Souleiman Yousef

      Many Kurdish brothers ask, with resentment: Why do the Syriac Assyrians, unlike the Armenians, include the Kurds as accomplices in the “Armenian-Assyrian Holocaust of 1915”? Our answer is that the Central Committee of the Committee of Union and Progress—the de facto ruler in the final years of the Ottoman Empire—on April 24, 1915, made the decision to exterminate the Armenians with the aim of ending and liquidating the Armenian question,The extermination decree made no mention of the other Christian peoples and ethnicities under Ottoman control. However, Kurdish aghas and mullahs in the provinces of Diyarbakir-Amid and Mardin, and other regions, in cooperation and coordination with the local Ottoman governors and military authorities, declared it a holy war (jihad) against all Christians in the Sultanate, Thus, the Kurdish Islamists expanded their ethnic and religious cleansing operations to include Assyrian Christians (Syriac-Chaldeans), coveting their property, women, and daughters, and seeking to erase their existence, And to seize control of their lands, which is what actually happened in most of the historical Assyrian communities and regions. Had the Kurds not participated in the massacres, more than half a million Assyrians (Syriac-Chaldeans) would not have been killed and slaughtered, nor would a similar number have been displaced, The Assyrian population today would number in the millions in the part of Mesopotamia, the Assyrian homeland, under Ottoman Turkish control. Because of the massacres, most Assyrian areas became predominantly Kurdish, This is a fact confirmed by survivors of the massacres, as well as by numerous historical sources and documents, including the book “Mardin: An Analytical Study of the 1915 Genocide” by the French historian and researcher Yves Ternon. Ternon states on page 19 of his book: “We cannot accuse the Committee of Union and Progress of setting a plan to remove Christians from the empire. The Turks wanted to resolve the Armenian question once and for all, and the Kurds were invited to share in the spoils, They seized the opportunity and extended it to other Christians, just as some Muslims of other sects, both Turks and Arabs, did.” For example… Even many Kurdish writers and researchers acknowledge this fact and Kurdish responsibility for the (Assyrian-Armenian) genocide, Among them is the writer Nizar Aghri, who wrote an article on April 16th entitled “The Unseemly Side of Kurdish History,” published in the international newspaper Al-Hayat. In it, he stated, “If one were to peruse the historical records of Kurdish nationalists, one would find names like Bedir Khan, Mir Muhammad Kur, Yazdan Sher, and others, up to Simko, prominently displayed and venerated as national heroes, when in fact they were ruthless murderers who annihilated hostile clans, tribes, and other groups,The Kurdistan Region is not the property of the Kurds alone. It was originally the homeland of the Syriacs and Assyrians, whose presence and influence diminished only because they were subjected to massacres and atrocities in Urmia, Salmas, Nohadra, Erbil, and Zakho,This is without even mentioning the horrific role of Kurdish clans in…” The massacres of Armenians in the genocidal campaigns waged against them by the Turkish state in all the provinces where Kurds now constitute the majority. Kars, Muş, Diyarbakir, Elazığ, Urfa, Nusaybin, Tur Abdin, Hakkari regions, and others were the homeland of Armenians and Syriacs, Of course, it is impossible to turn back the clock of history, but what is not impossible, indeed what the Kurds of today must do, is to understand the great Assyrian wound inflicted by their ancestors.

On the eve of each anniversary of the Armenian-Assyrian Genocide, a debate erupts within various Assyrian (Syriac/Chaldean) circles regarding the role and responsibility of the Kurds in the genocide, Some equate Kurdish responsibility for the Assyrian genocide with German responsibility for the Nazi Holocaust during World War II in 1945. Those who hold this simplistic view of Kurdish responsibility for the Assyrian wound must understand that the definition of “genocide” is not subject to the emotions, personal biases, or political whims of any particular group. Addressing and understanding genocide must be done through international laws and conventions related to genocide and war crimes against humanity, Germany was a state headed by Adolf Hitler, who personally ordered the killing and extermination of all German Jews. Therefore, the current German state, the legal successor to Nazi Germany, bears full legal and moral responsibility for the Jewish genocide. The German state recognized the Holocaust and its full responsibility for it, and assumed the resulting financial obligations (reparations) to the Jewish state of Israel, Regarding the 1915 Assyrian-Armenian Genocide, while it is true that Kurds participated in all its phases and committed the most heinous crimes and atrocities against the victims, who were unarmed civilians, the decision to carry out the genocide was not Kurdish. The Kurds were not decision-makers within the Ottoman Empire; rather, like the Assyrians and Armenians, they were subject to the authority of the Ottoman Caliphate, which issued and implemented the decision to carry out the genocide, Therefore, the Kurds are not legally responsible before the international community for the Assyrian-Armenian Genocide, For this reason, in their international campaign for recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenians did not invoke the Kurds, but only the Turkish state, as the legitimate successor to the dissolved Ottoman Caliphate. The Armenian Genocide has been recognized by more than twenty countries to date. The Kurdish responsibility in this humanitarian issue remains a moral one, The Kurds are required to reconcile with their history, acknowledge their moral responsibility for the Assyrian Genocide, and apologize to the Assyrian people (Syriacs and Chaldeans) if they wish to cleanse the Kurdish-Assyrian relationship of the remnants of the past and develop it for the benefit of both peoples, Regarding the rights of the Assyrians (descendants of the victims and survivors of the genocide) to their properties seized by the Kurds and Turks, this matter belongs in the Turkish state courts,The Assyrians can file lawsuits with the relevant European and international courts and organizations if they still possess documents proving their ownership of the seized properties and lands,Most of these documents were burned or destroyed by the perpetrators, except for those that did not fall into their hands.