“I AM TELLING YOU THIS FOR I HAVE SEEN IT” - The Sayfo diasporic politics of memory and the genocide recognition struggle of the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean migrant communities in Western Europe
Sofia Mutlu-Numansen is a PhD student in the research group Public Administration. Supervisor is prof.dr. A. Need and co-supervisor is dr. M.R.R. Ossewaarde from the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences.
Many genocides have been studied in the light of diasporic politics of memory such as the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and the Rwandan genocide. Yet the genocide on more than 70 percent of the Arameans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Sayfo, is much under researched. Studying this genocide can enrichen the body of literature of diasporic politics of memory because it leads to insights on several aspects, such as: long-term postmemory since this genocide has more generations than many others; the impact on the Sayfo politics of memory of a despotic regime that suppresses memory; the impact of migration from a despotic state to democratic Western European countries where the freedom of speech and language loss arise. To gain insights and to contribute to the state of art in the diasporic politics of memory of genocide, this dissertation focusses on various aspects of the diasporic politics of memory of the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean communities, which leads to the following research question: How is the diasporic memory of the Sayfo transmitted throughout generations, the Sayfo recognition struggle of the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean migrant communities in Western Europe organized, and what are the institutional responses? This dissertation includes four independent and interrelated empirical studies on the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean genocide postmemory, memory of gendercide and the role of women, the Sayfo recognition struggle and the institutional responses of their host states.
In chapter two, the focus is on the intergenerational transmission of diasporic memory of the Sayfo. The aim of the article is to understand how memory of the Sayfo narrative is transmitted within the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean communities throughout four generations. Since only the first generation has experienced the Sayfo itself, other generations rely on postmemory. Postmemory and intergenerational remembrance are important factors in the formation and development of a diaspora identity. The research question asked in chapter two is: How is memory of the Sayfo transmitted through four generations within Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean migrant communities in Western Europe? For this part of the study, 50 participants from transnational Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean communities were interviewed. The participants were from four generations; the three oldest generations were born in Turkey, the youngest generation was born into diaspora communities in Western Europe. All participants of this study are offspring from six original survivors of the Sayfo from the village of Bote, a village that was struck extremely during the Sayfo. We carried out semi-structured interviews in Aramaic and also opted to adapt our in-depth interview style to the particular culture, language, and traditions of the diaspora communities. We found that the Sayfo narrative is remembered in Western Europe by diasporic communities of Arameans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans in a variety of ways. Sayfo survivor descendants, which live in diaspora, have created identities in the context of diaspora post-memory and reflection on a shared history of persecution and violence. A significant problem for diasporic communities is the danger of forgetting the Sayfo narrative and the manipulation of postmemory. The intergenerational transmission of the Sayfo narrative is subject to revision in the context of the changing political and cultural environments of migrant communities, and the migration from South-Eastern Turkey to Western Europe in the 1970s-1980s has had a profound effect on the culture, communication and diasporic politics of remembering the Sayfo. This article is published as: Patterns of migrant post-memory: the politics of remembering the Sayfo in 2015 in Communication, Politics & Culture, vol. 48, issue 3.
In chapter three, the article covers in what ways the narratives about the Sayfo are gendered. We seek to understand the narratives of groups of descendants of the survivors of the Sayfo and how these migrant families interpret the Sayfo narrative as a gendered event. Whether the postmemory of rape and abduction is organized in a religious narrative that leads to identifying these victims of forced prostitution, mass rape, abduction, forced marriage and sexual mutilation as heroines and martyrs. The research question asked in chapter three is: In what ways are the narratives about the genocide on Arameans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans gendered? Based on interviews with 50 Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean migrants in Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands, whose families are from the village of Bote, known as one of the ‘killing fields’ in southeast Turkey, the article explores the ways in which descendants remember the ‘forgotten genocide’ of Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean communities in 1915. The article reveals that the descendants of Sayfo survivors make sense of the sexual violence experienced in Bote mainly through a religious narrative and that, for them, the genocide is, in spite of all the sufferings the males had to go through, a feminized event. In their gendercide narrative, the abducted and raped women are identified as the ‘heroines’ of the genocide. Their gendercide narrative has also contributed to the reinforcement of Islamophobic beliefs and attitudes across generations. This article is published as: Heroines of gendercide: The religious sensemaking of rape and abduction in Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean migrant communities in European Journal of Women’s Studies 2015, Vol. 22(4).
In chapter four, the third article of this dissertation lays out how the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean communities living in Western Europe are organized to pursue recognition for the Sayfo. It aims to find out how narratives of the past are enacted in their campaign. Three case studies were analyzed through observations of commemorations, a documentary about the recognition struggle, and several in-depth interviews. The research question asked in chapter four is: How is the Sayfo recognition struggle of the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean communities in Western Europe organized? The year 2015 provided a unique opportunity to study such diasporic communities’ strategic uses of the past. Hundreds of centenary commemorations were organized all over the world. In this study three cases are selected to analyze how these communities use their past in their campaign, these are the activities for recognition struggle of the Syriac-Orthodox Church of Antioch, the Bote Committee, and the World Council of Arameans. All three cases show how they use the Sayfo narrative to maintain a collective identity, a sense of diasporic belonging and a relationship to the lost homeland. The Syriac-Orthodox Church has a top-down management strategy to unify the diaspora against the global ignorance of the Sayfo. Their goal is to gain global recognition and to combat the worldwide silence over the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Middle-East. The Bote Committee is a grassroots association of descendants of families who originated from Bote and work to sustain the memory and cultural heritage of their ancestors. Their narrative is very specific and focusses on the exact events in a specific month in Bote and their commemorations mention each and every victim of the Sayfo in Bote. The World Council of Arameans, an NGO, represents a global, but secular agency. Its use of the past, however, differs from that of the Syriac-Orthodox Church (even though they often cooperate). Through diplomacy and lobbying within the UN and the use of the media, it seeks recognition. The WCA also mobilizes the past in pursuit of the dream of an Aramean state, something that would require recognition by the international community. This article is published as: A Struggle for Genocide Recognition: How the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean Diasporas Link Past and Present in 2019 in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume. 33(3).
In chapter 5, the fourth article of this dissertation, the aim is to understand how the Sayfo conflict re-emerges in the Netherlands. In this chapter the migration of the conflict is laid out and the reaction of Dutch institutions regarding this conflict. Through this study we seek to find out how the intra-diasporic Sayfo conflict migrated from the original battlefield (Turkey) to Western Europe and how Western European institutions respond to a conflict between two migrant communities. For this study an exceptional case was studied, a student documentary called Genocide in Twente (NPO3, 2018), which was marked by enormous media attention and was put on the political agenda of the Dutch House of Representatives because the University of Applied Sciences Saxion attempted to silence the documentary maker. The research questions answered in chapter five are: How does the migration of the intra-diasporic Sayfo conflict re-emerge in the Netherlands? And how do Dutch institutions (re)act concerning this conflict?
In this chapter I found that the re-emergence of the migrated Sayfo conflict is caused by the emancipation from a latent to manifest conflict. This is caused by the complexity of the trauma, postmemory and past presencing of stateless diasporic people and the intergenerational solidarity and strong ties of migrants with their homeland. It is shown that conflict mitigation in diasporic migrant environment is complex and that Dutch decision makers are not sufficiently equipped to cope with these imported conflicts. In this case it seems that mitigation intensified the conflict and silencing led to the ongoing relationship of oppressor and the oppressed. Recommendations to end the cycle of imported conflicts are organizing recognition, creating awareness and organizing dialogue. This article has not yet been published, nonetheless it is currently under review.
In chapter six the conclusions of the four articles are presented and discussed. The conclusion of this dissertation is that the Sayfo politics of memory and genocide recognition struggle of the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean migrant communities is much affected by the states they live(d) in. Since the Turkish government attempted to erase the existence of the Arameans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans through genocide, onomatodice, and renaming villages, this despotic regime created a culture of Sayfo memory suppression which led to the Sayfo memory being transmitted orally and secretly within the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean communities. Yet, after the Arameans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans migrated to Western European democratic countries, the politics of memory of the Sayfo began because memory suppression ended and these diasporic communities were able to process their Sayfo trauma, transmit the Sayfo narrative publicly, and commemorate and struggle for genocide recognition. This study shows that the Sayfo narrative is transmitted through postmemory, that it is the foundational narrative of the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean diaspora communities and that it is a significant part of their diasporic identity. I conclude that the younger generations in diaspora are the key actors in the struggle for genocide recognition and that they have created coalitions with the Armenians and with their own diaspora communities globally. With the use of (social) media, their podium broadened and therefore they can reach a broader public. Although Western European institutions seem to mitigate and silence the Sayfo conflict because of fear from the Kurdish and Turkish migrant communities, the young diasporic generation of Arameans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans which is born in Western Europe is also aware of their rights and the possibilities to influence politicians and manage to lobby to ensure support for their Sayfo recognition struggle and their freedom to express themselves. While this dissertation fills many knowledge gaps in research, recommendations for future research are made regarding studying more Sayfo postmemory generations than four because the fifth generation is now old enough to be interviewed; studying other villages besides Bote, such as Aynwardo (a village with only Christian inhabitants), Kafro ‘Elayto (a village where some Kurds secretly hid Christians in their homes) and Midyat, the “largest city” nearby Bote, because it is possible that the memory transmission is organized different; to complete the bigger picture, the Sayfo narrative and politics of memory of the Kurds that originate from Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean (grand)mothers should be studied in future research.
