WASHINGTON -- House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY), Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and other leading legislators are reporting publicly that the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.296) is set to come before the U.S. House for a vote as early as next week, reported the Armenian National Committee of America.
Archeologists have unearthed an engraved stone seal some 3,000 years old in southeastern Turkey. The seal was discovered around Zerzevan Castle, also known as Samachi Castle, a onetime important military base for the Byzantine Empire now in the southeastern Diyarbakir province.
Donald Trump's advisers offered him several options aimed at fulfilling his desire to pull back U.S. troops in Syria without allowing Turkey to commence its incursion. One tactic on the table: threatening to recognize the deaths of millions of Armenians and members of other ethnic minorities under the Ottoman Empire as a genocide, a National Security Council official told Newsweek.
Amman -- Humanitarian concerns are growing as people caught in the crosshairs of the Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria try to flee for safety, and groups are scrambling to aid them. "There are big concerns about what is going on in northeastern Syria with the Turkish military aerial assaults and ground operations," Father Emanuel Youkhana told Catholic News Service by phone from northern...
Baghdad -- The populations, Christian and otherwise, from northern Iraq "are afraid of a return of the Islamic State (IS, formerly Isis)", which could exploit the Turkish offensive against the Kurds and the consequences of chaos , to close ranks and reconstitute. In an exclusive interview with AsiaNews Mgr.
Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan falsely claimed Turkey had never "carried out any civilian massacres" in an attempt to assure the world that Ankara is not attempting ethnic cleansing against the Syrian Kurds on Wednesday.
A Syrian archbishop has condemned Western powers following concerns escalating conflict in the north-eastern region of the country could lead to many more Christians fleeing. Turkey's military claims to have seized the key border town of Ras al-Ayn in its attack on the north-eastern border of Syria, a region where many Kurdish people live as well as Arabs, Syrians, and Christians.
The patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church pleaded for "immediate and lasting peace in northeastern Syria and the preservation of innocent lives, especially for Christians, who are the original and founding component of Syria." Celebrating Mass Oct.
AKCAKALE, Turkey (AP) -- Syrian government troops moved into towns and villages in northern Syria on Monday, setting up a potential clash with Turkish-led forces advancing in the area as long-standing alliances in the region begin to crumble following the pullback of U.S. forces. The Syrian military's deployment near the Turkish border came after Syrian Kurdish forces previously allied with the U.
The near consensus view of President Donald Trump's decision to remove US special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey is that Trump is enabling a Turkish invasion and double crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with the Americans for five years against ISIS. Trump's move, the thinking goes, harms US credibility and undermines US power in the region and throughout the world.
A statement from the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Erbil, Bashar M. Warda follows: As the Church, our prayers and hopes are always for an end to this never-ending cycle of violence from all participants. We urge all parties to remember at all times their obligations to protect innocent civilians. Our special concern is for the innocent refugees and displaced of all faiths.
Church bells rang out across the plains of northeast Syria, warning villagers to seek shelter from incoming air raids. It was the first time in a century that the Christian communities in the region were forced to take shelter from a Turkish attack. The Syriac-Assyrians and Armenians of northeast Syria have been divided on their feelings towards the Kurdish-led, U.S.
(AINA) -- A paper published in 2019 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters shows the earliest known record of auroral observations were made by Assyrians circa 660 BC. According to the abstract of the paper: Auroral records found in historical archives and cosmogenic isotopes found in natural archives have served as sound proxies of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar energetic particles...
(AINA) -- Freelance journalist Ferran Barber was warned by the Kurdish authorities that any foreigner who enters the Assyrian valley of Nahla without permission will be imprisoned for months or years. The Spanish researcher was informed about this new regulation after being imprisoned for one month by the Kurdish Internal Security, Asayish.
Chicago (AINA) -- In September of 2014, Attorney Robert DeKelaita was indicted for helping a handful of Assyrian (also known as Chaldean or Syriac) asylum seekers obtain asylum. The government, represented by the US Attorney's Office, alleged that the means used to obtain asylum for the handful of the witnesses chosen to testify against DeKelaita was fraudulent.
(AINA) -- On May 4-5 the Salahaddin University in Erbil, Iraq and the French Institute of the Near East (IFPO) organized a workshop titled Christianity in Iraq at the turn of Islam. Its aim was to discuss important institutional changes for Christians in areas of the collapsed Persian Empire and retreated Byzantine Empire which were conquered by Muslims.
During the years of World War I 75% (750,000) of the Assyrian population in the Ottoman Empire was systematically murdered. That genocide of Assyrians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 is a fact, but it has largely been forgotten by the world.
(AINA) -- When speaking about the Ottoman Empire and Turkey today, it is not their contribution to civilization that comes to mind. Instead it is human rights violations, confiscation of land and property, genocide and genocide denials that are most frequently discussed in the public discourse. Today's Turkey is still far from being ruled by democratic principles.
Archeologists have unearthed an engraved stone seal some 3,000 years old in southeastern Turkey. The seal was discovered around Zerzevan Castle, also known as Samachi Castle, a onetime important military base for the Byzantine Empire now in the southeastern Diyarbakir province.
Mesopotamia is known as the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In this land, which has been home to countless civilizations, numerous cities have been established throughout history. Founded on fertile Mesopotamian lands, Mardin has also hosted different civilizations for thousands of years. It has a multicultural, multireligious, multilingual and multiethnic background.