by Benny Morris
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
officers referred to Assyrian re sis tance as the “Nestorian revolt.” 671 Assyrian leaders were arrested and some deported to Persia.
Earlier, in September– October 1914, Turkish troops, supported by Kurdish
tribesmen, invaded Azerbaijan and the Persian borderlands. They plundered
and burned Christian villages in the Urmia Plain, destroyed churches, and
slaughtered inhabitants. Local Kurdish leaders later referred to this as the
“ great jihad.” 672 It is pos si ble that the Turks unleashed the vio lence in the hope of persuading the Assyrians to join them, or at least to remain neutral, in the
war. If that was the intention, it failed.673
On October 26, 1914, Talât ordered the vali of Van vilayet to deport to
the interior the Assyrians in the Hakkari area, the vilayet’s southeastern
corner, because of their “predisposition to be influenced by foreigners and
become” their “instrument.” By foreigners, he meant Rus sians, and Talât of
course knew that Turkey was about to attack Rus sia.674 According to Rus-
sian intelligence, a “reign of terror” was unleashed in the Hakkari, where
Assyrians comprised 37 percent of the population.675 Some were deported
inland and dispersed in villages in Konya and Ankara vilayets. Others were
caught up in the general Turkish assault on the Christians communities of
Van vilayet.676 The Turks accused them of collaborating with the Rus-
sians, who periodically occupied and abandoned Christian villages in the
Hakkari.
Already in November– December 1914, well before the outbreak of Arme-
nian rebelliousness in Van town, Hamidiye troops massacred Christian villa-
gers in the Başkale area of the Hakkari— “pillaged and burned Armenian
houses, killed all the men and . . . captured the beautiful girls, and abandoned
the women and children without food or shelter.” 677 Judad Abdarova, the wife
of the headman of the Assyrian village of Ardshi, later testified that the Mus-
lims “tortured” her husband and sons “to death.”
They were beaten from all sides and ordered to become Muslims, but
they refused. Before my eyes Hurshid Bey [a Turkish or Kurdish com-
mander] shot my sons with a pistol. . . . I tried to protect my husband,
but Hurshid Bey kicked me in the face, knocking out two teeth. Then
he shot my husband with six bullets. . . . Hurshid Bey ordered that the
corpses be smeared with excrement. Over the following four days the
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
dogs ate the corpses. Then Hurshid ordered that the corpses be thrown
in the latrine. . . . Hurshid had the whole village burned and twelve
people killed. . . . All the women, virgins, and children were taken captive and brought to the village of Atis. There they had to choose: Islam
or death. 150 women and girls were forced to become the wives of Hur-
shid Bey’s relatives. Of all the prisoners, only I remained, because
Hurshid Bey knew that I was the cousin of the patriarch. . . . I was on
the road for two days. I was so tired that I had to leave two of my small
children under a tree. . . . I know nothing of their fate. My small daughter
died of hunger on the way.” 678
In January 1915 several dozen Başkale notables were arrested and used by
the Turks to carry equipment— perhaps barbed wire—to Urmia. Most were
then executed, but three survived to tell the tale. In November a missionary,
Dr. E. T. Allen, went looking for the corpses, to give them a Christian burial.
“ There were seventy- one or two bodies; we could not tell exactly, because of
the conditions. . . . Some were . . . dried like a mummy. Others were torn to pieces by the wild animals. . . . The majority . . . had been shot.679
In May, after the Turkish- Kurdish forces under Khalil retreated from Urmia
back to Turkey, there was renewed slaughter in the Hakkari. That month the
patriarch, Shimun, formally pledged Assyrian loyalty to the Allied cause, ef-
fectively “declaring war” on the Ottomans. In Başkale 300–400 women and
children, and some Armenian artisans, reportedly were massacred.680 Another
massacre occurred in Siirt. A full- scale Turkish campaign, designed to fi nally
cleanse the Hakkari, was unleashed the following month. It was led by the vali
of Mosul, Haydar Bey, joined by what remained of Halil’s corps. It was to be
an unequal strug gle, the Assyrians armed with their antique guns and the
Turks and Kurds with modern rifles, machine guns, and artillery. The Turks
conquered the key village of Qodshan and by September some 15,000–25,000
Assyrians, along with Shimun, fled to Urmia. Many others remained in the
mountains, hunted by the Turks or under siege.681
In the course of 1915 the anti- Assyrian operations in the southeast turned
genocidal. As Talât informed the German Embassy shortly after Turkey be-
came a belligerent, the country intended “to use the opportunity of the World
War thoroughly to eliminate their internal enemies— the indigenous Christians
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
of all denominations.” 682 The Turks may not have identified the Assyrians
explic itly or publicly as an enemy, as they did the Armenians, but in the Turkish mindset the Assyrians, too, were consigned to eventual oblivion. It is not clear
whether the CUP Central Committee, during its secret February– March 1915
meetings, deci ded to target the Assyrians alongside the Armenians.683 However,
when the campaign against the eastern Armenians began in late spring, the local
authorities butchered Assyrians, too.684 By contrast, urban Assyrians, princi-
pally in Diyarbekir and Mardin, were initially left in peace, though in Mardin
dozens of notables were eventually arrested, tortured, and murdered.685 But due
to foreign pressure— most of the Syriacs were Catholics— Constantinople
apparently ordered local authorities to refrain from mass deportation of
Assyrians.686
During March– June 1915 Turkish regulars and Kurdish tribesmen mas-
sacred rural Christians, including Syriacs, in Bitlis and Van vilayets. Cevdet
Bey, the vali of Van and military commander in the area (and Enver’s brother-
in- law), was heard saying, “I have cleansed the Christians from the country
of Bashkale and Saray. I would like to cleanse them from Van and its surround-
ings.” 687 In and around Siirt, in Bitlis vilayet, local Muslims and Cevdet’s
troops murdered 5,000 Assyrians and razed their villages.688 Cevdet came to
be known as “the horse shoer of Bashkale”: he had in ven ted, or resurrected,
a torture involving hammering horse shoes into Christians’ feet.689
Kevorkian suggests that the slaughter of Assyrians (and Greeks) in
Diyarbekir vilayet, as elsewhere, may have been a local initiative, but it was
consistent with central government policy. However, in the case of the Assyr-
ians, the authorities could not make use of the justificatory excuses of “sub-
version” and “rebellion,” as they did when it came to the Armenians. The
Assyrians were not po liti cally or ga nized and had no “national” ambitions.690
In Diyarbekir vilayet the Assyrian communities were largely dealt with as
an appendage of the larger Christian communi
ties and were swept up in the
slaughter of the Armenians. In Urmia the reverse happened: it was the mi-
nority Armenian community that was devastated when the Turks and Kurdish
troops assailed the far larger Assyrian population. With a Turkish army threat-
ening their lines of communication northward, Rus sians troops evacuated
the Urmia plain and the town itself on January 2, 1915, and the Turkish-
Kurdish force swept forward, advancing to a line just beyond Tabriz. The
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
“cry of Jihad” was in the air, and the invaders made a point of distributing
jihadi fatwas among Persian Shi’ites. The Turks hoped to mobilize them in
the unfolding campaign.691 Thousands of panicked Assyrians fled in the Rus-
sians’ wake. It was the heart of winter, and many perished during the week-
long trek to the Rus sian border.692 More died after crossing the frontier.693
But most of Urmia’s Christians stayed put.694 Some “found refuge with
friendly Mohammedans,” while others converted to Islam. Still others fought
the invaders. The Turks occupied the region until May 24. The January– May
period was marked by massacre and rape. At Ardishai seventy- five women
and girls reportedly ran into the lake to escape the Turks and were shot in the
water.695 In February the Turks reportedly executed more than 700 Assyrian
and Armenian men at Haftevan and dumped the bodies in wells and cis-
terns.696 Women were carried off to harems. Elsewhere, villa gers were burnt
alive.697 The Persian government complained, while noting that here and
there, Christian villa gers had massacred Muslims.698
In March the men of Gulpashan village were executed in the local cemetery,
and the women and children were “treated barbarously.” 699 A missionary de-
scribed what happened in nearby Tchargousha: “In the yard, [Lucy, who re-
lated this to the missionary,] saw her younger sister Sherin, a pretty girl of
about fifteen, being dragged away by a Kurd. She was imploring Lucy to save
her, but Lucy was helpless. . . . [Sherin] tried to conceal her face, and daubed
it with mud, but she has such beautiful dark eyes and rosy cheeks! The Kurds
grabbed the young women and girls, peering into their faces, till each one
found a pretty one for himself, then dragged her away.”700 A Rus sian official,
who later inspected twenty Urmia sites, found widespread vandalism against
churches. “The villages are full of . . . victims of massacres,” the Rus sian found.
“The corpses bear the marks of cruel killing with axes, daggers, and blunt ob-
jects.” In the large village of Dilman, an American missionary reported that
1,000 had been massacred and 2,000 had died of hunger and disease.701 The
Turkish Fifth Expeditionary Force, under Khalil, was responsible for much of
the slaughter. Among the victims were the force’s own Armenian and Assyrian
soldiers, who were taken out and executed alongside the Urmia Christians.702
Some 20,000 villa gers fled to Urmia town and took refuge in the Amer-
ican Presbyterian and French Catholic mission compounds.703 Between Jan-
uary and May the Turks and Kurds murdered and raped hundreds who had
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
strayed from the compounds— even children as young as seven. The Turks
took fifty young men from the French compound and demanded a ransom
for their release. When payment proved insufficient, the men were executed.
More than 200 women were abducted to harems. Inside and outside the
compounds, “not less than four thousand” died of malnutrition and diseases.
Kurdish and Turkish irregulars and Turkish regulars, and Persian and Azeri
locals, all participated in the killings. A missionary wrote, “Jealousy of the
greater prosperity of the Christian population . . . po liti cal animosity, race hatred and religious fanat i cism all had a part.”704 Many women were liberated
from Muslim house holds when the Rus sians reoccupied Urmia on May 24.
In Anatolia, while thousands of Assyrians were murdered or deported, a
good number were left alive and at home, by specific order from Constanti-
nople.705 But for many local administrators killing Assyrians came under the
broad ideologically driven rubric of eradicating “the Christians,” and so
went ahead regardless.
After May 24 the Rus sians held sway in the plain of Urmia for two years.
But the successive revolutions of 1917 resulted in a general disintegration of
their army, “and many oppressive acts against the Muslims” again took place
in and around Urmia.706 The Persians sought to reassert control. The Assyr-
ians, who were armed, assured the Persians that they intended only to defend
themselves. But the Persians didn’t trust them. In February 1918 a Persian-
Assyrian clash ended in Persian defeat. But Turkish- Christian hostilities were
renewed after Kurdish tribesmen, led by Aga Ismael Shasheknaya (aka Simko),
murdered the Patriarch Shimun and dozens of his supporters following a
peace parlay on March 16 or 17. Seeking revenge, Assyrians massacred Kurds
in Urmia, and as many as 200 in the nearby Muslim village of Karasanlui. The
Turkish Sixth Army, exploiting Rus sian weakness, then invaded the area. In
June it captured Salmas and Khoi, at the latter massacring Assyrians and Arme-
nians. Thousands fled to Urmia, to which the Turks then laid siege. On July 31
the Turkish army entered the town, and tens of thousands of Christians, mainly
Assyrians, fled toward British lines in Mesopotamia. The thousand- odd Chris-
tians left behind took shelter in the foreign missions, but 600, mostly Syriacs,
were eventually murdered.707
During the mass trek southward, to Mesopotamia, many were lost in
ambushes, and women and children were carried off. “Hunger, weariness,
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
sickness and fear reduced our people to bones and skin. . . . Dead and
dying [ were] left heedlessly on the road side. . . . Little infants forsaken or lost were seen walking up and down the hills . . . as in a trance.” As many as
30,000 died, or were “lost or captured.” Some 35,000 Assyrians and 10,000
Armenians eventually reached British lines near Hamadan. Most were tem-
porarily settled in the Ba’quba camp, though thousands stayed on in
Hamadan.708 In 1920 the Assyrian and Armenian refugees at Ba’quba beat off
a strong Kurdish- Arab attack during the Mesopotamian uprising against the
British.709
In autumn 1920 Ba’quba was closed and the Assyrians transferred to
Mindan, near Mosul, with the aim of eventual repatriation. The following
year, the ex- Urmia Assyrians, “moved by a national homesickness,” set out
northwards. Several thousand crossed into Persia. Teheran deci ded against
their return to Urmia and, eventually, they were allowed to resettle near
Tabriz and Kermanshah, while others resettled in Baghdad and Hamadan.
In late 1922–1923 several thousand Iraqi Assyrians trekked to Urmia, and
some of the original Hakkari exiles eventually ended up in the Tel Tamer
area in northern Syria.
The Turkish government, however, was not done with the Assyrians.
During 1924 the Turkish army attacked the remaining Assyria
n monasteries
and villages in the southeast. Kemal obliquely referred to this when he stated,
in 1927, that a plot had been discovered against his government “whilst our
army was occupied with the punishment of the Nestorians.”710
As to the exiled mountain Assyrians, they were moved from Mindan to
empty villages on the Zakhko- Duhuk- Akra line, at the northern edge of
British- ruled Iraq, many serving the British as native levies or border guards.
A few thousand eventually returned to their homes in Turkish Kurdistan.711
Most stayed on in Iraq, where, in July– August 1933, as many as 3,000 were
massacred by Iraqi troops and Arab and Kurdish tribesmen, prompting
many to move to Syria.
9
Turks and Greeks, 1919–1924
[It was] an irrevocable decision of the Committee of Union and Pro gress. After finishing the Armenians, we shall begin with the mass expulsion of the Greeks.
Johann von Pallavicini, quoting Abdullah Nuri Bey, 31 November 1915
En large, after the Armenians came the Greeks. But, in fact, there was a great
deal of overlap in the destruction of Anatolia’s two largest Christian
communities.
The deportation and murder of the Greeks during 1919–1923 was a di-
rect continuation of the effort to expel them that began in late 1913–1914 and
continued periodically through World War I. But in 1919–1923 there was a
radical shifting of gears. As a representative of the Greek Patriarchate in Con-
stantinople put it in 1922, what was happening was “on a scale greater than
any experienced during the [ Great] War. Thousands of Greeks had been, and
were being hanged, burned, and massacred, thousands were being deported
and exterminated.”1
In the weeks after the Ottoman surrender ended the world war in the east,
the Turks were in a state of shock and largely quiescent. But, as we have seen,
circumstances changed dramatically by May 1919, when the Greeks landed in
Smyrna. The Turks were jolted into frenetic po liti cal and military activism.
They feared the permanent occupation and Hellenization of parts of Anatolia,
with Ionia falling under direct Athenian governance, and separatism and revolt
