What Happened During The Ottoman Christian Genocide?

During the height of the Ottoman Empire rule, there was a radical nationalist group called the 'Young Turks' that carried out one of the most horrific genocides between 1915-1923.

While Armenians were the most affluent and widely persecuted group of the empire, perpetrators sought to purge the Ottoman Empire of all Christian minorities. This included Assyrians and Greeks. Scholars estimate that 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered, but the total death toll is over 2 million people.

The term 'Assyrian' encompasses the Chaldeans, Nestorians, Syriacs, Arameans, and more. Before 1915, between 500,000 and 600,000 Assyrians lived in the Ottoman Empire. They were persecuted due to prevailing anti-Christian sentiments and because of their pursuit for independence from the Empire.

In started in 1821 when the Greek War of Independence established a Greek state that was separate from the Ottoman Empire. This war, after decades of Greek revolts, turned many Ottoman Turks against the Greek people.

At the dawn of the 20th century, nearly 2 million Orthodox Greeks remained in the Ottoman Empire. Religious and ethnic tensions escalated during Greco-Turkish conflicts in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), leading many Turks to see Ottoman Greeks as accomplices to the runaway Greek state.

In the 1500s, the vast Ottoman Empire spanned Asia Minor, much of the Middle East, southeastern Europe, and North Africa. However, by the 20th century, the Empire was experiencing a steady loss of territory to other regional powers. Christian minorities were publicly blamed for the Empire’s decline and were persecuted as a result.

Before 1915, Christians, including the Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontic and Anatolian Greeks, were dispersed throughout the Ottoman Empire. During the genocide, the majority of their populations were displaced, either by forced deportations to the Mesopotamian desert or by mass exodus to escape persecution.

The genocide of the Assyrians was similar to that of the Armenians. Hundreds of thousands of Assyrians were deported to the desert in death marches, during which many died from starvation or disease. Women were raped and enslaved. Many villages or deportation convoys were massacred.

In the Greek case, Greco-Turkish military conflicts were used as a pretext for mass-deportations. During the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), Turkish forces committed mass rapes and civilian massacres when they overtook Greek villages or cities.

Between 250,000 and 500,000 Assyrians and around 350,000 Greeks were killed during the Ottoman Christian Genocide. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced.

After the genocide, the international community was largely distracted in the wake of World War I. It was not until the late 20th century that the Armenian genocide began to gain global recognition. The worldwide Armenian diaspora, a relatively cohesive group of about 11 million people, has successfully pursued advocacy to gain recognition.