The Assyrians suffered a further catastrophic series of massacres known as the Assyrian Genocide , at the hands of the Ottomans and their Kurdish and Arab allies from 1915 – 1918 . The genocide ( committed in conjunction with the Armenian Genocide and Greek Genocide ) accounted for up to 750,000 unarmed Assyrian civilians , and the forced deportations of many more . The sizeable Assyrian presence in south eastern Asia Minor which had endured for over four millennia was reduced to a few thousand . As a consequence , the surviving Assyrians took up arms , and an Assyrian war of independence was fought during World War I , For a time , the Assyrians fought successfully against overwhelming numbers , scoring a number of victories over the Ottomans and Kurds , and also hostile Arab and Iranian groups ; then their Russian allies left the war following the Russian Revolution , and Armenian resistance broke . The Assyrians were left cut off , surrounded , and without supplies , forcing those in Asia Minor and Northwest Iran to fight their way , with civilians in tow , to the safety of British lines and their fellow Assyrians in the Assyrian homeland of northern Iraq . Assyrians prominently served in Iraq Levies organized by the British in 1919 , and after 1928 , these became the Assyrian Levies
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
History of the Assyrian people