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RELATIONS BETWEEN KURDS and SYRIACS and ASSYRIANS in LATE OTTOMAN Diyarbekir

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RELATIONS BETWEEN KURDS and SYRIACS and ASSYRIANS in LATE OTTOMAN Diyarbekir RELATIONS BETWEEN KURDS AND SYRIACS AND ASSYRIANS IN LATE OTTOMAN DIYARBEKIR David Gaunt Many sources written at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twenti- eth centuries observe the close relations between the Syriac and Assyrian Christians and the Kurds.1 This relationship appears to have been unique and did not encompass other non-Muslim peoples. The British intelligence officer Edward Noel records a Kurdish saying comparing the attitude to Armenians and the Nestorian Assyrians: “Between us and them [Assyr- ians] there is but a hair’s breadth, but between us and the Armenians a mountain.”2 To a considerable degree, the Syriac and Assyrian memories of mod- ern history are intertwined with that of the neighbouring Kurds. Some observers indicate that they felt that previously there had been a balance of power between the Christians and the Kurds, but that this balance had decisively tilted to the disadvantage of the Christians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. However, the relationships—both the conflicts and the neighbourliness—have been as yet inadequately researched. Many of these relations were cultural, economic and social, dealing with integration and co-existence. Some of them had to do with conflicts over land, property and local power. But as Martin van Bruinessen has con- cluded, the Christian “relations with the Kurds are rather obscure in many cases . [Research] does not do justice to the complexity of the historical relations between both ethnic groups.”3 It is the intention of this article to attempt to identify and describe the development of the almost kalei- doscopic relations between Kurds and Syriacs and Assyrians in Diyar- bekir province in the late Ottoman Era. Each perspective and each period 1 I use the terms “Syriac” and “Assyrian” to denote ethnic collectives made up of several Christian groups with a historical background as speakers of Aramaic dialects living in Mesopotamia and its proximity. The terms cover members of the Syrian Orthodox Church (who Europeans often called Jacobites and in the Ottoman Empire were called Süryânî, or Süryânî-i Kadîm, or Yakûbî); the Syrian Catholic group that emerged in early modern times; the Church of the East or Nestorian, called Nestûrî by the Turks; and the Chaldean Catholic Uniate Church or Keldânî. Using either one of the names is controversial which is why I use both here. 2 Noel 1920. 3 Bruinessen 1992: 107. 242 david gaunt in time forms its own temporary and easily shattered pattern. Because it is based on Syriac and Assyrian sources, the research presented here can only illuminate one perspective on the history of these relationships.4 Population and Settlement Diyarbekir had one of the greatest concentrations of Syriac and Assyrian ethnic populations among Ottoman provinces. The word “Assyrian” was used by Armenian sources (in the form Aisor or Asour or Asshur) for all of the Aramaic-speaking Christians and the Russians borrowed this word from them in the nineteenth century. It came into British usage when the Archbishop of Canterbury established the Mission to the Assyrians in 1886, a mission that concentrated on the Nestorians in the Ottoman Empire and Iran. The Nestorians quickly adopted the term as a form of self-identification. Some of the few public uses of the term “Assyrian” by Syrian Orthodox journalists before World War I were made by Asur Yusuf of Harput, who published the newspaper Mürşid-i Âsûriyûn (Guide of the Assyrians)5 from 1909, and Naim Faik, who fully adopted the term after leaving Diyarbekir for the United States in 1912. Ottoman officials never used “Assyrian” at that time as the people were instead classified by religious denominations. Syriacs and Assyrians were thus treated as separate groups, such as the predominant Syrian Orthodox Church (also called Jacobite), the much smaller Chaldeans (who had broken away from the Nestorians in early modern times), Nestorians (who were very few in this province), Syrian Catholics and Protestants. It is not possible to give exact statistics for the number of the Assyrians in the province. One reason for this is the general eccentric quality of the Ottoman statistical publications. The figures for the different groups appear and disappear erratically between counts. There is a standing doubt about whether non- Muslim peoples were underestimated for political reasons. In addition, the statistics divide the non-Muslim population into various categories, which sometimes disappear completely from one census to another without 4 For a short general survey, see Kieser 2010. 5 Harput (close to Elaziğ) is situated some 120 kilometers northwest of Diyarbekir. By the nineteenth century, the Syrian Orthodox in Harput spoke Armenian and used the Armenian-language word “assouri” as a means of self-designation. See Southgate 1856: 80–87; Prym & Socin 1881..
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