Sunday, June 15 marks a day of commemoration as the genocide of Syriac Christians reaches its 110th anniversary. Undertaken alongside the genocides of Armenian and Greek Christians by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, the genocide, known as the “Sayfo” in the Syriac language, claimed at least 275,000 lives. At least half of the Syriac Christian community perished under this persecution, with higher estimates reaching as many as 750,000.
Syriac Christians comprise members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Syriac Catholic Church. The smaller and newer Assyrian Protestant community also faced persecution.
The Chaldean Catholic and Syriac Catholic Churches are constituent Eastern Catholic Churches within the wider Roman Catholic Church that are in full unity with the Vatican but maintain linguistic and self-governing independence.
All of these groups are united by historically speaking the Syriac language, a modern dialect of the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus Christ.
Ottoman Turkish Minister of the Interior, Talaat Pasha, sought the removal of Christian groups from their historic lands so that Muslim Turks and Kurds might be resettled there. Beginning in 1915, Syriac Christians were forced to flee their homes, subject to long marches where thousands succumbed to illness or starvation, and in many cases were outright slaughtered.
Firsthand accounts from the time such as The Rage of Islam by Yonan (John) Shahbaz relate the public murder of Catholic and Assyrian priests and the torture of families, including children, who were given the option of renouncing their faith or death. Ottoman authorities set churches ablaze, burning to death their congregants within. Others were shot en masse.
The Christian population in what is today Eastern Turkey fell by as much as 90 percent, concurrent with the loss of the Greek and Armenian Christian populations elsewhere in Turkey. Several areas lost the entirety of their Christian population. Eight of the 20 Syriac Orthodox dioceses were wiped out.
Many Syriac Christians fled, both across the Middle East and to locations abroad such as the United States, where a diaspora community of all three groups has existed for over a century. In fact, the non-Catholic Syriac churches are both led today by Americans.
Mar Awa III, Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, was born and raised in Chicago. The Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Mor Aphrem II, was born in Syria but immigrated to the United States, where he spent two decades as archbishop of the East American Diocese of the Syriac Orthodox Church.
Within the realm of American politics, Syriac Christians have gained significant recognition as an important demographic contributing to Republican victories. On the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump took time to thank by name the Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian communities for their depth of support.
He also sat down for an hour-and-a-half podcast interview with popular Assyrian media figure Patrick Bet-David. Assyrian Patriarch Mar Awa III congratulated Trump the day of his victory in the 2024 election, referencing the long history of persecution his people have experienced.
June 15 was chosen as remembrance day for the Sayfo to mark the murder of two bishops. This year’s Sayfo Remembrance Day will include mournful church services, the consecration of a rare monument honoring victims in the Middle East, and nationwide screenings of a documentary on the genocide hosted by the American Syriac Orthodox community.
Memories of the Sayfo have loomed large in past decades amidst wars in Iraq and Syria. Islamic extremist groups such as ISIS abducted, displaced, and murdered thousands of Syriac Christians on a scale unseen in a century. In response, locally organized Christian militias played a key role in defending their remaining villages and eventually defeating ISIS.
In a statement given by the Syriac Orthodox Church during last year’s commemoration, members vowed to “remember the atrocities” but also to “meditate on Christ’s words from His sermon on the Mount: ‘Love your enemies, and pray for those that persecute you.’”
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