by Benny Morris
ulation of Constantinople.” 620 Apparently, the Nationalists were eager to
complete the expulsion or “at least [have it] well under way” before the mi-
norities question came up in Lausanne.621 At Lausanne, the secretary of the
Turkish del e ga tion, Celaleddin Bey, said “that Armenians and Greeks were
no longer wanted. They were always like [an] open wound not only painful
in itself but inviting infection from foreign contacts.” 622
The Nationalists initiated a countrywide push to expel the last of the Ar-
menians (alongside the Greeks), but without explic itly enunciating the policy.
In October 1922 some 350 Armenians, mainly from Malatya but some from
Harput and Palu, were effectively deported to Aleppo. Malatya Armenians re-
ported that Turkish officials were
“making life intolerable . . . by instigating systematically the ransacking
of their houses, taking possession of the women and girls by force . . .
and shipping [out] and killing the men if they dare to oppose them. The
government have posted up notices on Armenian houses that they will
continue to inflict such outrages on them until they leave Turkish terri-
tory, and if they do not go of their own free will they will be forcibly de-
ported in winter.” 623
That fall NER removed all Armenian orphans from Harput, Malatya,
and Mezre. They traveled in fifteen caravans to French- held Syria. The Turks
generally afforded every help.624 But the deportations were occasionally
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
accompanied by murder. Near Bursa, the Turks arrested and shot dead eight
or nine Armenians from Samsun.625
In early November the Nationalist government announced that all non-
Muslims had a month in which to leave the country. The implication was
that if they failed to leave in time, they would be prevented thereafter from
leaving or would be deported to the interior. A British consul commented,
“This is done in pursuance of the policy that no Christians are to be allowed
to stay in Turkey.” 626 In Samsun, Trabzon, and some other places, the Chris-
tians were explic itly told that they would be deported to the interior if they
failed to leave.627 Some local authorities issued expulsion orders to bring about departure from specific sites: in January 1923 it was reported that such orders
were issued to the remaining Armenians of Maraş.628
Sometime in November 1922, Antep Armenian representatives went to the
mutesarrif, who told them that they were now free to leave. In the event of a
new war, he said, “ those who remained might be deported.” During the fol-
lowing days, an Armenian night watchman was murdered, and a wealthy Ar-
menian was badly wounded and robbed. Others were attacked and threatened
with massacre.629 “If anyone doubts the real ity of Satan, he has only to come
out here and see and hear what we witness,” a missionary wrote.630 The Ar-
menians took the hint. The government cared for the Armenians’ safety until
departure, secured the roads out, and enabled them to sell their chattels. The
exodus involved “less . . . hardship, loss and danger” than the Armenians had
feared.631 Nonetheless, it proved an uneasy passage. There were “annoyances,
extortions, robberies, and even loss of life” along the route.632
Having abolished the sultanate, Kemal’s directives were now those of the
head of state. In 1923 he told a Muslim audience in Adana, “The country is
yours, the country belongs to the Turks. . . . The country has fi nally been re-
turned to its rightful owners. The Armenians and the others have no rights at
all here. These fertile regions are the country of the real Turks.” 633 The au-
thorities prodded the exodus along by shutting down the Christian schools
and cultural institutions. In Adana the YMCA was closed; in Mardin, the
American schools.634 By early December 1922 there were only about a hun-
dred Armenians left in Antep. The government shut the Armenian schools and
took over the cathedral. The missionary college and girls’ seminary closed.
The last ser vices in the Protestant church were held on November 26, 1922,
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
“Dr. Hamilton leading in the morning and Dr. Shepard in the after noon.” But
the missionary hospital, which mainly served the Turks, stayed open.635
The convoys southward in 1923–1924 were subjected to a variety of dep-
redations. The authorities stripped all the exiles of gold and silver, expatria-
tion of which was officially forbidden. On the roads the Armenians were
robbed by Muslim brigands.636 An American consul described the robbery
as “systematic.” One convoy between Maraş and Antep, with 2,000 refugees,
was “robbed of every thing, even all their outer garments, and left freezing in
the sleet and rain.” Jackson reported that the caravans were even attacked after they had entered French- held Syria. In one caravan, near Katma, the three
daughters of Protestant pastor Assadoor Yeghoyian were raped by robbers
and gendarmes.637
In dribs and drabs, the Armenians streamed southward from across Ana-
tolia, though there was a brief let-up after the Lausanne Treaty was signed.
Letters from émigrés describing poor conditions in Aleppo may also, for a
time, have stalled new departures from Anatolia to northern Syria.638 Nonethe-
less 800 reached Aleppo in August 1923, mainly from Malatya, Arapgir, and
Harput. Another 600 arrived in November, mainly from Malatya, Harput,
Arapgir, Eğin, and Palu. Hundreds more arrived in January 1924, 160 of them
from Garmouj, near Urfa.639
At the end of November 1922
there
were 55,000 Armenians in
Aleppo—20,000 “old residents” and 35,000 recently arrived refugees. More
were arriving every day. They all told the “same tale— that they have been
threatened by the Turkish authorities and Moslem population for many
months . . . and told frankly that they are not wanted in the country, and to
get out.” 640
By spring 1923 the Armenians living in and around Turkey were dis-
persed as follows: 180,000 in Constantinople (of whom 30,000 were refu-
gees); 120,000 in Syria (100,000 refugees); 107,000 in Greece (77,000
refugees); 60,000 in Bulgaria (40,000 refugees); 100,000 in Anatolia;
37,000 in Rumania (7,000 refugees); 900,000 in Rus sian Armenia; and
300,000 in the Caucasus (100,000 refugees).641 Many of the refugees were in
a desperate condition. Those in Syria were “scattered over the country ex-
tending from Aleppo to Sidon, and herded in graveyards, marshes, caves
and noisome places which are shunned by all others, with little or no shelter
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
from sun, rain or snow.” Many, were like “scantily clad corpses,” disease-
ridden and in bad mental health.642 Meanwhile Kemal’s aides complained of
French atrocities and of Armenian bands operating around Antioch— “citing
details and names of officers that,” according to French intelligence, “do
not correspond to anything.” 643
The following months saw haphazard efforts to uproot the remaining Chris-
tians from Asia Minor. An American co
nsul in Aleppo wrote that “the much-
discussed policy of the nationalist[s] of ‘Turkey for the Turks’ (only) appear
[ sic] to be much in evidence. . . . It is reported here that the nationalist party contemplates not only the exclusion of the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian nationalities but also the Circassians and Kurds.” 644
By early 1924 life for the handful of Christians who still held on had
become unbearable. Many, apparently, wanted to stay, but conditions had
become too trying.645 The Turks were employing “secret terrorism and
victimization” and unleashing “the last clean sweep of Christians from the
Ottoman dominions.” 646 Though “no definite” expulsion order had been is-
sued, “vari ous forms of persecution” had made their “life . . . intolerable.” 647
Christians were selling their properties for a song: “A fine fertile little garden valued at 500 Turkish gold pounds went for 30 gold pounds.” In the south,
the Armenians and Assyrians were heading for Aleppo; in the north, they
were leaving via Samsun. With the economy depressed, even the Jews were
leaving.648
Urfa’s 4,500 remaining Assyrians were subjected over January– February
1924 to a fresh bout of persecution. The mutesarrif reportedly told them
that “all Christians must eventually leave Turkey.” There was molestation
and robbery. A handful of prominent Assyrians were murdered or arrested.
Those leaving were, initially, prohibited from taking anything with them and
forbidden to “sell their lands.” They left with “two days rations and one
blanket.” 649 But after it became apparent that Assyrians were leaving, the
Turks “relaxed” the orders and allowed them to take some property, including
money. Many were required to sign statements to the effect that they were not
being forced out. Leading the campaign locally was an Arab named Ajami
Pasha, a friend of Kemal’s, who had previously been awarded deported
Armenians’ houses and lands.650 On March 9 General İsmet Pasha ( later
Inönü), one of Kemal’s aides, wrote that reports about attacks on Christians
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
and desecration of their churches were unfounded, but the “forced depor-
tation of 4,000 Christians from Urfa to Aleppo has already begun.” 651 Days
later the Americans reported that 1,250 Urfa Assyrians and 750 of its Arme-
nians had reached Aleppo.652
Weeks later it was the turn of Mardin and Diyarbekir. In Mardin there was
“a systematic campaign against the Christians,” who were required to “step
aside, stand still and salute” Muslims as they passed in the street. They were
forbidden even to ride horses.653 Though some wealthy families were ordered
to leave, there were no general expulsion orders. Rather, there was “clandes-
tine persecution.” 654 The Christians, mainly Assyrian, were “forced to work
on Sundays” and barred from working on Fridays. They could not pray in
churches, celebrate “marriage festivities,” or ring church bells. If the head of
a family embraced Islam, the rest had to follow suit. Christians were not al-
lowed to “wear any luxurious clothes,” sell house hold furniture, or trade with
“firms abroad.” If a Christian left the country, he forfeited his property.655
Many of these anti- Christian mea sures were based on the so- called Pact of
Omar from the early Middle Ages, which defined how Muslims were to treat
the “other.”
In April the Turkish Interior Ministry announced that no Armenian would
be allowed to reside anywhere east of the Samsun- Selevke line.656 A handful
of Christians nonetheless remained in southeastern Turkey. During the fol-
lowing years they were periodically persecuted; some were deported, others
massacred. In October 1925 as many as 8,000 Assyrians were deported to the
interior by Turkish troops from the strip of territory along the Iraqi- Turkish
border near Zakhko. According to escapees the Turks murdered as many as
300 and raped or sold into concubinage some 200 women. The survivors de-
scribed how Turkish soldiers murdered old men, women who had just given
birth, and orphans who could not keep up. At night, the soldiers raped As-
syrian girls in the fields. According to the survivors, during one stop, Turkish
officers sold ten girls to Muslim villa gers.657
In early 1926 there was a Kurdish and Yezidi rebellion against the central
government. The authorities charged the handful of remaining Christians
with complicity. Deportation to Iraq of Assyrians— many of them Kurdish
serfs— and Armenians followed. According to reports reaching the American
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
consulate in Baghdad, the deportations were accompanied by mass killing and
mass rape. The village of Azakh was singled out for mention.658
By the Turkish government’s count, in 1927 there were only 25,000–30,000
Armenians left in the eastern provinces and about 100,000 in Constantinople.
In 2014 it was estimated that in Turkey as a whole, there were fewer than
80,000 Armenians, almost all in Istanbul.659
The Assyrians
There are 15,000–20,000 Assyrians in present- day Turkey, most of them in
Istanbul, with about 2,000 in eastern Anatolia.660 They are the remainder of
a community of more than half a million who had inhabited the Ottoman Em-
pire before World War I. Almost all were slaughtered or expelled between
1914 and 1924.
Some 250,000, perhaps more, were killed by Muslims between 1914 and
1919, most in massacres, some in battle.661 Assyrians and others today refer
to what happened as the Assyrian Genocide. But because the Assyrians in-
habited remote corners of Turkey and Persia, where there were no Western
consuls and few missionaries or travelers, primary sources attesting to their
destruction are scarce, and the picture that emerges is patchy and somewhat
confused. As well, the picture is complicated by the fact that there were sev-
eral, separate Assyrian concentrations, which were dealt with by the Ottomans
at diff er ent times and in diff er ent ways.
Before World War I there was no Assyrian national movement, no demand
for in de pen dence or even “autonomy.” There also was no anti- Ottoman po-
liti cal or military activism. But, inspired by the model of other national claim-
ants and provoked by Turkish massacres, an Assyrian- Chaldean del e ga tion
at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference called for the creation of an Assyrian state
comprising Mosul vilayet, part of Diyarbekir vilayet, Urfa, Deir Zor, and the
area immediately west of Lake Urmia.662 The Assyrians pointedly did not
wish to be included in an Armenian state, which, according to the British,
they felt would be “scarcely less distasteful” than Turkish domination.663 But
though Britain expressed sympathy for their plight, the Assyrians failed to
achieve statehood and remain dispersed in Turkey, Iran, northern Iraq, and
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
Syria.664 Their descendants— along with the Yazidis, another “infidel”
minority—recently suffered severe persecution by the Islamic State and other
Muslims.
Mass murder of Assyrians predated World War I. Durin
g the nineteenth
century, when Assyrians overwhelmingly lived within the Ottoman Empire,
they, like other Christians, suffered from state discrimination and Kurdish
brigandage. In the 1840s thousands were massacred by Kurds in the Hakkari
area. In 1894–1896, as we have seen, Assyrians were massacred in small num-
bers in Diyarbekir vilayet alongside Armenians. More died during the Adana
Massacre of 1909.665
According to one British officer, in the years immediately before the out-
break of World War I, unruly and warlike Kurdish and Assyrian mountain
tribesmen raided one another. The Rus sians came to dominate the Urmia
plain in 1912 after the Turks, who had previously occupied the border area,
withdrew. The Persian province of Urmia had a population, according to the
Rus sians, of 300,000, 40 percent of them Christian. Of these, 75,000 were
Assyrian— mostly Nestorian— and 50,000 Armenian.666 The Rus sians estab-
lished and armed local Christian militias. According to a British report, the
Christians of Urmia then “lorded it over, and made themselves generally un-
pleasant toward the Muslim population.” 667 In the mountains to the west, there
were sporadic Assyrian- Turkish clashes.
The Ottoman sultans had long sought to incorporate Urmia in their em-
pire, and the CUP were no diff er ent. In October 1914 Talât and Enver said
as much to the Ira nian ambassador in Constantinople. The year before, a team
of Turkish military and Special Organ ization operatives, including Halil Bey,
Enver’s uncle, had gone to Urmia to scout the region and forge alliances with
local tribal leaders in preparation for eventual annexation.668
Then the Ottomans entered World War I. Iran announced that it was
neutral. But Talât wanted the area, which bordered on Rus sia, cleared of
Christians. According to one report, with the onset of war, the Assyrian Pa-
triarch, Mar Shimun Benyamin, and an assembly of leaders of the mountain
Assyrians in Kurdistan, voiced support for the Allies.669 Assyrian youths re-
fused the Ottoman mobilization en masse, leading at least to one Assyrian-
Turkish firefight and then large- scale repression.670 Some Assyrians fled to
Iran; others resisted Turkish and Kurdish raids. Later, in April 1915, Ottoman
