| Chapter 14: | Conclusion |
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This effort lasted until 1847 and turned the whole region into a battleground. For this, all the inhabitants of the non-Turkish autonomous regions paid the price, including both the Kurdish emirates and the Christians living around the country of the independent tribes; at last, in 1847 Ottoman rule was permanently established over the tribes themselves after Bedr Khan Beg’s occupation of their country, which lasted from 1843 to 1847. The Assyrians, who had maintained their independence for ages in Tiyari and Hakkari, were then subjected to a systematic campaign of genocide and repression.
The Assyrian Massacre and Its Consequences
In the end, the independence of the Assyrian tribes was destroyed not directly by the Turks but by their Kurdish neighbours under Turkish auspices. This took place following the Ottoman success in undermining the autonomy of the various Kurdish emirates, Yezidi centres, and Arab dynasties by a policy of divide and rule. The Ottomans reaped the fruit of the Kurds’ internal dissensions and the actions of the Kurdish leader Bedr Khan Beg against the independent Assyrian tribes, whom he first fatally weakened and finally subdued during his invasions of 1843–1846. The tribes were forced by power of arms to join other Assyrian communities in the plains of Nineveh and Azerbaijan that had been turned into Ra’aya during the preceding centuries. Thus the massacres of 1843–1846 ended the long-lasting existence of the Assyrian people as an independent body, as attested by thousands of monuments, churches, towns, and villages that had existed in their homeland from time immemorial.
Thus the preceding chapters recount a distressing narrative that reveals how enmity between two different ethnic and religious peoples replaced a willingness to live side by side in coexistence and to maintain a positive relationship that could serve the best interests of both groups. Inevitably this led in the end to the removal of the weaker group from the scene.