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According to historian David Gaunt, a primary characteristic was the total targeting of the Assyrian population, including farming villages as well as rebelling mountain tribes. The killing in rural regions was more extensive, while some survived the massacres in cities; Gaunt states that this indicates that a primary aim was the confiscation of land. The property, villages and animals of the villagers were destroyed totally to prevent their return.[1] In most areas, the genocide occurred between June and October 1915.[2]
^Gaunt 2015, p. 85. sfn error: no target: CITEREFGaunt2015 (help)
^Cetin, Önder (2021). "Revisiting the Prospect of Revision in Turkish Secondary School History Textbooks: the Case of the Assyrian Debate". British Journal of Educational Studies: 1–20. doi:10.1080/00071005.2021.1990851.
^Mutlu-Numansen, Sofia; Ossewaarde, Marinus (2019). "A Struggle for Genocide Recognition: How the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean Diasporas Link Past and Present". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 33 (3): 412–428. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcz045.
^Mutlu-Numansen, Sofia; Ossewaarde, Ringo (2015). "Heroines of gendercide: The religious sensemaking of rape and abduction in Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean migrant communities". European Journal of Women's Studies. 22 (4): 428–442. doi:10.1177/1350506815605646.
Latest comment: 28 days ago18 comments2 people in discussion
Most sources would agree there is a general lack of documents & evidence when it comes to estimating the death toll, although it's possible that Assyrian leaders at the Paris Peace Conference could have had more documents that have not survived. Also, they had an incentive for exaggerating it. This is why the credible sources I'm aware of either accept this claim at face value or point out that it could be an overestimate. For the additional numbers added to the article, what is the evidence basis behind them? 750,000 is particularly incredible given that it would be roughly equal to the number of Armenian deaths despite the lower Assyrian/Syriac population before the war in the areas targeted for genocide. (t · c) buidhe14:09, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
I feel it would be good to present that information alongside the other numbers with appropriate sourcing, personally. Pietrus1 (talk) 17:26, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
I mean presenting this information alongside all instances of dubious casualty claims. For example, in the lead we have: "At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Assyro-Chaldean delegation said that its losses were 250,000, about half the prewar population. The accuracy of this figure is unknown. They later revised their estimate to 275,000 dead at the Lausanne Conference in 1923". In my view, this should be revised with a link down to the Historiography section, which includes sources on the nature of these claims. People often get very attached to these figures in events like this (one way or another), so in my opinion, such claims of X casualties should not be presented without reference to sources casting doubt on the figures unless sources are not credible. "Appropriate sourcing" refers to those sort of sources. Pietrus1 (talk) 17:41, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
That's what I attempted to do by mentioning that the accuracy of the figures is not known. What kind of revision are you looking for? I think it could be misleading to say that "historian David Gaunt writes that the delegation had an incentive to exaggerate and the accuracy of the figure is unknown" beccause it's not just Gaunt's opinion, no one else knows either. (t · c) buidhe20:01, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think I misunderstood your original comment a bit. My point is just that I would generally like to see all estimates presented with due weight. I specifically dislike the lead, especially given that such figures are disputed. Something generally in line with: "casualty estimation has proven fraught (see #section)" would seem preferable. Pietrus1 (talk) 20:17, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would be fine with mentioning alternative estimates that are widely mentioned in sources, but these don't exist. The vast majority of sources only cite the delegation estimates because that's all there is, although these figures are doubtful and impossible to confirm. (t · c) buidhe20:24, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section, the lead is supposed to be a summary of the body. It currently states the most commonly listed estimate as well as the problems with it. "casualty estimation has proven fraught (see #section)" is not as informative and does not really summarize the relevant body section. (t · c) buidhe03:50, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Do you happen to know of examples from other articles where totals are similarly disputed for comparison? Perhaps one has settled on a more agreeable alternative to this situation? Pietrus1 (talk) 04:05, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
In that case, how about this revision in line with what was said in this thread: "At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Assyro-Chaldean delegation said that its losses were 250,000, about half the prewar population. While this remains the most commonly-cited estimate for the number of victims of the Sayfo, the accuracy of this figure is unknown. They later revised their estimate to 275,000 dead at the Lausanne Conference in 1923."
This would be a reasonable suggestion if it could be sourced. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any source that says this directly, making it original research that we cannot use in mainspace. (t · c) buidhe04:58, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Then would you mind if I expanded out the death toll section with the same Gaunt journal article that includes information on information supporting that figure? We currently have the only that 50% or more were killed, but he goes into greater detail that I think is relevant. He mentions that he includes multipled more detailed local estimates of massacre totals in his book "Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I" as well. I do not currently have access to that, however. Pietrus1 (talk) 14:46, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
My proposition is to draw a stronger connection between Gaunt's usage of the "50%" statistic on which the 250,000 estimate is based and the various local estimates. In effect, I would be attempting to better capture the meaning of this line "...it
would have been natural for them to have exaggerated the figures—but, in fact, a 50% death rate may have been exceeded in some places." What is in the death toll section now did not make the connection fully clear to me until I read the source. I actually do not have access to the Wikipedia library either. I am active relatively infrequently, though my account is old enough. I mostly have edited more obscure topics (300~ total edits). I have been primarily working on the 1980s assimilation campaign and ethnic cleansing of Bulgarian Turks of late, for instance. I would imagine I will slide back into inactivity eventually. Pietrus1 (talk) 16:53, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Sure go ahead and make any edits that you think improve clarity based on these sources. If you email me, I can send you the relevant parts from ''Massacres, Resistance, Protectors''. (t · c) buidhe03:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Why is there no info box on this otherwise excellent article? It seems to be the convention that articles regarding discrete persecution-related events include info boxes, why does this article not have one? Can one be introduced? Pietrus1 (talk) 17:08, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Infoboxes can be helpful, but in this case I don't think they are. Most of the fields are disputed, unknown, or lose important nuance when squeezed into an infobox. The prose in the lead does a better job of informing the reader where it took place and the lack of reliable information on deaths. (t · c) buidhe17:31, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Makes sense. My disagreement regards the extent to which people look to wikipedia's info boxes for this sort of information and search engines scrape that information. Would it not be better to create an info box with most of the relevant boxes left as "See x" in the interest of the popular dissemination of this information? For example, the Holocaust article (which you seem to be active in?) cites the number of victims as "around 6 million Jews". I would like to present the information here even more vaguely than that. Pietrus1 (talk) 17:45, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply