Kurdish-Christian Armenian relations were bitter at the turn of the 19th century and land conflicts were a major problem. Many Christians and Europeans regarded the Kurds as barbarians and a major threat, the French consul at Erzurum describing them as a blood-thirsty savage population which is used to plundering and a nomadic life. Kurds also played a major part in the Ottoman army, also through the Hamidiye. The Kurdish chieftain Bedr Khan during his rise to power massacred about 10,000 Assyrians in 1842. Nestorian tribes were massacred by Kurds in 1843. In 1915 Kurds massacred more than 27,000 Assyrians in Urmia region alone and destroyed more than 100 villages Assyrian villages in March 1915 alone. In 1916 Kurds and Turks massacred Assyrians in Bohtan region. Both Kurdish and Turkish nationalists deny the fact that Assyrians were the original inhabitants of south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. The Assyrian population was so small in the aftermath of the genocide that the region called Assyria in ancient times came to be known as "Kurdistan". The Kurds and Turks cynically resisted Assyrian and Armenian efforts to attain statehood after World War II. While the Kurdish population doubled from two million in 1970 to four million in 2002, the Christian population decreased.