Assyrian genocide

The Syriac/Aramaic Genocide was a genocide by the Ottoman Empire, the estimates ranged from 650,000 and higher Syriacs that were killed during the raids and massacres.

The name goven to this is the "Sayfo" which is the Aramaic word for sword. Many Syriacs were considered unpure by the Turks and were massacred for not submitting their Christian identity. The Syriacs lost their homes and possessions to the Sultan-Adulhamed the Red and even before the genocide—they were persecuted and forced to pay high taxes.

Since ancient times and conquest by the Babylonian, the Syriacs have not have had their own nation. It was called a diaspora and they have spread over to many different countries. Under the Arabs and Turks, they were oppressed and assimilated to society and many lost their independence. Those that survive continue to have a common unity especially in their deep Christian faith.

Personal Exprienced Quate from the "Syriac Voice"

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"One day the Moslems assembled all the children of from six to fifteen years and carried them off to the headquarters of the police. There they led the poor little things to the top of a mountain known as Ras-el Hadjar and cut their throats one by one, throwing their bodies into an abyss."

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Overview of the Massacre

Map showing the Armenian (in colours) and Christian (in shadings) population of the eastern Ottoman provinces in the year 1896. In the areas where the share of Christian population was higher than that of the Armenians, the non-Armenian Christian population largely consisted of Syriacs (except in regions inhabited by Ottoman Greeks). Syriacs lived mostly in the southern and southeastern parts of the region

40 Christians dying a day say Syriac refugees - The Syracuse Herald, 1915.

The Washington Post and other leading newspapers in Western countries reported on the Syriac Genocide as it unfolded.

An article from The New York Times, March 27, 1915.

The Syriac Genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo) was committed against the Aramaic/Syriac population of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War by the Young Turks. The Syriac population of northern Mesopotamia (the Tur Abdin, Hakkari, Van, Siirt regions of present-day southeastern Turkey and the Urmia region of northwestern Iran) was forcibly relocated and massacred by Ottoman (Turkish) and Kurdish forces between 1914 and 1920 under the regime of the Young Turks. Scholars have placed the number of Syriac victims at 500,000 to 750,000.

The Syriac genocide took place in the same context and time-period as the Armenian and Greek genocides. But unlike these, no official national or international recognition of the Syriac genocide has been made, and many accounts discuss the Syriac genocide as a part of the larger events subsumed under the Armenian genocide.