massacred more than 27,000 Assyrians in Urmia region alone and destroyed more than 100 villages Assyrian villages in March 1915 alone. In 1916 Kurds and Turks massacred Assyrians in Bohtan region. Both Kurdish and Turkish nationalists deny the fact that Assyrians were the original inhabitants of south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. The Assyrian population was so small in the aftermath of the genocide that the region called Assyria in ancient times came to be known as "Kurdistan". The Kurds and Turks cynically resisted Assyrian and Armenian efforts to attain statehood after World War II. While the Kurdish population doubled from two million in 1970 to four million in 2002, the Christian population decreased. British Mandate Independent Kingdom of Iraq Simele massacre During July 1933, about 800 armed Assyrians headed for the Syrian border, where they were turned back by the French. While King Faisal had briefly left the country for medical reasons, the Minister of Interior, Hikmat Sulayman, adopted a policy aimed at a final solution of the "Assyrian problem". This policy was implemented by an Iraqi-Kurd, General Bakr Sidqi. After engaging in several unsuccessful clashes with armed Assyrian tribesmen, on 11 August 1933, Sidqi permitted his men to attack and kill about 3,000 unarmed Assyrian civilian villagers, including women, children and the elderly, at the Assyrian villages of Sumail (Simele) district, and later at Suryia. Having scapegoated the Assyrians as dangerous national traitors, this massacre of unarmed civilians became a symbol of national pride, and enhanced Sidqi's prestige. The British, though represented by a powerful military presence as provided by the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930, failed to intervene or allow the well-disciplined Assyrian Levies under their command to do so, and indeed helped whitewash the event at the League of Nations. The Assyrian repression marked the entrance of the military into Iraqi politics, a pattern that has periodically re-emerged since 1958, and offered an excuse for enlarging conscription. Republic of Iraq Recognition of the Syriac language by the Ba'thist regime In the early 1970s, the secularist Ba'ath regime initially tried to change the suppression of Assyrians in Iraq through different laws that were passed. On 20 February 1972, the government passed the law to recognize the cultural rights of Assyrians by allowing Aramaic be taught schools in which the majority of pupils spoke that language in addition to Arabic. Aramaic was also to be taught at intermediate and secondary