One year after the abduction and disappearance of an elderly Christian couple in southeast Turkey, their children are still asking the Turkish authorities for help in locating their missing father and holding the perpetrators accountable.
ALQOSH -- In November, I traveled to the beautiful Assyrian villages situated in TurAbdin in southern Turkey. Located a few hundred kilometers northwest of my home in the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq, TurAbdin is accessible using the Ibrahim Al-Khalil port. It took me five hours to reach TurAbdin's city of Midyat (Akkadian: Matiate).
In August 2020, Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi called for Iraq's Christians to return to their country, promising that returnees would be assisted, accepted and protected. As a result, many praised Kadhimi's appeal, viewing it as a hopeful omen for minorities in Iraq.
In a joint letter, a group of church leaders and international figures appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden to lift economic sanctions imposed on the Syrian people and "to help Syrians alleviate a humanitarian crisis that threatens to trigger a new wave of instability in the Middle East.
In the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakır, the Municipality of Eğil and the district governor's office have been working extensively to preserve and promote the ancient Assyrian Eğil Castle and the King Tombs. As part of their efforts, an application was made to UNESCO to register these historical and cultural heritage sites on its World Heritage List.
On the outskirts of Sydney lives an extraordinary artist whose work is bringing others closer to Christ. Syriac Catholic Ghusoon Durdur and her family were forced to leave their home in Bakhdida, northern Iraq when they were threatened by ISIS.
International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that the Turkish authorities have stalled the investigation into the disappearance of elderly Assyrian-Chaldean Christians Hurmüz and Şimuni Diril. They were kidnapped from the Turkish village of Mehr, located near the Iraqi border, one-year prior on January 11, 2020.
Over the course of the past year, the Turkish government has intensified its military operations targeting the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) positions along the Iraqi-Turkish border on the grounds of domestic security.
The Faravahar is arguably the best-known symbol of the Persian Zoroastrian faith. This symbol consists of a winged disc with a man emerging from it. The man is shown holding a ring. Whilst the symbol is well known, the meaning behind it is more complicated. The Faravahar was adopted as a secular symbol to represent the modern nation of Iran.
In the chaos following the Iraq war, the homes of thousands of Christian families in cities across Iraq were illegally taken and occupied. There is hope now that these properties will eventually be restored to their rightful owners.
Christians and others practicing their faith experienced serious challenges to religious freedom around the world this year, heightened by dangers posed by the coronavirus pandemic. The challenges ranged from institutionalized practices to violent killings and kidnappings. Others saw threats to religious freedom in pandemic lockdown restrictions.
Arising from the Fertile Crescent, the Assyrian Empire once ruled over Mesopotamia with powerful armies and grand stone palaces. This advanced civilization greatly predated the Roman and Greek Empires but produced works of art as delicate as Greek amphorae and as monumental as Roman statuary.
(AINA) -- Computers magically speak many languages, even human languages to a degree, but deep down inside their native language is electrical current flowing through transistors. If you have one transistor (a bit), it can be on or off, and so it can speak two words. What those words mean depends on the context. Mathematically, these words can be 1 and 0.
Hakkari, Turkey (AINA) -- The EU and Turkish Journalists Society sponsored a 40-minutes documentary capturing and documenting the remains of Assyrian churches in the region. Until the mid-1920s, Assyrian survivors of the genocide still inhabited the Hakkari region of northeast Turkey but were forcibly killed and driven out by the Turkish massacre of Assyrians between 1915 and 1918, which killed...
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.
On the outskirts of Sydney lives an extraordinary artist whose work is bringing others closer to Christ. Syriac Catholic Ghusoon Durdur and her family were forced to leave their home in Bakhdida, northern Iraq when they were threatened by ISIS.
The Faravahar is arguably the best-known symbol of the Persian Zoroastrian faith. This symbol consists of a winged disc with a man emerging from it. The man is shown holding a ring. Whilst the symbol is well known, the meaning behind it is more complicated. The Faravahar was adopted as a secular symbol to represent the modern nation of Iran.