Assyrians demand apology from Turkey for the Genocides

PanARMENIAN.Net - Following the Ottoman State resolution to remove the Armenians from their historical homeland in April 24, 1914, the Assyrians (Church Of The East, Syrians and Chaldeans) were victims of racial genocides as well as brutal and horrible carnages led by the Ottomans and many of the Kurdish tribes, says an article in AssyriaTimes.

“It is true that these genocides that reached their peak in the summer of 1915, mainly targeted the Armenians, but that was not the whole truth of it. In fact, the Turkish resolved to eradicate all Christian existence without any distinction between an Assyrian, a Greek or an Armenian,” the article says.

“Prior to these atrocious bloodbaths, the Ottomans overlooked the racial cleansing committed by the famous Kurdish leaders Mohammed Al Rawanduzi prince of Suran (1831-1836) and Baderkhan Beik prince of Butan (1843-1846), against the Assyrians in Hakkari, Turabdin, Zakho, Nouhdra (today’s Dohuk), Nineveh plain and Arbil. The racial cleansing campaigns committed by the Ottomans and the Kurds throughout a whole century, resulted most importantly in altering the ethnic, linguistic and religious map of all the peoples inhabiting the upper lands of the Tigris and Euphrates (northern Iraq and south east Turkey) in a manner that served the Kurds best.”

“The irony in this matter resides in the fact that most of the Armenian and Assyrian historical homelands were occupied by Kurds and not by a Turkish or Arab majority. When one million Armenians and a half million Assyrian martyrs were victims of genocides conducted under the title of "Al Jihad" as well as national and religious fanaticism, the number of the Kurds at that particular period did not exceed 2.5 million according to most historians and orientalists, in all Persia and the Ottoman and Russian territories. Thus, Kurds were the sole beneficiaries from these acts of displacing Assyrians and Armenians from their historical homelands. This truth, supported by the current geographical and demographic facts of the northern Mesopotamia, was absent or ignored by the decision makers in the Sublime Porte earlier and in Baghdad and Damascus later,” it says.