The Hakkari region was the main center of Assyrian population in early 20th century . According to the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople , there were 18,000 Assyrians in Van Vilayet , 15,000 in Bitlis Vilayet and 25,000 in Diyarbekir Vilayet in 1912/1913 . In 1914 , Young Turks with the aid of the Kurds and other Muslim ethnic groups , began to systemically target the ancient indigenous Christian communities of Asia Minor , primarily composed of Armenians , Assyrians , Greeks and to a small degree Georgians . Events such as the Assyrian Genocide , Greek Genocide and Armenian Genocide followed , as did the similarly motivated Great Famine of Mount Lebanon which targeted Maronite Christians . In the beginning , key Assyrian nationalist leaders and religious figures were wiped out of communities , followed by the systematic massacre and ethnic cleansing by the Turks , Arabs , Kurds , Chechens and Circassians of hundreds of thousands of unarmed men , women and children
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Assyrian independence movement