Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I

David Gaunt

• Publisher: Gorgias Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781463210816
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This is a pioneering historical investigation of the Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syrian Christian minorities during World War I, who suffered the same fate as the Armenians. Ethnic cleansing and large-scale massacres occurred throughout northern Mesopotamia and parts of Ottoman-occupied Iran. Based on primary sources from official archives, as well as hitherto unused manuscript sources and oral histories published here for the first time, this book attempts to give a full picture of the events of 1915. The book concentrates on the Assyrians of Urmia and Hakkari and on the Syrians of Diyarbekir province, particularly in Tur Abdin.

Table of contents

• Summary
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• List of Maps
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction and Background
• 2. Setting the Stage: Kurds and Turks, Armenians and Syriacs
• 3. The Road to the Fatal Solution
• 4. Playing with Fire: Occupied Urmia
• 5. The Ethnic Cleansing of the Hakkari Mountains
• 6. Anatolia’s Heart of Darkness
• 7. The Destruction of Midyat
• 8. Sayfo: The General Massacre of Northern Mesopotamia
• 9. The Battle for Azakh
• 10. Implications and Conclusions
• 11. Notes on the Sources
• Appendix 1. Oral Testimony on Tur Abdin 1914–15
• Appendix 2. Documents on the Syriac Population
• Appendix 3. Documents on the Number of Victims
• Appendix 4. Turkish Archival Documents on Deportations and Sieges
• Bibliography
• Indexes