Haydar Beys Assyrian Expedition
| Haydar Bey's Assyrian Expedition | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Assyrian Genocide and the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Ottoman Empire; Kurdish tribal forces | Assyrian tribal/irregular forces and local militias | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Haydar Bey (governor of Mosul); local Kurdish aghas; Ottoman officers | Local Assyrian maliks and clergy (e.g. district leaders of Tyari, Tkhuma, Baz); community volunteers | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| Ottoman gendarmerie, regular units, Kurdish tribal auxiliaries (numbers vary by district) | Irregular village fighters; limited arms and ammunition | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Unknown | Thousands killed; tens of thousands displaced (estimates vary) | ||||||
Haydar Bey's Assyrian Expedition was an Ottoman–Kurdish campaign led by Mosul governor Haydar Bey against the Assyrian highland communities of Hakkari and Barwar during World War I. The operation formed part of the wider Sayfo (Assyrian Genocide), in which Assyrian civilians were subjected to mass killing, pillage, and forced deportation from their ancestral mountain districts along the Ottoman–Persian frontier.[1][2][3]
Background
By 1915, the Ottoman leadership sought to neutralize perceived minority threats in the eastern provinces. In the Hakkari highlands—home to tribal Assyrian districts such as Tkhuma, Tyari (Upper/Lower), Jilu, Baz, and Diz—the state coordinated with Kurdish tribal forces to disarm and uproot Christian communities viewed as disloyal or aligned with Russia and Persia.[1][4]
Course of the campaign
Ottoman columns and Kurdish auxiliaries advanced into the Assyrian districts in summer 1915, employing artillery and machine guns against villages and defensive positions. Fighting, sieges, and mass assaults were reported across Jilu, Tyari, Tkhuma, Baz, and neighboring valleys. Many settlements were burned and looted; churches and monasteries were destroyed; survivors fled toward Urmia in Persia or south toward the plains under British protection.[1][2][5]
Atrocities and displacement
Contemporary accounts and later scholarship record large-scale massacres of civilians, forced conversions, abductions, and the devastation of ecclesiastical sites. Estimates of deaths and refugees vary, but the campaign contributed decisively to the near-total depopulation of the Assyrian highlands of Hakkari and to long-term refugee flows into Persia and (from 1918) British-controlled Iraq.[1][3][2]
Aftermath
Assyrian resistance leaders and tribal maliks were killed or dispersed, and the surviving population was permanently expelled from most of the Hakkari districts. In the post-war settlement, Assyrians were not permitted to return to their mountain homelands; many remained in refugee camps or were resettled in Iraq and elsewhere in the diaspora.[3][6]
Legacy
The operation attributed to Haydar Bey is remembered by Assyrians as a key episode of the Sayfo. It is cited in genocide scholarship as part of the destruction of Christian communities in eastern Anatolia during the First World War.[7][8]
See also
- Sayfo
- Assyrian–Kurdish conflict
- Hakkari (Ottoman sanjaks)
- Agha Petros
- Malik Khoshaba
Notes
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Gaunt, David (2006). Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. Gorgias Press. ISBN 978-1-59333-301-0. Search this book on
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Yacoub, Joseph (2016). Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide, A History. Hurst. ISBN 978-1-84904-660-8 Check
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- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Donabed, Sargon George (2015). Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-9423-7 Check
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- ↑ Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (2019). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Harvard University Press. pp. 189–208. ISBN 978-0-674-97651-5 Check
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- ↑ Travis, Hannibal (2006). "Native Christians Massacred: The Ottoman Genocide of the Assyrians during World War I". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 1 (3): 327–371. doi:10.3138/gsp.1.3.327.
- ↑ Feldman, Noah (2008). "After the War in Iraq (background on mandates)". The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State. Princeton University Press. Search this book on }
- ↑ Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (2019). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-97651-5 Check
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- ↑ Travis, Hannibal (2006). "The Assyrian Genocide: A Case of Ottoman Anti-Christian Violence". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 1 (3): 327–371. doi:10.3138/gsp.1.3.327.
