The Assyrian genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire and the Simele massacre of 1933 have been recognized by the State of California recently. The decision was made unanimously, with both Democratic and Republican assembly members behind the resolution.
The Assyrian genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo, «Sword») refers to the mass slaughter of the Assyrian population of the Ottoman Empire and those in neighbouring Persia by Ottoman troops during the First World War, in conjunction with the Armenian and Greek genocides.
Contemporary newspapers reported death tolls of 200,000 to 250,000. Representatives from the Anglican Church in the region claimed that about half of the Assyrian population perished.
The Greek presence in Asia Minor dates at least from the Late Bronze Age (1450 BC). The geographer Strabo referred to Smyrna as the first Greek city in Asia Minor, and numerous ancient Greek figures were natives of Anatolia. The Greek poet Homer lived in the region around 800 BC.
By late 1922 most of the Greeks of Asia Minor had either fled or had been killed. For the whole of the period between 1914 and 1922 and for the whole of Anatolia, there are academic estimates of death toll ranging from 289,000 to 750,000.
Those remaining were transferred to Greece under the terms of the later 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, which formalized the exodus and barred the return of the refugees.
The Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust, was the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of 700,000 to 1.5 million Armenians, mostly citizens of the Ottoman Empire.
One of the triumvirate rulers, Enver Pasha, publicly declared on 19 May 1916: «The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation.»
The “Three Pashas” refers to the triumvirate of senior officials who effectively ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I: Mehmed Talaat Pasha (1874–1921), the Grand Vizier (prime minister) and Minister of the Interior; Ismail Enver Pasha (1881–1922), the Minister of War; and Ahmed Djemal Pasha (1872–1922), the Minister of the Navy.
They were largely responsible for the Empire’s entry into World War I in 1914. All three met violent deaths after the war – Talaat and Djemal were assassinated, while Enver died leading the Basmachi Revolt near Dushanbe, present-day Tajikistan.