woman, maidens and chil- dren
were taken and sent to Turkish harems (1).
The
'young' Turks came to power in 1908. They quickly took on genocide of non-
Turkish elements as part of their national policy. They viewed the struggle with
all national minorities in the Osman empire as the only way to save them from
historical falling. Naturally, Christian minorities seemed to be very dangerous
for the Turkish cause and should be destroyed.
It
is clear that Assyrians had to seek sup- port with Christian powers hostile to
Turkey, primarily, with Russia and Great Britain which pursued their own
interests in the re- gion at the time long before the first world war the
Russian command were investigating the possibility of using Assyrians on their
side in the military campaign. It was sug- gested to organize Assyrian combat
squads which were to be on the Russian side in the conflict as well as to defend
the Assyrian
----------------------
population
from Kurdish systematic raids(2). Assyrian were promised to get arms and
amunition, but eventually they did not get any because every gun was badly
wanted on the German front. So it happened that Assyri- ans had to use own
resources in fighting with Turkish regular troops as they had already declared
themsel ves on the Russian side.
As
of October 30th when the Russian goverment declared a war against Turkey, the
situation of Assyrians became even worse. Turkish regular army units as well as
Kurdish gangs made frequent raids on peaceful Assyrian villages poth in the
Turkish territory and in the Iranian Urmia. Assyrians squads participated in the
Russia anny's operations on many occasions, making sweeping raids in the enemy's
rear, or operating survey trips inside its territory.
However,
the same year later and in Janu- ary 1915 Russian the military mission in Iran
ordered that Russian troops should withdraw from Urmia\ Assyrians knew it on any
notice at all. Russians said it was just a .casual' mistake. They just left in
haste so that Kurds came after and took all Russian depots filled with arms and
ammunition. As a result, Assyrian squads were totally destroyed as they did not
know about the Russian with- drawal. Civilians were also left unprotected, so
Turks just came to kill and plunder them easily. Over 25000 Iranian
Assyrian&...W:t their houses to follow the Russian [fOOpS. They were a
terrible sight to see. They were lined in columns along the whole pathway to
Russia. It was just a crowd of starving people we"aring old raps to be seen
out for miles and miles (3). The most intensive inflows of refu- gees to Russia
from the Iranian Urmia during the first world war were in 1914, 1915 and 1918,
respectively (4).
Those
who stayed in the country met their terrible late indeed. In fact, Kurdish
cutthroats followed by Turkish soldiers or Iranian police under German control
kept coming .to devas- tate Assyrian villages and to kill the local people. Most
brutally they did in the place where they found a strong opposition. While all
males were to be murdered, children,
---------------------------
maidens
and woman were to be sent to Kurdish harems (5).
On
June 10, 1915 the Turkish Assyrians headed by Mar Shimmun Benyamin, Patri- arch
of the Assyrian Church of the East, came out self defence openly in strife with
the Osman government. A considerable mili- tary force was sent to suppress the
rising. Besides, Kurds made successive raids on in- dependent Assyrian
principalities or malik- ships which were the core of the Assyrian combat force.
Despite
the high fighting spirit they had revealed, they were in want of anns and am-
munition, starving and yet feeling unprotected after withdrawal of the Russian
troops, Assyrian warriors made a decision to join the civilians on the way to
catch up with Rus- sians. On marching they had to cross the following places in
the southern Van prov- ince, Tyari, Tkhoma, Tull, Julamerk, Kocha- nis, Kudranis,
Resh, Geduchi, Biban, Sevan, Bashkale, that is about a hundred kilometers (6).
The Assyrian marching column, a few hundred thousand strong, was assaulted by
Turkish or Kurdish squads all the way down. In fact, Assyrians suffered heavy
losses.
By
the end of the autumn the Assyrian vanguard had reached the Iranian border where
they held up by Russian cordons. Russians wanted them to turn back and fight
Turks. However, Assyrian squads made a break in the cordons and found a way into
the Iranian Urmia where thousands of starv-
~
ing people just met even more hardship than ever. The Russian commanders tried
to use this Assyrian force in their own interests. Russian just wanted to put up
Assyrians to hold local Kurds and Persians on a string. This Assyrian mission
really tore them far apart. from these nations.
The
October 1917 revolution in Russia dashed all hopes of Assyrians for a comeback
to their nati ve mountains in Hakkiari. In 1918 the Kurdish shakh Simko invited
the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Shimmun Benyamin to nego- tiatious and murdered him
in a deceptive manlJer. In the same year a large group of Assyrians followed the
Russian troops out of Urmia.
Those
Assyrians who had decided to stay were put under the British control. In fact,
tne British secret emissaries had long been trying to bring Assyrians to their
side against Turkey. And now after the withdrawal of the
-----------------------
Russian
troops they took an extremely 'good' care of Assyrians. Actually they just tried
to make the perfect use of the situation as Assyrians were starving and had no
safe place to be. After the withdrawal of the Rus- sian troops Turks made a
sweeping raid on . Urmia. Many Assyrians were killed at the time. The British
emissaries promised Assyri- ans any kind of support and probably the formation
of an independent national Assyr- ian state somewhere in the Rakkiari moun-
tains, but in fact they just began to lead the Assyrians out of Unnia to
relocate them to North Mesopotamia (presently, the Iraqui territory) as the
British planned to use Assyrians for their own purpose in this oil- field area
(7). In this pursuit of oil they just let the 250000 Assyrian population of
Urmia rise and move to Iran. They had to walk about 900 kilometers away through
Ramadan to a British-mandated territory. At least 50000 people perished on the
way (8). The rest of them later were led out to Northern Iraq where the British
emissaries were organ- izing Assyrian combat squads ('levy') to be used against
the local Kurds and Arabs.
In the tragic events from 1914 to 1918 at least
500000 Assyrians totally were murdered and hundred thousands just to another
land to be furthermore scattered all over the world. Despite the presence of
Assyrians in the North-Western Iraq (Urmia), in Northern Iraq and in Syria,
where they came from Iraq after 1933, Assyrians lost a very large part of their
territory during the years in question. Actu- ally, Assyrians lost almost all
their lands in the Rakkiari mountains where they used to be in very high
numbers. There were some densely populated areas as well as independ- ent ('ashirates')
principalities or malik ships, where Kochanis was the residence of Assyr- ian
patriarchs, etc. All these event brought about a big dispersion of the Assyrian
ethnos in Western Europe. This tendency is still ob- vious now (Assyrian exodus
from Iraq after the Persian Gulf war, etc.) and unfortunately. it may cause full
assimiliation of this ancient
people
eventually. In 1914 to 1918 some 100000 Assyrians found refuge in the territory
of the fonner Russian empire (9). Till 1918 almost all of them stayed in
Transcaucasus waiting for the situation in their homeland to change for the
o batter, but many Assyrians just perished by
hunger or disease in the meantime. After
-----------------------------------------------------------
1918
about 50000 Assyrians returned to Iran, and those who had decided to stay in
Russia they just started to look for a home mainly in townships. Later in 1920s
and 1930s some of them left the USSR for Iran or Western Europe.
--------------------
.
,
, So that was the state of the art analysis of the Assyrian dispersion in the
European part of Russia and Ukraine. Most of Assyrians in this country are the
posterity of those refu- gees who once fled to Russia for fear of de- .
struction and annihilation alike ".~
--------------------------------
foot
note:
Re_ferences:
1.
Sargizov L.M. An age-longfriendship (Assyrians in Armenia), "Atra",
1992, no.4, p.71
2.
Matveyev K.P. (Bar Mattai), Mar lukhanna I.I. Assyrian issue during and after
the jlrst world war. M. 1968, pp. 45-46.
3.ibidem,
pp. 48-49
I4.
Assyrians. London, 1988, no.11, p.9
5.
Matveyev K.P. (Bar Mattai), Mar lukahanna I.I. ibidem, pp.50-51. 6. ibidem,
p.57 7. ibidem, p.78 8. ibidem p.79
9.
Matveyev A.K. Matveyev K.P. Assyrians. Material for the series ion ',1990,
vol.1,p.101. I,
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