Chaldean genocide

Chaldean Genocide
Part of the persecution of Chaldeans
Location	Ottoman Empire
Date	1914–1918, 1922–1925
Target	Chaldean civilians
Attack type	Deportation, mass murder, etc.
Deaths	250,000–300,000 (see death toll section below)
Perpetrators	Sultan Abdulhamid II, Young Turk government, Kurdish tribes

This article is part of the series on the History of the Chaldean people Early history Old Babylonian period (53th–15th c. BC) Aramaeans (14th–9th c. BC) Neo-Chaldean Empire (911–612 BC) Achaemenid Chaldea (539–330 BC) Classical Antiquity Seleucid Empire (312–63 BC) Osroene (132 BC – 244 AD) Syrian Wars (66 BC – 217 AD) Roman Syria (64 BC – 637 AD) Adiabene (15–116 AD) Roman Chaldea (116–118) Christianization (1st to 3rd c.) Nestorian Schism (5th c.) Asuristan (226–651) Byzantine–Sasanian wars (502–628) Middle Ages Muslim conquest of Syria (630s) Abbasid rule (750–1258) Emirs of Mosul (905–1383) Buyid amirate of Iraq (945–1055) Principality of Antioch (1098–1268) Ilkhanate Empire (1258–1335) Jalayirid Sultanate (1335–1432) Kara Koyunlu (1375–1468) Aq Qoyunlu (1453–1501) Modern History Safavid Empire (1508-1555) Ottoman Empire (1555–1917) Schism of 1552 (16th c.) Massacres of Badr Khan (1840s) Massacres of Diyarbakir (1895) Rise of nationalism (19th c.) Adana Massacre (1909) Chaldean genocide (1914–1920) Independence movement (since 1919) Simele massacre (1933) Post-Saddam Iraq (since 2003) See also Chaldean continuity Chaldean diaspora

The Chaldean genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo, Syriac: ܩܛܠܐ ܕܥܡܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ or ܣܝܦܐ) refers to the mass slaughter of the Chaldean population of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, in conjunction with the Armenian and Greek genocides.

The Chaldean civilian population of upper Mesopotamia (the Tur Abdin region, the Hakkâri, Van, and Siirt provinces of present-day southeastern Turkey, and the Urmia region of northwestern Iran) was forcibly relocated and massacred by the Muslim Ottoman (Turkish) army, together with other armed and allied Muslim peoples, including Kurds, Chechens and Circassians, between 1914 and 1920, with further attacks on unarmed fleeing civilians conducted by local Arab militias.

Estimates on the overall death toll have varied. Providing detailed statistics of the various estimates of the Churches' population after the genocide, David Gaunt accepts the figure of 275,000 deaths as reported at the Treaty of Lausanne and ventures that the death toll would be around 300,000 because of uncounted Chaldean-inhabited areas, leading to the elimination of half of the Chaldean nation.

The Chaldean 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 Chaldean 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, Chaldeans, 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 Chaldeans, Greeks, and Armenians."

Terminology

The Chaldean genocide is sometimes also referred to as Sayfo or Seyfo in English language sources, based on the modern Chaldean (Mesopotamian neo-Aramaic) designation Saypā (ܣܝܦܐ), "sword", pronounced as Seyfo, and as Sayfo in the Western dialect (the term abbreviates shato d'sayfo "year of the sword"). The Chaldean name Qeṭlā ḏ-‘Amā Kaldāyā (ܩܛܠܐ ܕܥܡܐ ܐܬܘܪܝܐ), which literally means "killing of the Chaldean people", is used by some groups to describe these events. The word Qṭolamo (ܩܛܠܥܡܐ) which means Genocide is also used in Chaldean diaspora media. The term used in Turkish media is Süryani Soykırımı.

Background

File:Chaldean population 1914.svg

Percentage of Chaldean populations in Several Vilayets and Sanjaks in the Ottoman Empire and Urmia in Persia prior to WW1 as presented by the Chaldean delegation to the 1919 peace conference.

  More than 50%

  30–40%

  20–30%

  10–20%

  5–10%

The 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. However, researchers such as David Gaunt have noted that the Chaldean population was around 600,000 prior to World War I. There were also hundreds of thousands of Maronite Christians in Lebanon, with some Chaldean heritage but which are less often called Chaldeans. 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 vilayets of Diyarbekir, Erzurum and 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 Chaldeans were subjected to Kurdish brigandage and even outright massacre and forced conversion to Islam, as was the case of the Chaldeans of Hakkari during the massacres of Badr Khan in the 1840s and the Massacres of Diyarbakır during the 1895–96 Hamidian Massacres. The Hamidiye received assurances from the Ottoman Sultan that they could kill Chaldeans and Armenians with impunity, and were particularly active in Urhoy and Diyarbakir.

Outbreak of war

The Ottoman Empire began massacring 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. In October 1914, the Ottoman Empire began deporting and massacring Chaldeans and Armenians in Van. After attacking Russian cities and declaring war on Britain and France, the Empire declared a holy war on Christians. 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.

Responsibility of the Ottoman government

Concerning the responsibility of the Ottoman government, Hilmar Kaiser wrote that Talaat Pasha ordered the deportations of the Chaldeans in the area on 26 October 1914, fearing their collaboration with the advancing Russian troops, but the order was postponed and abandoned three days later due to a lack of forces. When the Chaldeans did not collaborate with Russians, any plans to deport them were cancelled. Kaiser wrote that the massacres of Chaldeans were apparently not a part of the official Ottoman policy and that the Chaldeans were ordered to be treated differently than the Armenians. Taner Akçam cites Ottoman official correspondence in 1919, inquiring the number and conditions of Chaldeans deported, to state that the Ottoman government was unaware of the full numerical extent of the deportations of Chaldeans. Another Ottoman document orders Chaldeans to be detained in their present locations, instead of their deportation, which, according to Akçam, indicates that the Chaldean population could have been treated differently from the Armenians, but that they were often "eliminated" alongside them.

Massacres

General characteristics

Death rafts in the Tigris River.

According to historian David Gaunt, a primary characteristic was the total targeting of the Chaldean population, including farming villages as well as rebelling mountain tribes. The killing in rural regions was more extensive, while some survived the massacres in cities; Gaunt states that this indicates that a primary aim was the confiscation of land. The property, villages and animals of the villagers were destroyed totally to prevent their return. Gaunt states that organized troops were tasked with killing and expelling Chaldeans in Hakkari and Ottoman-controlled parts of Persia, as well as resisting villages. There were also deportations of Chaldeans.

Gaunt wrote that there was no standardized way of killing. He cites accounts of killings at town halls, river rafts, tunnels, streets, and during the flight of the victims. The methods included stabbing, decapitation, drowning, shooting and stoning among others according to eyewitness accounts cited by Gaunt; these accounts also record local officers having collections of body parts, such as ears, noses and "female body parts".

Percy Sykes, a British officer in Persia, wrote that the Chaldeans would have been exterminated if they had not fled to Persia. However, starvation, disease and fatigue cost the lives of 65,000 more Chaldeans on their way to Persia or once they had arrived there, according to Christoph Baumer.

Diyarbekir

The earliest programs of extermination took place in the southern province of Diyarbekir, under the leadership of Reshid Bey. A German Vice-Consul reported in July 1915 that Chaldeans were being massacred in Diyarbekir Vilayet. A German Consul reported in September 1915 that the adult Christians of Diyarbakır, Harput, Mardin, and Viranşehir had been targeted, and also mentioned an Ottoman reign of terror in Urhoy. According to the reports, the Chaldean population of Faysh Khabur was completely killed, along with all the male Chaldeans of Mardin and Siirt. The widows and orphans of these men were reportedly left to flee to Mosul on foot, and died on their way due to starvation and harsh conditions. These atrocities prompted the Chaldean patriarch to appeal to the Russian representative in the Caucasus, claiming that the Turkish leaders were intent on killing all Chaldeans. The German ambassador reported that the Ottoman Empire was being "clear[ed]" of its indigenous Christians by "eliminat[ion]". In July 1915, he confirmed that the Chaldeans of Midyat, Nisibis, and Jazirah were also slain.

According to the Syrian Patriarchate, the Turkish government ordered an attack on the Christian villages near Mardin, which were mostly inhabited by Chaldeans. The soldiers went beyond attacking property and killed civilians, for instance, the Chaldeans of Kızıltepe/Tell Armen were gathered in a church and burned. In Diyarbekir, women and children were deported, but only a very small number reached their destinations as women were killed, raped or sold.

Individual accounts of the massacres include several villages. In the village of Cherang near Diyarbekir, 114 men were killed and the women and children were put to forced agricultural labor and given the choice to convert or die. The massacre was committed by an Al-Khamsin death squad, which were recruited by the government and led by officials, while composed of local urban Muslims. In the village of Hanewiye, about 400 Chaldeans are believed to have been murdered. In Hassana, a village near Jezire, the 300 inhabitants were massacred, with some managing to survive and flee. The inhabitants of the village of Kavel-Karre were attacked by Kurdish tribes on 19 June 1915 and killed; their bodies were then thrown into the Tigris River. In Kafarbe, 2 km from the Mor Gabriel Monastery, 200 Chaldeans were attacked by a clan of Kurds and murdered in 1917. However, there were also cases when those in power chose to protect the Chaldeans, as Rachid Osman, the agha of Şırnak protected the 300–500 inhabitants of Harbol.

Figures by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate presented to the peace conference after the war state that 77,963 Chaldeans were killed in 278 villages of the Diyarbekir province. Jean Naayem writes that about 50 villages close to Midyat were ruined and their Chaldean inhabitants slaughtered, but he does not name any of them nor give any casualty figures. However, the figure agrees with the data of the patriarchate.

Van

Painting by Leonardo de Mango, showing the stoning of the Christian population of Siirt.

Jevdet Pasha the governor of Van, is reported to have held a meeting in February 1915 at which he said, "We have cleansed the Armenians and Syriac [Christian]s from Azerbaijan, and we will do the same in Van."

In late 1915, Jevdet Bey, Military Governor of Van Vilayet, upon entering Siirt (or Seert) with 8,000 soldiers whom he himself called "The Butchers' Battalion" (Turkish: Kasap Taburu), ordered the massacre of almost 20,000 Chaldean civilians in at least 30 villages. The following is a list documenting the villages that were attacked by Cevdet's soldiers and the estimated number of Chaldean deaths:

Sairt – 2,000	Sadagh – 2,000	Mar-Gourya – 1,000	Guedianes – 500	Hadide – 1,000
Redwan – 500	Dehok – 500	Ketmes – 1,000	Der-Chemch – 200
Tentas – 500	Tellimchar – 1,500	Telnevor – 500	Benkof – 200
Altaktanie – 500	Goredj – 500	Galwaye – 500	Der-Mazen – 300
Artoun – 1,000	Ain-Dare – 200	Berke – 500	Bekend – 500	Archkanes – 500
Charnakh – 200	Der-Mar-Yacoub – 500	Der-Rabban – 300
Harevena – 200	Piros – 1,000

The same "butcher battalions" killed all the male Chaldean and Armenian population of Bitlis. They reportedly raped the women, and subsequently sold them or gave them as "gifts".

The town of Sa'irt/Seert (modern-day Siirt), was populated by Chaldeans and Armenians. Seert was the seat of a Chaldean Archbishop Addai Scher who was murdered by the Kurds. The eyewitness Hyacinthe Simon wrote that 4,000 Christians died in Seert. According to Joseph Naayem, who was an Chaldean priest, the number of Chaldeans killed in the town of Seert/Siirt alone exceeded 8000. Eyewitness accounts state that the Chaldean men were rounded up by criminal gangs and forced to a march to the valley of Zeryabe, where they were killed. This was followed by the gangs' attack on women. The Ottoman officer Raphael de Nogales described a "slope [...] crowned by thousands of half-nude and still bleeding corpses, lying in heaps". He then wrote that when he entered Siirt, he saw that the police and the locals were sacking Christian homes, and learned that the governors of the town directed the massacre, which had been arranged beforehand.

According to "the Blue Book" of the American government, widespread ethnic cleansing and massacres occurred against the Chaldeans as well as Armenians in the Hakkari area, with the orders for the deportations of Armenians being misinterpreted as orders against all Christians by the local Kurds. It was reported that an attack was launched on Chaldean dwellings in summer 1915, and that Chaldeans were attempted to be "starved out". According to Paul Shimmon and Arnold J. Toynbee, an Chaldean village called "Goele", with the population of 300, was attacked and its men were killed, while the women and children were forced into slavery and the houses were pillaged. In another village with fifty houses, the Kurds reportedly killed the entire civilian population. "The Blue Book" states that in one district of Hakkari, only 17 Christian survivors were left from 41 villages. In April 1915, after a number of failed Kurdish attempts, Ottoman Troops invaded Gawar, a region of Hakkari, and massacred the entire population. Prior to this, in October 1914, 71 Chaldean men of Gawar were arrested and taken to the local government center in Başkale and killed. There were later reports of the mass killing of hundreds of Chaldeans in the same area, and women being forced into sexual slavery.

Chaldean resistance in upper Mesopotamia

On March 3, 1918, the Ottoman army led by Kurdish soldiers assassinated one of the most important Chaldean leaders at the time. This resulted in the retaliation of the Chaldeans. Malik Yosip Khoshaba of the Bit Tiyari tribe led a successful attack against the Ottomans. Chaldean forces in the region also attacked the Kurdish fortress of Simko Shikak, the leader who had assassinated Mar Shimun XIX Benyamin, they successfully stormed it, defeating the Kurds, however Simko escaped and fled.

Chaldeans were involved in a number of clashes in Turkey with Ottoman forces, including Kurds and Circassians loyal to the empire. When armed and in sufficient numbers they were able to defend themselves successfully. However, they were often cut off in small pockets, vastly outnumbered and surrounded, and unarmed villagers made easy targets for Ottoman and Kurdish forces.

Events in Persia

The Chaldeans in Persia armed themselves under the command of General Agha Petros, who had been approached by the Allies to help fight the Ottomans. They put up a resistance, and Agha Petros' volunteer army had quite a few successes over the Ottoman forces and their Kurdish allies, notably at Suldouze where 1,500 Chaldean horsemen overcame the far larger Ottoman force of over 8,000, commanded by Kheiri Bey. Agha Petros also defeated the Ottoman Turks in a major engagement at Sauj Bulak and drove them back to Rowanduz. Chaldean forces in Persia were greatly affected by the withdrawal of Russia from the war and the collapse of Armenian armed resistance in the region. They were left cut off, with no supplies, vastly outnumbered and surrounded.

Urmia and surroundings

Ruins of Golpashan, one of the most prosperous Chaldean towns in Persia.

The Ottoman Empire invaded northwestern Persia in 1914. Before the end of 1914, Turkish and Kurdish troops had successfully entered the villages in and around Urmia. On February 21, 1915 the Turkish army in Urmia seized 61 leading Chaldeans from the French missions as hostages, demanding large ransoms. The mission had enough money to convince the Ottomans to let 20 of the men go. However, on February 22 the remaining 41 were executed, having their heads cut off at the stairs of the Charbachsh Gate. The dead included bishop Mar Denkha.

Most of the Chaldean villages were unarmed. The only protection they had was when the Russian army finally took control of the area, years after the presence of the Ottoman army had been removed. On February 25, 1915, Ottoman troops stormed their way into the villages of Gulpashan and Salamas. Almost the entire village of Golpashan, of a population of 2,500, were massacred. In Salmas, about 750 Armenian and Chaldean refugees were protected by Iranian civilians in the village. The commander of the Ottoman division stormed the houses despite the fact that Persians lived in them, and roped all the men together in large groups and forced them to march in the fields between Khusrawa and Haftevan/Hafdewan. The men were shot or killed in other ways. The protection of Christians by local Persian civilians is also confirmed in the 1915 British report: "Many Moslems tried to save their Christian neighbours and offered them shelter in their houses, but the Turkish authorities were implacable." According to American official accounts, the largest Chaldean knowledge in the Urmia region was overrun and all its men killed, while the women were attacked. In Haftevan, the Russian troops later discovered more than 700 corpses, and The Washington Post also claimed the abduction of 500 Chaldean girls. According to similar reports, 200 Chaldeans were killed by burning in a church.

During the winter of 1915, 4,000 Chaldeans died from disease, hunger, and exposure, and about 1000 were killed in the villages of Urmia. According to Los Angeles Times, in Urmia alone, 800 Chaldeans were massacred and 2000 died from disease. American documents report widespread sexual violence against Chaldean women of all ages and the looting and destruction of the houses of about five-sixth of the Chaldean population. Reports state that over 200 girls were forced into sexual slavery and conversion into Islam. Eugene Griselle from the Ethnological Society of Paris gives the figure of 8,500 for the number of deaths in the Urmia region; according to other reports, out of an Chaldean population of 30,000, one-fifth was killed, their villages and churches destroyed. An English priest in the area estimates the death toll at 6,000.

However, David Gaunt wrote that the massacres were reciprocated by the Chaldeans. Chaldean Jilu tribes were accused of committing massacres of local villagers in the plains of Salmas; local Iranian officials reported that between Khoi and Julfa, a great number of villagers were massacred.

In 1918, the Chaldean population of Urmia was nearly wiped out, 1,000 killed in the French and American mission buildings, 200 surrounding villages destroyed, and thousands perished of famine, disease, and forced marches.

In early 1918, many Chaldeans started to flee present-day Turkey. Mar Shimun Benyamin had arranged for some 3,500 Chaldeans to reside in the district of Khoi. Not long after settling in, Kurdish troops of the Ottoman Army massacred the population almost entirely. One of the few that survived was Reverend John Eshoo. After escaping, he stated:

You have undoubtedly heard of the Chaldean massacre of Khoi, but I am certain you do not know the details.

These Chaldeans were assembled into one caravansary, and shot to death by guns and revolvers. Blood literally flowed in little streams, and the entire open space within the caravansary became a pool of crimson liquid. The place was too small to hold all the living victims waiting for execution. They were brought in groups, and each new group was compelled to stand over the heap of the still bleeding bodies and shot to death. The fearful place became literally a human slaughter house, receiving its speechless victims, in groups of ten and twenty at a time, for execution.

At the same time, the Chaldeans, who were residing in the suburb of the city, were brought together and driven into the spacious courtyard of a house [...] The Chaldean refugees were kept under guard for eight days, without anything to eat. At last they were removed from their place of confinement and taken to a spot prepared for their brutal killing. These helpless Chaldeans marched like lambs to their slaughter, and they opened not their mouth, save by sayings "Lord, into thy hands we commit our spirits. [...]

The executioners began by cutting first the fingers of their victims, join by joint, till the two hands were entirely amputated. Then they were stretched on the ground, after the manner of the animals that are slain in the Fast, but these with their faces turned upward, and their heads resting upon the stones or blocks of wood Then their throats were half cut, so as to prolong their torture of dying, and while struggling in the agony of death, the victims were kicked and clubbed by heavy poles the murderers carried Many of them, while still laboring under the pain of death, were thrown into ditches and buried before their souls had expired.

The young men and the able-bodied men were separated from among the very young and the old. They were taken some distance from the city and used as targets by the shooters. They all fell, a few not mortally wounded. One of the leaders went to the heaps of the fallen and shouted aloud, swearing by the names of Islam's prophets that those who had not received mortal wounds should rise and depart, as they would not be harmed any more. A few, thus deceived, stood up, but only to fall this time killed by another volley from the guns of the murderers.

Some of the younger and good looking women, together with a few little girls of attractive appearance, pleaded to be killed. Against their will were forced into Islam's harems. Others were subjected to such fiendish insults that I cannot possibly describe. Death, however, came to their rescue and saved them from the vile passions of the demons. The death toll of Chaldeans totaled 2,770 men, women and children.

Baquba camps

Chaldean digging mass graves for those perished during the exodus from Urmia.

By mid-1918, the British army had convinced the Ottomans to let them have access to about 30,000 Chaldeans from various parts of Persia. The British decided to relocate all 30,000 from Persia to Baquba, northern Iraq, in the hope that this would prevent further massacres. Many others had already left for northern Iraq after the Russian withdrawal and collapse of Armenian lines. The transferring took just 25 days, but at least 7,000 of them had died during the trip. Some died of exposure, hunger or disease, other civilians fell prey to attacks from armed bands of Kurds and Arabs. At Baquba, Chaldeans were forced to defend themselves from further Arab and Kurdish raids, which they were able to do successfully.

A memorandum from American Presbyterian Missionaries at Urmia During the Great War 16 to British Minister Sir Percy Cox had this to say:

Capt. Gracey doubtless talked rather big in the hopes of putting heart into the Chaldeans and holding up this front against the Turks. [Consequently,] We have met all the orders issued by the late Dr. Shedd which have been presented to us and a very large number of Chaldean refugees are being maintained at Baquba, chiefly at H.M.G.'s expense.

In 1920, the British decided to close down the Baquba camps. The majority of Chaldeans of the camp decided to go back to the Hakkari mountains, while the rest were dispersed throughout Iraq, where there was already an Chaldean community. However, they would again be targeted there in the 1933 Simele massacre.

Death toll

Bodies of Christians who perished during the Chaldean Genocide

Scholars have summarized events as follows: specific massacres included 25,000 Chaldeans in Midyat, 21,000 in Jezira-ibn-Omar, 7,000 in Nisibis, 7,000 in Urfa, 7,000 in the Qudshanis region, 6,000 in Mardin, 5,000 in Diyarbekir, 4,000 in Adana, 4,000 in Brahimie, and 3,500 in Harput. In its December 4, 1922, memorandum, the Assyro-Chaldean National Council stated that the total death toll was unknown. It estimated that about 275,000 "Assyro-Chaldeans" died between 1914 and 1918. The population of the Chaldeans of the Ottoman Empire and Persia was about 600,000 before the genocide, and was reduced by 275,000, with very few survivors in 1930s Turkey or Iran. Contemporary newspapers reported death tolls of 200,000 to 250,000. Representatives from the Anglican Church in the region claimed that about half of the Chaldean population had perished.

The memorandum of the Chaldean Archbishopric of Syria (Damascus-Homs) to the 1920 peace conference, places the death toll at 90,313 people, with 345 villages burned and 156 churches destroyed. The archbishop demanded 250,000 pounds sterling of reparations to compensate for the destruction of the churches. The figures of the archbishopric places the death toll in Harput at 3,500, in Midyat at 25,830, in Diyarbekir and surroundings at 5,679, in Jezireh at 7,510, in Nusaybin at 7,000, in Mardin at 5,815, in Bitlis at 850, in Urfa at 340, and tens of thousands at other areas. The archbishopric states that the Ottoman government undertook massacres of Chaldean civilians with "no revolutionary tendencies" in the provinces of Diyarbekir, Urfa, Van, Harput and Bitlis.

Massacres in the late Ottoman Empire

The Chaldeans were not going to be an easy group to deport, as they had always been armed and were as ferocious as their Kurdish neighbors.

Chaldean and Armenian population in Diyarbakır Province in 1915-1916
	Sect	Before World War I	Disappeared (killed)	After World War I
Armenians	Gregorians (Apostolic)	60,000	58,000 (97%)	2,000
	Armenian Catholics	12,500	11,500 (92%)	1,000
Chaldeans	Chaldean Catholics	11,120	10,010 (90%)	1,110
	Syrian Catholic	5,600	3,450 (62%)	2,150
	Syrian Jacobite	84,725	60,725 (72%)	24,000
	Protestants	725	500 (69%)	2,150
	Total	174,670	144,185 (83%)	30,485

Chaldean and Armenian population in Mardin province in 1915-1916
	Sect	Before World War I	Disappeared (killed)	After World War I
Armenians	Catholics	10,500	10,200 (97.1%)	300
Chaldeans	Chaldean Catholics	7,870	6,800 (86%)	1,070
	Syrian Catholic	3,850	700 (18%)	3,150
	Syrian Jacobite	51,725	29,725 (58%)	22,000
	Protestants	525	250 (48%)	275
	Total	74,470	47,675 (64%)	26,795

Documented accounts of the genocide

2015 Chaldean Genocide Article

Religious leaders say persecution of Iraqi Christians (Chaldeans) has become genocide in 2014 and 2015

Chaldeans in what is now Turkey primarily lived in the provinces of Hakkari, Şırnak, and Mardin. These areas also had a sizable Kurdish population.

The following newspaper articles documented the Chaldean genocide as it occurred:

• "Chaldeans Burned in Church", The Sun (Lowell, Massachusetts), 1915
• "Chaldeans Massacred in Urmia", The San Antonio Light (San Antonio, Texas), 1915
• "Chaldeans Massacred in Urmiah", The Salt Lake Tribune, 1915
• "Chaldean Victims of the Turks", The Times, 22 November 1919, p. 11
• "Christian Massacres in Urmiah", The Argus (Australia), 1915
• "Extermination of the Armenian Race", The Manchester Guardian, 1915
• "Many Chaldean Perish", The Winnipeg Free Press, 1915
• "Massacred by Kurds; Christians Unable to Flee from Urmia Put to Death", The Washington Post, 14 March 1915, p. 10
• "Massacres of Nestorians in Urmia", The New York Times, 1915
• "Massacres Kept Up", The Washington Post, 26 March 1915, p. 1
• "Native Christians Massacred; Frightful Atrocities in Persia", The Los Angeles Times, 2 April 1915, p I-1
• "Nestorian Christians Flee Urmia", The New York Times, 1915
• "Syrian Tells of Atrocities", The Los Angeles Times, Dec. 15, 1918, at I–1.
• "The Chaldean Massacres", The Manchester Guardian, Dec. 5, 1918, at 4
• "The Suffering Serbs and Armenians", The Manchester Guardian, 1915, p5
• "Turkish Horrors in Persia", The New York Times, 11 October 1915
• "Turks Kill Christians", The Muscatine Journal (Muscatine, Iowa), 1915
• "Turkish Troops Massacring Chaldeans, The Newark Advocate, 1915
• "Turkish Horrors in Persia", The New York Times, 1915
• "The Total of Armenian and Syrian Dead", Current History: A Monthly Magazine of the New York Times, November 1916, 337–38

Hannibal Travis, Assistant Professor of Law at Florida International University, wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal that:

Numerous articles in the American press documented the genocide of Chaldeans by the Turks and their Kurdish allies. By 1918, The Los Angeles Times carried the story of a Syrian, or most likely an Chaldean, merchant from Urmia who stated that his city was "completely wiped out, the inhabitants massacred", 200 surrounding villages ravaged, 200,000 of his people dead, and hundreds of thousands of more starving to death in exile from their agricultural lands. In an article entitled "Native Christians Massacred", the Associated Press correspondent reported that in the vicinity of Urmia, "Turkish regular troops and Kurds are persecuting and massacring Chaldean Christians". Close to 800 were confirmed dead in Urmia, and another 2,000 had perished from disease. Two hundred Chaldeans had been burned to death inside a church, and the Russians had discovered more than 700 bodies of massacre victims in the village of Hafdewan outside Urmia, "mostly naked and mutilated", some with gunshot wounds, others decapitated, and still others carved to pieces.

Other leading British and American newspapers corroborated these accounts of the Chaldean genocide. The New York Times reported on 11 October that 12,000 Persian Christians had died of massacre, hunger, or disease; thousands of girls as young as seven had been raped or forcibly converted to Islam; Christian villages had been destroyed, and three-fourths of these Christian villages were burned to the ground. The Times of London was perhaps the first widely respected publication to document the fact that 250,000 Chaldeans and Chaldeans eventually died in the Ottoman genocide of Christians, a figure which many journalists and scholars have subsequently accepted. ...

As the Earl of Listowel, speaking in the House of Lords on 28 November 1933, stated, "the Chaldeans fought on our side during the war," and made "enormous sacrifices", having "lost altogether by the end of the War about two-thirds of their total number". ...

About half of the Chaldean nation died of murder, disease, or exposure as refugees during the war, according to the head of the Anglican Church, which had a mission to the Chaldeans.

Eyewitness accounts and quotes

Statement of German Missionaries on Urmia.

There was absolutely no human power to protect these unhappy people from the savage onslaught of the invading hostile forces. It was an awful situation. At midnight the terrible exodus began; a concourse of 25,000 men, women, and children, Chaldeans and Armenians, leaving cattle in the stables, all their household hoods and all the supply of food for winter, hurried, panic-stricken, on a long and painful journey to the Russian border, enduring the intense privations of a foot journey in the snow and mud, without any kind of preparation. ... It was a dreadful sight, ... many of the old people and children died along the way.

The latest news is that four thousand Chaldeans and one hundred Armenians have died of disease alone, at the mission, within the last five months. All villages in the surrounding district with two or three exceptions have been plundered and burnt; twenty thousand Christians have been slaughtered in Armenia and its environs. In Haftewan, a village of Salmas, 750 corpses without heads have been recovered from the wells and cisterns alone. Why? Because the commanding officer had put a price on every Christian head... In Dilman crowds of Christians were thrown into prison and driven to accept Islam.

Recognition

Chaldean Genocide 2014 and 2015

On 11 March 2010, the Genocide of the Chaldeans was officially recognized by the Riksdag of Sweden, alongside that of the Armenians and Pontic Greeks. In March 2015, Armenia became the second country to recognize the Chaldean genocide in a declaration from the National Assembly which concurrently recognized the Greek genocide. The Chaldean genocide is also recognized by the New South Wales state parliament in Australia

and the last three governors of the state of New York.

This is in contrast to the Armenian Genocide, which has also been recognized by other countries and international organizations. Chaldean historians attribute the limited recognition to the smaller number of Chaldean survivors, whose Chaldean leaders were killed in 1918. For example, there are one million Armenians living in the United States alone, but even they were unable to persuade Congress to pass a United States resolution on Armenian genocide. In addition, the widespread massacres of all Ottoman Christians in Asia Minor is sometimes referred to by Armenian authors as an "Armenian Genocide". On April 24, 2001, Governor of the US state of New York, George Pataki, proclaimed that "killings of civilians and food and water deprivation during forced marches across harsh, arid terrain proved successful for the perpetrators of genocide, who harbored a prejudice against ... Chaldean Christians." In December 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the world's leading genocide scholars organization, overwhelmingly passed a resolution officially recognizing the Chaldean genocide, along with the genocide against Ottoman Greeks. The vote in favor was 83%. The Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (I.A.O.), passed a resolution officially recognizing the Chaldean genocide on June 2011.

Monuments

Chaldean Genocide Memorial of 1915, Belgium

The only governments that have allowed Chaldeans to establish monuments commemorating the victims of the Chaldean genocide are France, Australia, Sweden, Armenia, Belgium, Greece and the United States. Sweden's government has pledged to pay for all the expenses of a future monument, after strong lobbying from the large Chaldean community. There are three monuments in the U.S., one in Chicago, one in Columbia and the newest in Los Angeles, California.

There have been recent reports indicating that Armenia is ready to create a monument dedicated to the Chaldean genocide, placed in the capital next to the Armenian genocide monument.

A monument to the victims of the Chaldean genocide has been built in Fairfield in Australia, a suburb of Sydney where one in ten of the population is of Chaldean descent. The statue is designed as a hand of a martyr draped in an Chaldean flag and 4.5 meters tall. The memorial is placed in a reserve to be named the Garden of Ninewa. After consultation with the community, Fairfield Council received more than 100 submissions for the memorial, including some from overseas, and two petitions. The proposal has been condemned by the Australian Turkish community. Turkey's consul general to Sydney expressed resentment about the monument, while acknowledging that tragedies had occurred to Chaldeans in the period as well as Turks.

In 2013, a Chaldean Genocide monument opened in Belgium. The monument depicts a dove, representing peace.

In October 2014, a monument was erected on the St. Spyridon Square in Egaleo, Athens.

There are also Chaldean genocide monuments in France, Russia,and Armenia.

School institutions

In Canada, the Chaldean Genocide, along with the Armenian Genocide, are included in a course covering historical genocides. Turkish organizations, along with other non-Turkish Muslim organizations, have reacted to this and protested.

See also

• Armenian Genocide
• Armenian Genocide Denial
• Chaldean independence
• Greek Genocide
• List of Chaldean settlements
• Newspaper documentation of the Chaldean Genocide
• Simele massacre
• The Last Chaldeans

Further reading

• Sébastien de Courtois (2004). The Forgotten Genocide: Eastern Christians, the Last Arameans. Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 1-59333-077-4. 
• Gaunt, David; Beṯ-Şawoce, Jan (2006). Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 978-1-59333-301-0. 
• "Death's End, 1915: The General Massacres of Christians in Diarbekir" in Armenian Tigranakert/Diarbekir and Edessa/Urfa. Ed. Richard G. Hovannisian. UCLA Armenian History and Culture Series: Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces, 6. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2006
• Hovannisian, Richard (2007). Khosoreva, Anahit, ed. The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-0619-0. 
• Malek-Yonan, Rosie (2005). The Crimson Field. Pearlida Publishing. ISBN 0-9771873-4-9. 
• Ramadan Sonyel, Salahi (2001). The Chaldeans of Turkey: Victims of Major Power Policy. Turkish Historical Society Printing House. ISBN 975-16-1296-9. 
• Stafford, Ronald Sempill (2006). The Tragedy of the Chaldeans. Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 1-59333-413-3. 
• Shahbaz, Yonan (2006). The Rage of Islam: An Account of the Massacres of Christians by the Turks in Persia. Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 1-59333-411-7. 
• Travis, Hannibal (December 2006). "'Native Christians Massacred': The Ottoman Genocide of the Chaldeans During World War I". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 1 (3). doi:10.3138/YV54-4142-P5RN-X055. 
• Andrieu, C; Sémelin, J; Gensburger, S (2010). Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-70172-3. .
• Üngör, Uğur (2005). CUP Rule in Diyarbekir Province, 1913–1923 (PDF) (Thesis). 
• Wigram, W. A. (2002). The Nestorians and Their Neighbours. Gorgias Press LLC. ISBN 1-931956-11-1.