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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sayfo/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 28 July 2022 [1].

Sayfo edit

Nominator(s): (t · c) buidhe 15:50, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the lesser known sibling of the Armenian genocide. Thanks so much to Ichthyovenator and Hog Farm who reviewed at ACR, Jens Lallensack for the GAN, and Miniapolis for a thorough copyedit. (t · c) buidhe 15:50, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • The shading in the Assyrian percentage map is quite difficult to distinguish - see MOS:COLOUR
  • Suggest scaling up the Paris Peace Conference map
  • File:Syrian_Women_of_the_Kurdistan_Mountains_in_Flight.png: why is Iranian copyright believed relevant? The given source was published in the US and UK. If it is kept, the tag indicates that the description should specify which rationale applies.
  • That comment on Iranian copyright applies to multiple other images
  • File:Assyrian_warriors_from_Tergawar,_Iran.jpg: when and where was this first published?
  • File:Map_of_southeastern_Anatolia_printed_in_The_cradle_of_mankind;_life_in_eastern_Kurdistan_(1922)_(14576929017).jpg: one of the authors listed died less than 70 years ago
  • File:Oramar._Looking_northwards_across_the_gorge_towards_the_crags_of_Supa_Durig_between_Jilu_and_Baz.jpg: can a more specific copyright tag be applied?
  • File:Syriac_Orthodox_family_in_Mardin,_1904.jpg: what is the author's date of death? Ditto File:Map_of_Assyria_Paris_Peace_Conference_1919.jpg. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:05, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nikkimaria I put Iranian tags because the photographs were taken in Iran, so I figured that would be the source country.
Okay - tag requires that the description page identify which rationale listed is believed to apply. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:11, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Assyrian_warriors_from_Tergawar,_Iran.jpg —published in US in 1924, details added to image description.
  • File:Map_of_southeastern_Anatolia_printed_in_The_cradle_of_mankind;_life_in_eastern_Kurdistan_(1922)_(14576929017).jpg As stated in the deletion request, the man who died in 1935 is credited with the illustrations in the book, while the other guy wrote the text
  • File:Oramar._Looking_northwards_across_the_gorge_towards_the_crags_of_Supa_Durig_between_Jilu_and_Baz.jpg Same situation as the previous one, this is PD-old-70-1923, licensing corrected
  • File:Syriac_Orthodox_family_in_Mardin,_1904.jpg I'm not sure about the author's death date, but the French source linked in the image description says the author's works are public domain and I have no reason to doubt it.
  • As for the map, I don't know about the author's death so removed that claim. But it was definitely published in 1919 or 1920. (t · c) buidhe 05:35, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Still concerned about the map shading; image description on Iranian images needs to identify which rationale is believed to apply. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:40, 13 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by GGT

I had worked quite a bit on this article a number of years ago, so am quite familiar with the topic in general. Buidhe's important work on this rather under-researched but important part of history has been exciting to follow and I'll be pleased to read through the article and share some of my thoughts - this is my first FAC review on en.wiki so please do bear with me.

  • I'm not too comfortable with the image in the lead. We don't really know where this was taken, we don't know who took it. The only verification we have about the image is the single sentence caption in a 1916 book that seems to have been sponsored by the Assyrian Church. All it shows is a bunch of women wearing the garments of the day and carrying a bunch of bags in a countryside setting. I've just seen too many instances of falsified or out-of-context claimed images of atrocities for this period. Granted, these are mostly from the denialist camp but as the article explains quite well, the Assyrian church had its own reasons for being less than factual. So I'm not comfortable with having this image in the article without a secondary source using it, or at least some attribution.
  • Similarly with the image captioned "Cavalry and slain Assyrians at the mission in Urmia". This image is so low-resolution that it's not even very meaningful. The caption in the primary source from which it's taken raises more questions than it answers.
    • Removed both images
  • "The Syriac Orthodox Church has officially rejected the use of "Assyrian" since 1952, however, but not all Syriac Orthodox reject Assyrian identity." "However, but" sounds a bit clunky.
    • Reworded
  • "David Gaunt has estimated the Assyrian population at between 500,000 and 600,000 just before the outbreak of World War I, significantly higher than Ottoman census figures." This sentence conveys Gaunt's estimate to be much more confident than it actually is. In fact, Gaunt is very tentative in his calculations in the cited work as well as his more detailed account in Massacres, Resistance, Protectors. His bottom line is that there aren't really any reliable figures for the population, and I don't think that this comes across as such in the article. The sentence also begs the question of what the official Ottoman figure was and why it's discounted, which should be easy enough to add to the article.
    • Reworded. There was no official Ottoman figure for Assyrians since they were counted in a fragmentary way by religious denomination; I removed the reference to the census. In his 2006 book, Gaunt says that the 1914 Ottoman census's figures for "non-Muslims were thoroughly misleading and inaccurate. As a token of the confused nature of the official census-taking and the lack of coordination between the local correspondents, the Syriac Orthodox population is shown in three separate categories: Süryaniler, Eski Süryaniler, and Jakobiler"
  • I'm hoping to keep posting comments as I read through the article. --GGT (talk) 17:46, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for your feedback! (t · c) buidhe 15:26, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the improvements! I consider the issues above to be fully resolved. Moving on...
  • "Under the Qudshanis-based Patriarch of the Church of the East, Assyrian tribes ruled farmers in the Hakkari mountains east of Tur Abdin (adjacent to the Ottoman–Persian border) with aşiret status—in theory, with full autonomy." I note that this section, along with a substantial part of the article, relies extensively on Gaunt's work: I won't critique this too much as I'm aware that this is an understudied topic but some of his more general comments should be taken with a pinch of salt, and this is one of those. The sentence doesn't make sense to me as a native Turkish speaker as aşiret isn't really a status. It simply means "tribe" (so the sentence is repetitive) and was integrated into Ottoman administrative hierarchy as such, but it wasn't a status that was bestowed, so to speak, and it also didn't theoretically provide full autonomy. (For a non-Turkish speaker I imagine this sentence also doesn't really clarify what an aşiret is.) This article provides a good overview of what an "aşiret" is its place in Ottoman law. If Assyrian tribes enjoyed full autonomy, that would have been thanks to the remoteness of the region rather than any status.
    • Rephrased
  • "Assyrian efforts to maintain their independence" - this should probably read "autonomy" rather than independence.
    • Done
  • "Historians date mass violence against the Assyrians to the 1830s or earlier" - I'd say that the wording here is a bit too similar to the source. Also Gaunt doesn't really cite any historical works to substantiate this statement.
    • Reworded
  • There is a bit of a chronological confusion here - the Russo-Turkish war precedes the creation of the Hamidiye cavalry; the cavalry should probably be discussed within the context of the Hamidian massacres. --GGT (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Added dates and restored chronological order. The cavalry were not involved in the 1895 massacres in Diyarbekir. (t · c) buidhe 14:58, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In particular, the Ottoman Empire wanted to annex Persia's Azerbaijan province to connect with Russia's Muslim subjects in Transcaucasia." I'd say that this is a slight oversimplification of the Ottoman motives, this article provides a better summary than Gaunt for this IMO. At any rate, the aim wasn't necessarily to "annex" to territory but rather to "occupy" it.
    • Removed the sentence. I'm not sure exactly what the academic consensus on this issue is, but I would hesitate to cite that source since as far as I can tell it doesn't say anything about Assyrians.
  • "Historian Donald Bloxham emphasizes the negative influence of interfering foreign powers in the Ottoman Empire (including plots to annex territory) under the pretext of protecting Ottoman Christians." A very important point - I think one or two sentences about the British involvement with the Assyrians prior to the Sayfo is actually essential background.
    • Do you know any good sources on this? I can't find any and Bloxham's book says virtually nothing about Assyrians that's not already covered. I know there were American, French, and British missionaries; is there a reason the British were most important?
  • "According to Gaunt, the Sayfo should be considered among other settler genocides that sought the elimination of the original inhabitants to redistribute land to a different population." I'm unable to verify this I think. It's not in Gaunt's chapter (p. 245 onwards) and it's not on p. 331, which is cited. In general, I find the focus on Turkification and settler colonialism as a motive for Sayfo in this paragraph a bit bizarre and undue. The areas populated by the Assyrians weren't really very "desirable" areas and unlike the properties of the Armenians, they mostly weren't repopulated by Turks. Yalçın (2009) quotes Dündar in a comment that is general about the repopulation of Christian villages with muhacirs, that shouldn't be understood as specifically applying to the Assyrians. And again I don't think Gaunt really substantiates his resettlement argument in the 2015 paper either, the whole paragraph is vague ("The order to resettle the Nestorians of Hakkari was one step within this greater scheme"), and as I said I think the article relies a bit too much on Gaunt's analysis of events already - this might be a good place to cut down on it unless other researchers explicitly agree with him on this.
  • --GGT (talk) 17:03, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • It does show up on page 331 of the version I consulted. The argument is more that they were mostly killed by other locals (not primarily Turks) with less involvement from the government. Although their land wasn't the most desirable, my understanding is it was indeed taken over by other people (although mostly not muhacir) after the Sayfo. Locally driven violence and land appropriation is typical of settler genocides (eg. see Civilian-Driven Violence and the Genocide of Indigenous Peoples in Settler Societies.) However, I don't feel strongly about including this particular language, so removed

Comments by Ovinus

Will get reviewing in a moment. Thanks for your important work as always. Ovinus (talk) 23:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • First sentence – I'm pretty sure MOS says to avoid slashes. (Sorry to be the obsessive/pedant.) Is it because of the controversial terminology? I think that's a perfectly valid exception, but just want to make sure
    • Yes, it's because the people may be called either Assyrians or Syriacs
  • "irregulars" (twice) – too technical for a lead. perhaps "guerillas" or "paramilitaries", but I'd even prefer "independent fighters" or something
    • Changed to "Ottoman forces" referring to both soldiers and irregulars
  • "were not part of the genocide" – Clarify whether they were not part of his order specifically or the ensuing genocide in practice
    • The latter, clarified
  • "Local actors played a larger role for local actors than the Ottoman government" – I do not understand this sentence
    • "Local actors played a larger role than the Ottoman government", fixed
  • "this is rejected by Turkey" – Also say that Turkey denies the Armenian genocide, which is quite relevant I think
    • Not sure about this, Armenian genocide denial is only briefly mentioned in the body so seems like it may be UNDUE in the lead. Thanks for reviewing! (t · c) buidhe 02:25, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Understood
  • "collective identity such as the Armenian national movement" – maybe "analogous to" ?
    • "similar to"
  • "There were no accurate estimates of the prewar Assyrian population" – were or are?
    • The source is discussing past estimates
  • "The first mass violence targeting Assyrians was in the 1940s ... killing several thousands during the 1840s" – I assume you mean 1940s, and probably remove the second date
    • 1840s, fixed
  • "During intertribal feuds, most violence was directed at Christian villages under the "protection" of the opposing tribe." – I assumed "most" was considered over Christian villages, so I rephrased, but rv if that's not right
    • Not sure what you mean
      • Never mind, I confused myself
  • "realize Pan-Turanism" – define or remove
    • Removed
  • "Turkify" – I remember this word was used in Armenian genocide, but just to confirm, RS use this word?
    • Cited source says "Talât developed a scheme of demographic engineering that would also enable the Turkification of those refugees who were not already Turkish speaking."

Really sorry to do this, but I'm too tired to get through the rest of the article atm. It's pretty dense stuff for someone who has trouble following key events and people. Back with Armenian genocide there were just a lot less people and places to remember, plus a very helpful map. But I'm not sure if this is something that can be fixed without degrading the encyclopedic quality of the article. Ovinus (talk) 05:15, 11 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ovinus yeah I understand and thanks for reviewing what you did review. Unfortunately the Sayfo is less centralized than the Armenian genocide and therefore more people and places to keep track of. (t · c) buidhe 05:22, 11 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Funk edit

  • Marking my spot. FunkMonk (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • At first glance, there are a lot of WP:duplinks throughout, which can be highlighted with this script:[2]
    • Thanks for your review! I've removed many of the duplinks, except where there is a considerable distance between links and I think it helps the reader to keep them in. (t · c) buidhe 18:04, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Terms for Syriac Christians such as Assyrian, Syriac, Aramean, and Chaldean" These names should all be linked here at their first mention, no? Now they are first linked under second mention in the background section.
    • I don't think that would be helpful. The terminology article explains the use of these terms, which are not synonymous with the names or the membership of the churches.
You link all these names not much later, though, so why link them there and not at first mention? FunkMonk (talk) 01:26, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't link any of the terms on their own and as I was trying to say, Syriac ≠ Syriac Orthodox, etc. Some Syriac Orthodox identify as Assyrian, other Syriac Orthodox are not Assyrian. (t · c) buidhe 07:25, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Link Ottoman Empire at first mention in article body.
    • Done
  • "speaking of an 'Assyrian Genocide' is anachronistic" I think we need to know what the alternative is here then, a general Christian genocide?
    • Gaunt doesn't propose an immediate alternative and does not buy into the idea of a general Christian genocide. Since the localized killings in different areas occurred for different reasons, one potential argument is that there's more than one Assyrian genocide (although I haven't seen this in RS)
  • "In Neo-Aramaic" Could be explained in parenthesis that is is the language spoken by these ethnicities, now there is no context.
    • done
  • "The people now called Assyrian, Chaldean, or Aramean, who historically spoke Aramaic languages, converted to Christianity in the first centuries CE" Would it be more accurate to say they are descendants of people who converted to Christianity, as their modern supposed self-identities would otherwise be retroactively applied to their ancestors, who we do not know identified as what?
    • Rephrased
  • Perhaps also specify these were people native of West Asia/Near East/Asia Minor/whatever works.
    • Done
  • Link Middle Eastern Christian?
    • Done
  • Link Nestorians
    • Done
  • "Unlike the Syriac population of Tur Abdin, many of these Syriacs spoke other languages." Unclear what is meant by this. What language did those of Tur Abdin speak, and what did the others speak?
    • non-Aramaic languages (eg. Kurdish, Armenian, Arabic)
  • Link World War I at first mention.
    • Done
  • "Although the Kurds and Assyrians were well-integrated" With each other or with the Ottoman Empire?
    • the former, clarified
  • Link Russian Empire.
    • Done
  • "tried to enlist Caucasian" Link to Caucasus or similar to avoid confusion.
    • done
  • Link Persian at first mention.
    • done
  • "confiscated from populations deemed unreliable" Perhaps specify they were unreliable to the empire, I was unsure who the CUP worked under at first read.
    • done
  • Link Turkify.
    • Done
  • "The goals of the population replacement were to Turkify the newcomers" Who are the newcomers, Muslims from other areas? Perhaps state specifically that these were of non-Turkish ethnicities, if that's the case?
    • Some but not all the Balkan Muslims were non-Turkish (ie. Slavic-speaking, Albanian etc.) The source doesn't go into detail here though
  • "expelled from the Lizan valley" To where? And where were Christians generally expelled to?
    • It's not clear where they went, probably other Assyrian areas. There weren't a significant number of other Christians living in the Lizan valley at this time.

Thanks for your comments! (t · c) buidhe 08:13, 13 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Link Sunni Muslim.
    • Done
  • "clearly related to the extermination orders from Constantinople" You don't mention extermination orders earlier, would seem the question of whether there were such orders could be dealt with in more detail, now it seems like a strong claim with little backing in-text.
    • Removed since the source doesn't elaborate and other sources don't specify whether the killings were ordered from Constantinople or decided by local CUP leaders (or lean towards the latter interpretation)
  • "a collection of eyewitness reports" Reports about what?
    • fixed
  • "The CUP government reversed its position on the Hamidiye regiments" Reversed from what? Until now, you have only stated they cooperated with the Ottoman authorities.
    • Done
  • "many Christian men were drowned in the river." The article body doesn't seem to state this anywhere? Image captions should preferably not have unsourced information not covered in the article body.
    • Removed
  • Halfway trough the article, you seem to switch from calling them Assyrians to Syriacs. If there is no particular reason for this, it might be better to be consistent.
    • This because self-identified Assyrian identity is less common for the (descendants of the) mainly Syriac Orthodox population of Diyarbekir.
  • "The killers began separating Armenians and Syriacs in early July, only killing the former" Regardless of their obvious role, it seems a bit blunt and informal to just refer to them as "the killers".
    • Changed to perpetrators
  • "militiamen were caught attempting to plant arms in a Syriac Catholic church in Mardin to justify the planned massacres" I don't understand the logic of this. How does an explosion in a church justify killing Christians?
    • Not bombs, arms as in firearms. although source isn't explicit about the type of weapon. They weren't trying to blow up the church but rather "find" weapons there to "prove" that Christians were plotting a rebellion. Clarified
  • "Those who refused to convert to Islam was murdered" Were murdered.
    • Fixed
  • "The city's Syriac Orthodox made a deal with authorities and were spared" What did the deal entail?
    • It's not known exactly what kind of deal, but it apparently involved payment of a bribe, release of Syriac Orthodox notables and their subsequent declaration of support for the government (Gaunt 2006, pp. 171–172)
  • "Islamicized Syriacs (primarily women) were left behind; their Kurdified (or Arabized)" Link "ized/ified" terms.
    • Done
  • "becoming landless agricultural laborers or (later) and urban underclass" Do you mean "an urban underclass"? Otherwise, it's a kind of odd sentence.
    • Fixed
  • "In 2000, Syriac Orthodox priest Yusuf Akbulut was secretly recorded by journalists saying: "At that time it was not only the Armenians but also the Assyrians [Süryani] who were massacred on the grounds that they were Christians". The journalists gave their recording to Turkish prosecutors" You should specify if he lived in Turkey.
    • Done
  • The intro could mention that the Assyrians fought back in some cases, now it looks like they were just passively exterminated?
    • Done
  • Support - nice work, and while a difficult subject, I hope it will attract more reviewers soon. FunkMonk (talk) 13:13, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Coordinator comment - at over a month in with only a single general support, this nomination is liable to be archived after a couple days without significant further movement towards a consensus to promote. Hog Farm Talk 02:02, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Dudley edit

  • "experienced war between Kurdish tribes and their Assyrian allies". This is confusing. It appears to say that allies were fighting each other.
    • Rephrased
  • "The first major schism in Syriac Christianity dates to 410, when Christians in the Sassanid Empire (Persia) formed the Church of the East to distinguish themselves from the official religion of the Roman Empire." This is a bit confusing as you say that the beakaway from the religion of the Roman Empire was a split in Syriac religion. If you mean that the West Syriac church sided with the Romans but later broke away from the Catholics and Orthodox you should say so.
    • Clarified
  • "Assyrian tribes ruled farmers in the Hakkari mountain". I do not think it makes sense to speak of a tribe ruling.
    • Rephrased
  • "interfering foreign powers in the Ottoman Empire" Which foreign powers?
    • European ones
  • "the loss of the Balkan Wars" This is ungrammatical and unclear. Who were the parties to the war and who won?
    • the Ottomans lost the war (clarified this). Who they were fighting against (Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania) is not important to this article.
  • "deemed unreliable to the empire". This is ungrammatical. Maybe disloyal to the empire?
    • Done
  • "deportation of the Christian population" deportation to where?
    • That's a complex question and it's partly addressed in the remainder of the article. I don't think it would be possible to explain in this paragraph.
  • "Mar Shimun sent Malik Khoshaba and bishop Mar Yalda Yahwallah from Barwari to Tabriz in Persia to request urgent assistance from the Russians" Why to Persia? What was the relationship between Russian and Persia? (If I have not missed your explanation)
    • Mentioned Russian occupation of northeastern Persia, which predated the war, at an earlier point in the article.
  • "There were no missionaries in the Salmas valley to protect Christians" Why should missionaries have been able to protect the Christians?
    • Reordered paragraphs as this question is addressed in the other paragraph (the attackers were reluctant to target missionary compounds)
  • More to follow. Dudley Miles (talk) 14:49, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks so much for your review! (t · c) buidhe 05:44, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Half of the second convoy, which departed on 12 June, was massacred when messengers from Diyarbekir announced that the non-Armenians had been pardoned by the sultan" This seems a non-sequitur.
    • Clarified timing (the massacre occurred before the arrival of the envoy)
  • "discouraged discussion of the Sayfo in fear of reprisals from the Turkish government". "for fear" would be better.
    • Done
  • This appears to be a sound article so far as a reviewer with no knowledge of the subject can judge. The locations mean nothing to me, but this would apply to any reader who does not have a specialist knowledge of the geography and I doubt whether there is any easy solution.
  • My main query is about the word "Assyrian". This would usually mean the the ancient empire, and I think you should spell out the meaning in a twentieth-century context. Dudley Miles (talk) 17:19, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Done
    I'm really sorry for not getting to your comments yet. I should be able to action them by tomorrow. (t · c) buidhe 14:44, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Now done, thanks again for your feedback. (t · c) buidhe 05:47, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by SnowFire edit

Just a few comments. (I read the whole article but my comments are only on the earlier parts.)

  • "There were no accurate estimates of the prewar Assyrian population"
  • I get the gist of this, but if we're being nitpickers - shouldn't this be "precise", or "precise and accurate"? Accurate merely means correct, and somebody's surely made an accurate guess if they are sufficiently vague as well ("between 0 and 3 million"). More generally, I suspect this is really talking about poor Ottoman record-keeping, so maybe "no contemporary estimates" or "no official organized estimates" for other alternatives? Will defer on wording here, I realize that a two-sentence side note explaining that nobody at the time made very good estimates would blunt the focus.
    • "Historian Donald Bloxham emphasizes the negative influence of European powers interfering in the Ottoman Empire under the pretext of protecting Ottoman Christians. This imperialism put the Ottoman Christians at risk of retaliatory attacks. "
  • This doesn't seem to be referenced? I checked Bloxham's book from the sources and can't find him talking about this specifically. Is this in the Gaunt reference (which isn't easily publicly available) where Gaunt is citing some other work by Bloxham? I guess you already mentioned to GGT that Bloxham's book doesn't cover much not already described, but in "Interlude: The Genocide in Context", he has two paragraphs discussing the Assyrian genocide, and in "Interlude: New Minority Questions in the New Near East", he talks about the 1933 Iraqi attacks on Iraqi Assyrians. He doesn't really talk about imperialism in either - he does mention that the Assyrians threw their lot in with the Entente, but also makes clear this was their choice. If it's not clear where Gaunt is citing this from, I'd be careful with this phrasing and attribute it to Gaunt instead. Also, assuming this is indeed claimed by someone, I'm not a fan of the wording. "Pretext" makes it sound like the Entente was led by cynical, secular types who merely used Assyrian Christians as an excuse. Some of the leadership thought this way, but many more seem to have been deadly serious. France thought they were avenging the Crusader states and the Gallic Kingdom, the British had plenty of evangelical true believers, Russia wanted to reclaim Constantinople on religious grounds, and so on. They really did consider the fate of Middle Eastern Christians important, if in a paternalistic way. (This is not exactly a good thing, of course, it explains a lot of the foolish decisions made.. but "neo-crusaders" is different from "it's just an excuse"). Without being able to see the source to know for sure, I suspect a more general "credible fears of invasion worsened inter-religious relations" slant would be better. SnowFire (talk) 18:04, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I know the difference between precision and accuracy and picked this wording because I felt it best summarized the source. There are some precise counts of subsets of the prewar population (i.e. "One count of the “Assyrians”—probably referring only to the Nestorians—in the districts of Hakkari, Bohtan, and Iranian Urmia cites 594 villages and hamlets, with 38,148 households.") just not complete or accurate ones of the entire population that concerns us; the numbers that exist "At best... give approximations"
  • Bloxham doesn't say this specifically about Assyrians as much but Ottoman Christians in general, hence the wording. You could probably get this from reading his book overall and it's certainly supported by the cited source: "Another macro-level idea comes from Donald Bloxham, who emphasizes the dangerous interference of Great Power rivalry as a background to genocide. The nineteenth century’s so-called Great Game rivalry between Russia, Britain, Germany, Austria, and France for influence over the declining Ottoman Empire destabilized that empire, even when the intervention was intended as help. The Great Powers became increasingly involved in the condition of the non-Muslim minorities and what is today called their human rights. Their involvement included plans for grabbing territory under the premise of protecting the non-Muslims. With the connivance of Ottoman officials, this interference put the minorities at risk of retribution." I don't want to attribute to Gaunt since he is clear that it's Bloxham's idea. The Western influence on Assyrians is well known and covered in other sources. (t · c) buidhe 01:28, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • On "accurate": If you think there's no other wording that works, fair enough. I stand by my comment before but recognize as noted that explaining in detail everything would dull the focus and hurt concision.
  • On Bloxham: I couldn't see Gaunt's source, but if that's what he writes, fair enough. I would suggest changing "pretext" to "premise" to match the source, though, since "pretext" has a somewhat different implication here. SnowFire (talk) 13:50, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Looks good on the whole - expect to support, just waiting on the library to deliver one of the books on so I can sanely comment on the Diyarbekir section. (As the Gaunt discussion showed, it's easier when reading the source material...) SnowFire (talk) 03:31, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Kaiser's book is pretty good although hard to get. I actually have (low quality) scans of the relevant chapters and could email them if desired. I also have a pdf of Ungor's chapters and could send those as well if that would help you SnowFire (t · c) buidhe 04:22, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • It was Kaiser's 2014 book on Diabekir that I'd requested, yes. Didn't read all of it, but read a decent amount, the cited pages from the article, and the whole Conclusion chapter, and the references check out. (Okay, with one minor question: why is "Reshid also replaced Midyat governor Nuri Bey with the hardline Edib Bey in July 1915" citing page 290 as well? It's cited in the other page range, though, so it's not really a big deal. Did that sentence used to also talk about economic damage, which is what is discussed in p. 290?)
    • Sometimes I cite multiple pages if the content is confirmed in different places.
  • I will make an optional suggestion: yes, they're wikilinked, but I would consider glossing some of the Ottoman-specific terms for the benefit of a broad audience the first time they're used outside the lede. So vilayet (province), sanjak (district), etc. I also might suggest optionally that "district governor" be used by default in text and glossed as "mutasarrif" on introduction rather than the other way around (Kaiser simply uses "governor" and it doesn't seem like the Ottoman office is particularly different than "governor"?). Might make the article a bit less "dense" as Ovinus put it above, no need to use untranslated terms.
    • Done
      • As a minor clarification - I suspect the term "vilayet" is important enough to still include directly, even if potentially glossed more aggressively (would be hypocritical for me to say otherwise, as I've been recently editing some articles that use "vilayet" myself). It was more mutasarrif and maybe sanjak that just replacing is better. Of course, as stated before, up to you, but don't feel obligated to hide "vilayet" on my account. SnowFire (talk) 07:35, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • One other nit, although unrelated to Kaiser's book: In "Exile in Iraq", there's the line "They worked for the British as mercenaries in Mandatory Iraq". I don't have access to Gaunt 2020 but "mercenaries" is a misleading phrasing that suggests soldiers of fortune looking to make a buck or the like. "Soldiers" is fine. (The Assyrians, like many minorities the British Empire recruited, thought they'd be safer by openly allying with the British and thus having the right of carrying arms just in case. Didn't work in the long-term, of course.)
    • Done
  • Support (although please still consider the remaining nitpicks).SnowFire (talk) 19:31, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks so much for your comments and support! (t · c) buidhe 02:12, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Source review edit

Footnote numbers refer to this version.

  • In a handful of cases there's no "p." or "pp." in the citation: [3], [212], [220], [221], [228], [236], [239], [240] & [270].
  • Some of the chapters are missing page ranges: Gaunt (2013), Tamcke, Yalcin, and Yuhanon.
  • Hellot-Bellier is missing issue information. So is Gaunt, but there I see you're using cite web, which seems reasonable for that one.

That's everything I can see -- sources are reliable, and all links work. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:23, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Christie The openedition journals open access mode doesn't display page number, but they do show paragraph number. I use the loc= parameter for the paragraph number which actually is more verifiable than the page since paragraphs are shorter.
Added pp.
For Hellot-Bellier, there is no volume number, only an issue number.
  • Thanks for your review! (t · c) buidhe 01:10, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Two struck. For the remaining point, I don't understand how that works. E.g. footnotes [3] and [5] both refer to Gaunt 2010; the latter has a "pp." indication and the former does not. When I go to the external link for that article, I don't get taken to a particular paragraph or page. I can see there's no page number, so I take your point there, but how do I find the paragraph number and what am I looking for? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:57, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Right, the Gaunt article unlike Hellot-Bellier doesn't have paragraph numbers either. At one point I was able to access the pages for this source, but then I needed to cite it again and forgot how to access the page numbers. Now added. (t · c) buidhe 16:36, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK -- looks good. I might suggest using "para." where one would otherwise put "p." in those cases, to help the reader understand what to look for, but that's optional. Pass. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:16, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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