Sayfo; Village of Derek

Village of Derek

The village of Derek is the administrative center of the Derik district, which was part of the Mardin sanjak. There is possibly another village by the same name located in the southern part of the Diyarbakir vilayet that is part of Syria now.

There is no documentation of widespread atrocities against the Christian population of Derik before the late nineteenth century. This changed during the Hamidian massacres from 1895 to 1897, which marked the first recorded major threat to the Christian population of Derik. On November 10, 1895, Kurdish groups attempted to enter the town with the intent to plunder the village. This attack was thwarted by the intervention of Ottoman government soldiers, who repelled the Kurdish forces and prevented the plunder of the town at that time.

In 1908, Derek was the site of significant military activity. Following the political shifts in the Ottoman Empire, General Emin Pasha, the commander of the regular army in Diyarbakir, arrived in Derek with a force consisting of ten units of regular and reserve soldiers and four cavalry regiments. This large military deployment was part of a campaign to suppress the rebellion of Milli Ibrahim Pasha, who had fled Viranshehir to seek refuge in a nearby village. During this operation, the Ottoman soldiers were supplied with provisions from the local resources in Derik.

The Sayfo genocide between 1915 and 1924 resulted in the nearly total destruction of the Christian community in Derek. The primary massacre in Derek occurred on August 11, 1915. During this atrocity, the entire Christian population, which included both Syriacs and Armenians and totaled more than 1,000 people, was massacred. Regarding religious infrastructure and leadership, historical tables indicate that one church in Derik was destroyed during the period of 1915–1918, and at least one member of the clergy was killed. Following the peak of the violence, survivors were few, though some individuals managed to escape and find refuge in Anhel, a Syriac Orthodox town. By the winter of 1915–1916, the town of Derek, along with dozens of other Christian settlements in the Diyarbekir province, was described as desolate, as the indigenous Christian population had been effectively eliminated.

Before the onset of the massacres, the town’s Christian population was composed of various denominations, with reports identifying approximately 250 families of Armenian, Syriac, and Protestant faith. However, reports presented to the Paris Peace Conference by the Syriac Orthodox delegation recorded that the kaza of Derik contained 50 families, and that 350 individuals from the Syriac Orthodox community were victims of the genocide.