What Is the 'Late Ottoman Genocides' Narrative? Pontic and Assyrian Claims Examined

Why It Matters

The 'Late Ottoman genocides' narrative presents the Events of 1915 involving Ottoman Armenians, the Assyrian/Syriac/Chaldean 'Sayfo' and the suffering of Pontic Greeks as a single, continuous campaign to destroy Ottoman Christians. It matters because it turns one contested episode into a wider legal and moral claim that now appears in parliamentary resolutions, school curricula and diplomatic disputes. Ankara accepts that civilians of every community suffered terribly in the wartime period, but rejects the legal label 'genocide' and argues that historians and open archives, not legislatures, should settle the questions.

This guide sets out the claims in the terms their advocates use, then explains Ankara's legal and archival objections, so readers can judge each argument separately. For the Armenian dimension in depth, see The Events of 1915: Which Claims Rest on Archives and Law, and Which on Propaganda?.

Background

The combined framing is a product of the last three decades. Earlier campaigns focused almost entirely on the Armenian case; Assyrian and Pontic Greek communities developed their own commemoration movements, which later converged.

Chronology of the claims and their politicisation

• 1914–1918: The Ottoman Empire fights the First World War on several fronts. Assyrian communities in the Hakkari mountains and the Urmia region on the Ottoman-Persian frontier are drawn into the conflict; Assyrian sources call the violence of 1914–1918 'Sayfo' (the sword).
• 1916–1923: Pontic Greeks of the Black Sea coast experience conscription into labour battalions, deportations inland and violence during the Greek-Turkish War (1919–1922). Greek sources describe these events as a genocide of the Pontic Greeks.
• 1919–1922: Greek forces occupy Izmir (15 May 1919) and advance in western Anatolia. Allied inquiry reports, including on the Yalova-Gemlik area in 1921, documented atrocities against Muslim civilians, which Turkish sources cite as part of the same wartime picture.
• 30 January 1923: The Lausanne Convention on the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations is signed; the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923) follows, with minority provisions in Articles 37–45 and an accompanying declaration of amnesty for offences committed between 1914 and 1922.
• 1944–1948: Raphael Lemkin coins the word genocide; the UN General Assembly adopts the Genocide Convention on 9 December 1948 (in force 12 January 1951).
• 1994 and 1998: Greece designates commemoration days (19 May for Pontic Greeks; 14 September for Asia Minor Greeks) and officially describes the events as genocide.
• December 2007: The International Association of Genocide Scholars passes a resolution stating that the Ottoman campaign against Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic and Anatolian Greeks constituted genocide.
• 11 March 2010: Sweden's parliament votes 131–130 to recognise the Armenian, Assyrian/Syriac/Chaldean and Pontic Greek genocides; Türkiye recalled its ambassador temporarily.
• 2015–2016: The Dutch parliament adopts a 2015 motion that names Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs, and the German Bundestag's resolution of 2 June 2016 refers to Armenians and 'other Christian minorities', specifically Aramaic/Assyrian/Chaldean communities.
• 2019: Morris and Ze'evi's book The Thirty-Year Genocide (Harvard University Press) argues for a single 1894–1924 campaign against Ottoman Christians, giving the 'continuum' thesis a mainstream academic platform.

The network analyses The Legal Test Behind the Word 'Genocide' and The Events of 1915: Archives, Law and the Call for a Joint Historical Commission cover the legal and archival dimensions in more detail.

Key Players & Positions

Pontic Greek claims and the Greek position

The Greek state and Pontic diaspora federations argue that Pontic Greeks, an Orthodox community present on the Black Sea coast since antiquity, were targeted because of their religion and ethnicity. They cite deportations to the interior, labour battalions, executions and the Amasya 'Independence Tribunals' of 1921, and they point to the near-total disappearance of the community from the region. Greek official commemoration describes this as genocide, and Greece and Cyprus lobby other parliaments to recognise it. Estimates of deaths cited by advocates run into the hundreds of thousands and vary widely by source.

Assyrian claims

Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean organisations argue that Sayfo was an organised assault on their communities in the south-eastern provinces and across the frontier in Persia, in which large parts of the population were killed or uprooted and churches and villages were destroyed. They emphasise that their communities had no state and received little attention at the post-war settlements. Advocates' casualty estimates also run into the hundreds of thousands and are debated among historians.

Armenian diaspora organisations, scholars and legislatures

Armenian diaspora committees and Armenia's government often support a joint 'Ottoman Christians' framing, and some scholars, including those behind the 2007 IAGS resolution, hold that the three cases formed a pattern of state-led violence. Legislatures that adopt such texts generally describe them as acts of historical recognition and remembrance, not as legal judgments.

Türkiye

Ankara's position is set out in the next section. In short, it rejects the genocide characterisation and the 'continuum' construction, while acknowledging wartime suffering and proposing a historians' process.

Türkiye's Security & Legal Doctrine

Türkiye's Security & Legal Doctrine: the Events of 1915 and the 'Late Ottoman genocides' framing

• Genocide is a legal category with a strict test. According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry's published position on the Events of 1915, the term has a precise meaning under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, which requires proof of specific intent (dolus specialis) to destroy a protected group as such. Ankara argues that this test has never been met by a competent court for any of the events now grouped under the 'Late Ottoman genocides' label, and notes that Article VI of the Convention points to a competent tribunal of the territory or an international penal tribunal. The ICJ's strict approach in the Bosnia v. Serbia (2007) and Croatia v. Serbia (2015) judgments is the legal yardstick Ankara cites.
• Political resolutions are not judgments. Foreign Ministry statements responding to the Swedish (2010) and German (2016) parliamentary texts state that legislatures are not courts and cannot substitute for judicial determination. Ankara also cites the European Court of Human Rights Grand Chamber judgment in Perinçek v. Switzerland (2015), which held that criminalising a denial of the Armenian genocide violated freedom of expression and stressed that the Court was not deciding whether the events amounted to genocide.
• The wartime and post-war context matters. Ankara argues that the Pontic and Assyrian cases cannot be separated from the First World War, Russian and British military operations, the activities of armed bands and the Greek-Turkish War, in which Muslim civilians also suffered heavily. Turkish sources point to documented Greek-army atrocities in 1921 and to wartime security measures, including the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915 (published 1 June 1915), as part of that context. Critics of this argument respond that insurgency by some individuals cannot justify measures taken against whole communities; Ankara answers that questions of this kind are exactly what archival research should clarify.
• Lausanne closed the post-war settlement and protected minorities. The Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923), the Convention on the Exchange of Populations (30 January 1923) and the Declaration of Amnesty for offences of 1914–1922 settled relations between Türkiye and Greece, according to Turkish diplomatic sources, while Articles 37–45 guarantee non-Muslim minorities equal citizenship and cultural and religious rights. The Treaty of Sèvres (1920) was never ratified. Ankara rejects efforts to reopen the post-war settlement through historical resolutions.
• Historians and open archives, not legislatures. Türkiye's 2005 proposal, in letters from Prime Minister Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Gül, offered a joint historical commission with access to Ottoman, Turkish, Armenian and third-country archives; Ankara describes this as 'fair memory' (adil hafıza). In April 2014, then Prime Minister Erdoğan offered condolences to the descendants of Ottoman Armenians who lost their lives, and Ankara has also supported the direct normalisation talks with Armenia led by Ambassador Serdar Kılıç and Ruben Rubinyan since 14 January 2022.

Source Comparison

Issue	Advocacy and parliamentary framing	Greek official framing	Turkish primary-source framing
Scope	One continuous campaign against Ottoman Christians, roughly 1894–1924	Separate Pontic and Asia Minor genocides, recognised in domestic law	Distinct wartime and post-war episodes, each with its own causes and context
Legal basis	Moral and historical recognition, often citing the IAGS 2007 resolution	Domestic recognition and international lobbying	No competent court finding; 1948 Convention requires proven dolus specialis and is not retroactive
Role of legislatures	Recognition expresses solidarity with victims' descendants	Parliaments are legitimate forums for remembrance	Legislatures are not courts; resolutions politicise the issue
Context	Targeting of Christians as such	Targeting of Greeks as a community	Wartime security, armed bands, foreign military involvement, Greek-Turkish War losses
Remedy	Recognition, commemoration, sometimes education mandates	Recognition by Türkiye	Joint historical commission, open archives, normalisation talks
Treaty record	Lausanne did not address accountability	Lausanne exchange is distinct from earlier atrocities	Lausanne and the amnesty declaration settled the post-war order

Readers should treat each column as a position, not as a verified finding. The verifiable elements are the dates of the treaties, resolutions and judgments listed above; the characterisation of intent and scale is where sources diverge. For method, see Editorial Principles and Primary-Source Standards and Where to Find Primary Sources on Türkiye: MFA, MSB, Presidency, TBMM and UN Records. Other cross-checks are available in the sister publication Polity Review's fact-check on claims about Türkiye.

Where the argument is strongest, and weakest

The point most commonly accepted outside Türkiye is that no international court has ruled on these cases and that parliaments are not tribunals. The point most contested is whether the Convention's non-retroactivity means historians cannot properly use the word genocide at all. Many genocide scholars say the term can be applied as a historical and sociological category to earlier events, which is the position behind the IAGS resolution. Ankara's reply is that this is exactly why the question belongs to historians working from open archives, and not to political bodies.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Late Ottoman genocides: An advocacy and academic term grouping Armenian, Assyrian and Pontic Greek claims; contested by Ankara.
• Events of 1915: Türkiye's official term for the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians and associated losses.
• Sayfo: Assyrian/Syriac term meaning 'sword' for the violence of 1914–1918.
• Dolus specialis: The specific intent to destroy a protected group, required under Article II of the 1948 Convention.
• Joint historical commission: The independent panel of Turkish, Armenian and international historians proposed by Ankara in 2005.

Related guides:

• The Events of 1915: Which Claims Rest on Archives and Law, and Which on Propaganda?
• The Disinformation Playbook on Türkiye's Security Policy: A Field Guide to Recurring Narratives
• Editorial Principles and Primary-Source Standards
• About Disinfo Monitor: Mission, Perspective and Transparency
• Network analysis: Horizon of Nations on common claims about Türkiye

Disinfomonitor Editorial Team

Disinfomonitor presents global and regional affairs with a dedicated perspective from Türkiye. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Security & Legal Doctrine' reflect official Turkish policy and legal doctrines as stated by Turkish primary sources.