All events · The World Wars
The Sayfo: The Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean Genocide
c. 1914–1920 · Balkans, Anatolia & the Caucasus
Displacement
Territory Seized
Mass Killing
Sexual Violence
Abduction (Children)
Killing was the defining act
Displaced
250,000
Whole communities of the Hakkari mountains fled into Persia and then, with the Russian collapse in 1917-18, retreated some 500 kilometres south to British lines, where about 50,000 survivors were placed in the Baquba refugee camp near Baghdad in 1918; others fled from Tur Abdin into Syria. There was never a census of the Ottoman Syriac population, so both the pre-war base and the number displaced rest on church registers, missionary counts and British and Russian military reporting.
Share of the population affected
45%
of the Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean population of the Ottoman Empire and the adjoining Persian border districts in 1914, 1914
Killed
150,000–300,000
direct killing
Open on the interactive map →
What happened
Alongside the deportation of the Armenians, Ottoman forces and allied tribal irregulars attacked the Syriac-speaking Christian communities of south-eastern Anatolia and north-western Persia from 1914, in events remembered in Syriac as the Sayfo, the sword. The mountain tribes of Hakkari were driven out in 1915 and took refuge around Urmia; the villages of Tur Abdin and the Diyarbekir province were attacked and their inhabitants killed or dispersed. When Russian forces withdrew in 1917-18 the surviving population made a long retreat southward under attack, and about 50,000 were placed by the British in the Baquba camp in Mesopotamia. Britannica states that upwards of 250,000 Assyrians were killed during the First World War. The International Association of Genocide Scholars resolved in December 2007, by 83 percent of voting members, that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks; Turkey rejects that characterisation.
Parties
Ottoman forces, gendarmes and allied Kurdish tribal irregulars destroyed Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean communities in Hakkari, Tur Abdin, Diyarbekir, Urmia and the Bohtan valleys
Disputed
Turkey denies that a genocide took place; the death toll rests on estimates of a pre-war population that was never counted, with figures from about 150,000 to 300,000 in circulation, and some historians treat the killings as part of the Armenian genocide rather than as a distinct event.
The denominator
Ottoman censuses recorded these communities by millet rather than ethnicity and undercounted them; church registers and the estimates used by Gaunt and other historians of the Sayfo put the total at roughly 500,000-620,000 across Hakkari, Tur Abdin, Diyarbekir, Urmia and Mosul province. Assyrian organisations give higher pre-war figures, Turkish official accounts lower ones.
Both numerator and denominator are contested: death estimates for the Sayfo range from about 150,000 to 300,000 and the pre-war population is itself disputed, so the resulting share carries an uncertainty of tens of percentage points.
Where the baseline comes from
On the death toll
Britannica gives upwards of 250,000 Assyrians killed during the First World War and notes the figure may not include all victims. The range reflects disagreement over the pre-war Syriac population of the Ottoman Empire and Persia and over whether deaths from starvation and epidemic during the 1918 retreat are counted. Deaths came from massacre, from exposure and hunger during flight, and from epidemics in the refugee concentrations at Urmia and Baquba.
Documented forms of violence
Mass KillingSummary ExecutionSexual ViolenceAbduction of ChildrenDestruction of PropertyCultural Destruction
Massacres, abductions of women and children, and the destruction of villages, churches and monasteries are documented in Syriac chronicles and survivor testimony, in Russian, British and American consular and military reporting, and in the material assembled for the 2007 IAGS resolution.
Formal findings
- International Association of Genocide Scholars (2007) — Resolution adopted in December 2007 with 83 percent support, holding that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks, and calling on Turkey to acknowledge it and apologise. — source
- Riksdag of Sweden (2010) — On 11 March 2010 the Swedish parliament adopted a resolution recognising the 1915 killings of Armenians, Assyrians/Syriacs/Chaldeans and Pontic Greeks as genocide and calling on Turkey to come to terms with its history. — source
- Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2005) — Turkey rejects the genocide characterisation of the 1915 events, including as applied to Christian communities other than the Armenians, and treats parliamentary recognitions as political rather than historical or legal determinations. — source
Movements mapped
- Hakkari -> flight to Urmia in Persia, 1915
- Urmia -> retreat to British lines and the Baquba camp, 191850,000
Countries touched, on present-day borders
Turkey, Iran, Iraq
Sources
This entry rests only on reference, press or open-edited sources. Treat its figures as indicative and follow the links before relying on them.