Assyrian Genocide

The Assyrian Genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo, Syriac: ܩܛܠܐ ܕܥܡܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ or ܣܝܦܐ) refers to the mass slaughter of the Assyrian population of the Ottoman Empire during the 1890s, the First World War, and the period of 1922-1925. The Assyrian population of upper Mesopotamia (the Tur Abdin region, the Hakkari, Van, and Siirt provinces of present-day southeastern Turkey, and the Urmia region of northwestern Iran) was forcibly relocated and massacred by Ottoman (Turkish) and Kurdish forces between 1914 and 1920. Estimates on the overall death toll have varied. Contemporary reports placed the figure at 250,000. Numerous scholars and journalists have accepted that figure, though some sources lacking a detailed statistical analysis claim figures as high as 750,000.

The Assyrian genocide took place in the same context as the Armenian and Pontic Greek genocides. In these events, close to three million Christians of Syriac, Armenian or Greek Orthodox denomination were murdered by the Young Turks regime.

Since the "Assyrian genocide" took place within the context of the much more widespread Armenian genocide, scholarship treating it as a separate event is scarce, with the exceptions of the works of David Gaunt and Hannibal Travis. In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) reached a consensus 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. The IAGS referred to the work of Gaunt and Travis in passing this resolution. Gregory Stanton, the President of the IAGS in 2007-2008 and the founder of Genocide Watch, endorsed the "repudiation by the world's leading genocide scholars of the Turkish government's ninety-year denial of the Ottoman Empire's genocides against its Christian populations, including Assyrians, Greeks, and Armenians."