When Perpetual Persecution Becomes Ottoman Genocide

Abstract

Abstract A review of Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi's The Thirty-Years Genocide deals with the experience of Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek minorities in late Ottoman and early Republican Turkey. The thesis of a long genocide challenges the international law concept of genocide while reopening a line of interpretation of long-standing persecution that is close to Christian memory, but far from contemporary historians' emphasis on political decision-making. The review specifically deals with the Assyrians who were less of a passive victim than Morris and Ze'evi maintain.