ABSTRACT
The Armenian Genocide is understood by much of the world to have been the climax of a long history of oppression and violence for a group that had suffered for centuries as a Christian minority at the hands of greater powers, most notably the Turks. Less recognized is the fact that the Assyrians, whose ancestors stood at the cradle of civilization, have shared a similar history: that of a dispersed, Christian ethnic group with a prolonged experience of marginalization by foreign rule, particularly in the Ottoman Empire. Armenian and other sources show the number of Assyrians living in Turkish-controlled and adjacent territories during Ottoman times to be about one million. As part of the general Christian populace of the Ottoman Empire, the Assyrians were subjected to the same oppressive policies meted out by Turkish authorities to the Armenians and their religious kin.
