Amidst the partition of the Ottoman Empire, Cizre was allocated to become part of 'the specifically French zone of interests' as per the Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August 1920. However, Turkey concentrated a significant number of forces at Cizre in January 1923 to bolster the Turkish position at the Lausanne Conference of 1922–23, and the city itself was retained by Turkey, but part of the district was transferred to Syria and Iraq. In response to Kurdish revolts in the 1920s, the Turkish government aimed to Turkify the population of eastern Turkey, but Christians were deemed unsuitable, and thus attempted to eradicate those who had survived the genocide. In this effort, 257 Syriac Orthodox men from Azakh and neighbouring villages were imprisoned by the government at Cizre in 1926, where they were beaten and denied food.