TUR ABDIN

TUR ABDIN, Turkey — The Heritage Preservation Center published information about two important projects, one about Edirne and the other about the Tur Abdin region. The Center stated that they visited Tur Abdin and inspected the architectural inscriptions found in the houses of Syriac (Aramean–Assyrian–Chaldean) people there. They also recorded…

By Denho Bar Mourad-Özmen journalist and TV moderator Suroyo TV  Most of the older towns and villages in the Mhalmayto region originally had Syriac names. Some villages still retain the names of their Christian saints today: Dayrozbino (Mor Zbino ܙܒܝܢܐ  ܡܪܝ  Acirli), kfarhewar, Mor Aday (ܡܪܝ ܐܕܝ , Baskavak), Kfarzota…

ANKARA / TUR ABDIN, Turkey — Political parties and institutions of the Syriac (Aramean–Assyrian–Chaldean) people in Europe sent a letter of protest to the Turkish Minister of Forests and the Mardin Governor regarding the encroachment on the mountainous forests adjacent to the Syriac villages of Derqube and Beth Kustan in…

ANKAARA / TUR ABDIN – Syriac Member of Turkish Parliament Tuma Çelik has raised the unsolicited tree felling in the woods near the Syriac village of Derqube with the Turkish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. MP Çelik asked about the why and who of the decision to cut down the…

By Denho Bar Mourad-Özmen journalist and TV moderator Suroyo TV  After the two previous articles in our series on the Mhalmayto region – The Mhalmoye (ܡܚܠܡ̈ܝܐ). Who are they? and The Mhalmoye (ܡܚܠܡ̈ܝܐ) and their conversion to Christianity – we now turn to the Mhalmoye who were of cultural, religious,…

By Denho Bar Mourad-Özmen journalist and TV moderator for Suroyo TV  Like  many of the religions and cults of other peoples of Upper Mesopotamia, the Mhalmoye religion was one of worship to the sun god Shamash. In the vernacular Mhalmoyo language, the Arabic dialect of the Mhalmoye, the sun worshippers were called…

By Denho Bar Mourad-Özmen journalist and TV moderator at Suroyo TV  From the days of the Assyrian Empire in late antiquity, Mhalmoyto (ܐܝ ܡܚܠܡܝܬܐ) is the name given to the western half of the administrative part of Tur Abdin, in current-day southeastern Turkey. The Mhalmoyto Region is located between the city of…

Syriac resident of Tur Abdin, Yakup Mete, was killed 28 years ago today in Midyat by the Hezbollah counter-guerrilla. The Turkish Hezbollah, with no direct links to the Lebanese Hezbollah, carried out extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, and torture in the 1990s. The killers of Yakup Mete have never been found.

MIDYAT, Turkey — The wronged Suryoye (Syriacs) in Turkey have long had to do without an independent secular organization defending their cultural, linguistic, and constitutional rights. Decades of denial and subordination of the Suryoye to the Turkish state and Kurdish tribal hierarchies failed to put an end to the patriotic…