 The majority of the Assyrians affected by the massacres were adherents of the Church of the East ( often dubbed Nestorian ) , who originally inhabited the mountainous Hakkari and Barwari regions covering parts of the modern provinces of the Hakkâri , Şırnak and Van in Turkey and Dohuk in Iraq , with a population ranging between 75 @,@ 000 and 150 @,@ 000 . Most of these Assyrians were massacred during the Genocide of 1915 , at the hands of the Ottoman Turks . The rest endured two winter marches to Urmia in 1915 and to Hamadan in 1918 . Many of them were relocated to refugee camps by the British in Baquba and later to Habbaniyah , and in 1921 some were enlisted in the pro @-@ British Assyrian Levies which helped quell Kurdish revolts in the British Mandate of Mesopotamia . Most Hakkari Assyrians were resettled after 1925 in a cluster of villages in northern Iraq . Some of the villages where the Assyrians settled were leased directly by the government , while others belonged to Kurdish landlords who had the right to evict them at any time . 
