ABSTRACT
The culture of the modern Assyrians is at risk. According to some scholars, a zone of genocide has been tolerated by the international community in southern Turkey and northern Iraq. There are historical connections between the Ottoman Christian genocide and its denial, and the contemporary danger of genocide in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. This concluding chapter to a study of genocide in the early twentieth century explores questions that arise in contemporary studies of the former Ottoman Empire's history and present situation, including questions of identity, historiography, legal categorization, and religio-political ideology. Among other things, it provides a chronology of warnings of genocide in contemporary Iraq and Syria, an analysis of the identity and historiography of Iraq's Yezidis to the extent that they share historical connections with the Assyrians, and a critique of the international response to crises in Iraq and Syria. As in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish republic, bands of brigands in Iraq and Syria are killing, depopulating villages and towns, abducting women and children, and torturing some of their victims. Another parallel is that false visions of liberation, moderation, and democratization are serving to excuse the brigands’ crimes, and to maintain a culture of impunity in the region that is contributing to the destruction of minority cultures. Many of the patterns of criminality recognized by the European Parliament, the US State Department, the US Congress, and other entities as leading to a religious genocide against Assyrians, Yezidis, and other minorities were also prevalent in 1915-1924, including assassinations, abduction, enslavement, the destruction of houses of worship, widespread plundering, and removals of communities from their ancestral homelands under threat of violence. The Christian populations of Iraq and Syria declined by 75% or more between 2001 and 2016.
