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Christians of Iraq
Contact Links Historical articles Historical pictures Photos of Bombed Churches Home Only this link has access to all News articles
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Kurdish Selective Amnesia & the Endless Genocide
of the Assyrians Nuri Kino
SwedenMay 2006
On Tuesday October 25th, 2005, DN Kultur -- the cultural section of one of Sweden's leading morning newspapers, Dagens Nyheter -- published another article by Kurdo Baksi, lecturer, columnist, debater and leading proponent of the Kurdish cause in Sweden. He wrote about his journey to his hometown, Batman, in southeast Turkey, returning for the first time in 25 years.
During this trip he also visited one of the world's oldest cities, Hasankeyf, Hasno Kifo (the fortress on the rock) as it is called in Syriac.
"About 30 km (19 miles) from Batman something that I would like to call a cultural murder was in progress," Baksi claims. "Hasankeyf, a city thousands of years old that had survived the Greeks, Romans, Persians and Mongolians is now in danger of being wiped out since the Turkish authorities have decided to build a dam at the Tigris River that runs through the city."
He also writes about Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author who in December 2004 was put on trial. Earlier that year Pamuk stated that a million Armenians lost their lives during the First World War. What Baksi unconsciously or consciously left out is that Hasankeyf is one of the cities in which the genocide of the Christian Assyrians (also known as Syriacs or Chaldeans) began. Because Pamuk spoke about this openly, he could be tried for treason.
A year ago, cinematographer, Håkan Berthas and I followed Zelge, fans of Assyriska (the Swedish professional soccer team which played in the top football league in 2005, and is often viewed as a national team by the Assyrian diaspora) to the very same Hasankeyf. We filmed them, overwhelmed by emotion as they searched for traces of their forefathers. They cautiously discussed with their Assyrian guides why no one wants to acknowledge the genocide.
The city's Kurdish mayor was happy to see us and exclaimed: "So nice to see that you, young Assyrians, are interested in your history. Indeed it is you who really own and have a right to this city." One of Assyriska's supporters replied, "Why don't you admit the genocide so in that way we can live as good neighbors? Right now this feels like nothing more than that you occupied our land." The Assyrian youngsters from Turkey, where one doesn't dare openly discuss the genocide, hid from sight so as not to get into trouble at home.
Several years ago I made another visit to Hasankeyf with, among others, Dagens Nyheter's reporter Lisbeth Bratberg. Our interpreter and guide was a 12 year-old Kurdish girl, Ayshe. Standing on one of the walls of the fortress on the cliff I pointed out an old and very beautiful house and asked Ayshe who had lived there earlier. She answered "Pigs, the unfaithful, they were not Muslims and very disgusting. But, we killed most of them and we drove away those that were left."
The house I pointed toward belonged to the father of my grandmother, and the father of the famous poet, Daniel Boyacioglus grandfather. This was our ancestral home. The cliff on which we stood was the very same spot that Nure, the Christian Assyrian woman after whose name I was Baptized, jumped to her death so as to save her son from the Muslim sword. She died, but managed to save her son by throwing him into the river as she fell.
Kurdo Baksi, who has received awards for anti-racism, does not mention that Assyrians once existed in Hasankeyf. His anti-racism appears to be selective! His article of November 15th came out on the very same day that he announced his candidacy for the Swedish parliament. A gesture that cannot be interpreted as anything but populist.
His conclusion: "It's time that even Sweden criminalizes the denial of the genocide."
It is not only ironic when someone is guilty of the same crime that they urge others to refrain from it is criminal!
On November 15th, 2005, the Forum For Living History, a Swedish government ministry, arranged an international seminar, "The Genocide in the Ottoman Empire." This seminar was devoted to the genocide of Christians in the Turkish Ottoman Empire during the First World War. A genocide where over one and a half million Christians among whom were Assyrians, Armenians, and Anatolian (Pontic) Greeks lost their lives.
On the same day Kurdo Baksi wrote in his article for DN Kultur: "In the western world we have seldom taken a definite position and demanded responsibility from the Turkish nation who are the heirs of the Ottoman Empire."
Baksi also attended the seminar.
The lobbyist that he is, he buttonholed a group of Swedish politicians during a pause in the seminar, stating: "Remember that everyone is a Kurd from the beginning." Two of these politicians, Ulla Hoffman and Hans Arvidsson from the Vänsterpartiet (the Leftist Party) became very irritated about this remark.
Baksi's inference cannot be interpreted in any other way than he considers that the Assyrians are actually Kurds and do not have the right to their own identity.
This is the same attitude of the political leaders who made the decision for the 1914 genocide.
I am tired of Kurdo Baksi representing Turkey, immigrants, the Kurds, the oppressed and now obviously also the Assyrians and humanity in general. Or, if you like, according to Kurdo, the Assyrians do not exist. It has been branded into the politically correct Swedish folk soul that 'the Kurds deserve pity,'. But can we stop talking about the Kurds for a minute? So as to retain their position of pity-us-poor-buggers-number-one some of them are now oppressing another nation. Some Kurds are consequently guilty of the very same thing they are accusing others for doing to the Kurds.
For us Assyrians this is nothing new.
One of the historical pieces of evidence that was presented by David Gaunt, a researcher from Södertörn University College in Stockholm, was the letter by the Kurdish leader Suti Aga Oramar to the Turkish military commander Haidar Bey. Oramar writes that they were proud of having participated in a major Jihad. The word Jihad means Holy War or the war of the Muslims against the unfaithful in other words all those who are not Muslim. In other words, Kurds were proud of participating in the genocide of their neighbors, the Assyrians and the Armenians.
Today in southeastern Turkey the few Christian Assyrians who remain are more frightened of Kurdish feudal warlords than they are of the Turkish government. One can off-hand count the seven Kurdish tribes that occupy the Assyrian land, who force cooperation through fear, persecuting those Assyrians who dare oppose them. Some of them belongs to the same tribes that once slaughtered Assyrians and Armenians.
Baksi's article also contains factual errors:
"And our [Sweden's] football association punished the Assyriska football team who permitted its players to wear black armbands on April 24th this year, the 90th anniversary of the Ankara decree that approved the elimination of the Armenians."
Indeed the reason that the Turkish media, among others, its largest morning newspaper, Hurriyet, reacted strongly against Sweden was because neither the team nor the players were punished. It made headlines in Turkey where it is, according to the law, impossible to even speak about the genocide.