Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans: Intercommunal Relations on the Periphery of the Ottoman Empire
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Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans: Intercommunal Relations on the Pe ...

Chapter 11:  Great Britain, the Ottomans, and the Assyrian Tragedy
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The efforts and intervention of the British ambassador appear to have produced results. In a dispatch to the Foreign Office, he announced that the Turkish Chamber of Ministers had decided to respond to his appeal and send a delegation to Mosul headed by Kemal Effendi to investigate the Nestorian issue and to contact both Mar Shimun and Bedr Khan Beg. He expressed his wishes to meet the sultan’s envoy, and

[i]nsisting upon the restitution of the Nestorian prisoners, and laying the foundation of friendly understanding with that chief and the eventual withdrawal of his forces from the Nestorian country…to affect the liberation of the Nestorians and the settlement of their relations with the Porte.

The ambassador, however, reflected the policy of his government towards the whole issue of the Assyrian tribes, which in part was to support the Turkish government and to assist in establishing centralisation and the firm rule of the sultan, and also noted the limit of his influence with the Ottoman government:

I do not despair of being able into the end to effect an arrangement between the Porte and the Patriarch, sufficient to establish the Sultan’s authority and to secure an independent land administration for the Turkish Nestorians under the civil as well as spiritual guidance of Mar Shimon.16

The direct intervention of Canning in the Assyrian issue secured the participation of Stevens, the vice-consul at Samsoon, in any discussion or meeting with the sultan’s envoy to inquire into the affair of the Assyrian tribes, which gave Stevens effective access to Bedr Khan Beg and Mar Shimun alike. In this way, Britain became a prime player in all the affairs of the region. This state of affairs continued until the final disaffected centre of the emirate of Bohtan under Bedr Khan Beg was subdued in July 1847. Throughout the whole operation and development, both the Assyrians and the Kurds were convinced that Great Britain was the only great power able to influence the outcome of the issue. This conviction rested on experience of the British role in the affair of Mohammed Ali Pasha of Egypt, which had revealed the extent of the protection that Britain could offer the Ottoman Empire to avert its final collapse.