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[[File:Assyrian Chaldean population 1914.svg|thumb|left|Percentage of Assyrian Chaldean populations in Several Vilayets and Sanjaks in the Ottoman Empire and Urmia in Persia prior to WW1 as presented by the Assyrian Chaldean delegation to the 1919 peace conference.

The Assyrian Chaldean population in the Ottoman Empire numbered about one million at the turn of the twentieth century and was largely concentrated in what is now [[Iran]], [[Iraq]] and [[Turkey]].<ref name="Travis2"/> However, researchers such as David Gaunt have noted that the Assyrian population was around 600,000 prior to World War I.<ref name="The Assyrian Chaldean Genocide of 1915"/> There were also hundreds of thousands of Maronite Christians in Lebanon, with some Assyrian Chaldean heritage but which are less often called AssyriansChaldeans. There were significantly larger communities located in the regions near [[Lake Urmia]] in Persia, [[Lake Van]] (specifically the [[Hakkari]] region) and [[Mesopotamia]], as well as the eastern Ottoman [[vilayet]]s of [[Diyarbekir Vilayet|Diyarbekir]], [[Erzurum Vilayet|Erzurum]] and [[Bitlis Vilayet|Bitlis]]. Like other Christians residing in the empire, they were treated as second-class citizens and denied public positions of power. Violence directed against them prior to the First World War was not new. Many Assyrians Chaldeans were subjected to [[Kurds|Kurdish]] brigandage and even outright massacre and forced conversion to Islam, as was the case of the Assyrians Chaldeans of Hakkari during the [[massacres of Badr Khan]] in the 1840s and the [[Massacres of Diyarbakır (1895)|Massacres of Diyarbakır]] during the 1895–96 [[Hamidian Massacres]].<ref name="Anahit"/> The [[Hamidiye (cavalry)|Hamidiye]] received assurances from the Ottoman Sultan that they could kill Assyrians and Armenians with impunity, and were particularly active in [[Şanlıurfa|Urhoy]] and [[Amid|Diyarbakir]].<ref name="Travis2"/>

The Ottoman Empire began massacring Chaldean Chaldeans in the nineteenth century, a time of friendly relations between the Ottomans and the British, who were defending the Ottomans from the Russian Empire's efforts to include under its protection the communities of Ottoman Orthodox Christians.<ref name="Travis2"/> In October 1914, the Ottoman Empire began deporting and massacring Chaldeans and Armenians in [[Van]].<ref name="Travis2"/> After attacking Russian cities and declaring war on Britain and France, the Empire declared a holy war on Christians.<ref name="Travis2"/> The German Kaiser and the German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire directed and orchestrated the holy war, and financed the Ottomans' war against the Russian Empire.<ref name="Travis2"/>