The Deadliest Religious Conflicts In History Explained

Publish date: 2024-05-15

The Armenian Genocide, which saw the Ottoman Empire massacre or exile its Armenian population, is well-known in Western circles. Less known is that it formed part of a greater Ottoman war on Christians. In fact, according to Haaretz, the Ottomans waged a Christian genocide against Turkey's millennia-old Christian communities, who were slated for elimination between 1914 and 1923.

The genocide, which occurred against the backdrop of World War I, began with massacres of the ancient Assyrian Christian communities. Assyrian historian Avraham Yohannan wrote that Turkish and Kurdish paramilitaries began rounding up Assyrians as early as 1914, accusing them of collaboration with Russian forces in the Caucasus. Survivors faced grueling marches to safety in Russian territory or concentration camps. The Armenian Genocide followed in 1915, and any resistance, according to the Armenian National Institute (ANI), was put down with heavy–handed force.

By 1918, over 600,000 Assyrians and 1.5 million Armenians were dead (via European Syriac Union). Survivors fled to neighboring states, Europe, and the Americas. But the tragedy for Christians did not end there. In 1923, the newly born Turkish Republic still had a large population of Greek Christians in its western territories, while Greece had a population of unwanted Muslims. Under the Treaty of Lausanne, both countries agreed to expel their respective unwanted populations. The resulting exchange, according to MERIP, transferred 1.5 million Greeks, who had inhabited Turkey for millennia, to Greece, while 500,000 Balkan Muslims were forcibly relocated to Turkey.

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