Assyrian Leaders Issue Letter to Presidential Candidates

The West will not protest a Jewish genocide, said Adolf Hitler, who added, 'Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'

BY UZAY BULUT Wed, May 18, 2016

Several Middle Eastern, European and American Assyrian organizations have recently issued an open letter for the U.S. Democratic and Republican presidential candidates -- Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders -- and asked them, if elected President, to officially recognize the 1915 genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire and help the victims of the current genocide committed by the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria:

Daily reports from the Middle East and other corners of the world document a campaign of terror against Christians. Assyrians and others are being tortured, kidnapped, raped and murdered by radical terrorist

organizations such as ISIS… For Assyrians it feels like 1915 all over again.

One hundred years have passed since the era of World War I when no one heard the cries of our ancestors, the Assyrian people, in their suffering in that genocide that is known as the Armenian Genocide.

As President of the United States, would you do everything in your power to end these atrocities, bring the perpetrators to justice, and aid the survivors?

As President of the United States, would you acknowledge the Ottoman Genocide against Christians -- Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks -- during World War I and support reparations for the victims?

It is our hope that as President you would aid the victims of genocide, both past and present, and bring relief to their suffering.


From 1915 to 1923, Assyrians were systematically killed in their native lands by the Ottoman-Turkish government.

"It is hard to give an exact number of victims,” according to Sabri Atman, the founder and the president of the Assyrian Genocide and Research (Seyfo) Center. “About 350,000 to 500,000 Assyrians lost their lives. The carnage was not only about murdering people. The lands and property of Christians were also seized.”

“Prior to the First World War, the population of Turkey was fourteen million; 4.5 million of those were Christians,” said Atman. “In other words, 33% of the population were Christians. Today in Turkey, the total number of Christians only amounts to 0.1 percent of the population.”

“Like the Armenians,” writes the scholar Hannibal Travis, “the Assyrians living in Mesopotamia, Persia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey became victims of a genocidal ‘holy war’ declared by the Ottoman Sultan and carried out by the Young Turk regime of Enver Pasha.

“That this war against the indigenous Christians of the Ottoman Empire was genocidal in character is manifest not only from the admissions of Ottoman and Turkish officials at the highest levels of government but also from those of their German allies in World War I, American and British officials, legions of foreign journalists and missionaries, and, of course, the countless civilian victims of the war’s massacres and deportations.”

The U.S. administration has recently recognized the Islamic State atrocities in Syria and Iraq as “genocide.”

"In my judgment,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, “Daesh [ISIS] is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shi'ite Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions."

Turkey is a member of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, but the same Turkey still denies the 1915 Christian genocide even after 101 years.

“Denial is actually a continuation of the genocide,” writes Dr. Gregory Stanton, the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, “because it is a continuing attempt to destroy the victim group psychologically and culturally, to deny its members even the memory of the murders of their relatives.”

While persuading his associates that a Jewish Holocaust would be tolerated by the West, Adolf Hitler said: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Sadly, the Assyrians, another victim of the same genocide, seem to have been mostly forgotten by the international community.

By recognizing the 1915 Christian genocide, as well as saving and empowering the Assyrians in Iraq and Syria, the next U.S. president, the leader of the free world, must prove Hitler to be wrong.

Assyrian Leaders Issue Letter to Presidential Candidates