A tragic story leads to an exodus
Sayfo (lit. ‘sword’) is a term that one often hears when talking to Syriac Orthodox families who have come to live in Germany. What are they talking about? We need to journey back in time to understand this term better—and the time it represents. For our understanding, the year 1915 is a crucial marker.
Aramean families, who are of the Syriac Orthodox faith, used to live in Mesopotamia. That's the region of the world that today includes—roughly speaking—Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. As mentioned previously, many of these families lived in the Tur Abdin region of southeast Turkey, near the border with Iraq.
Villages were scattered across the hilly area. Churches and monasteries dotted the landscape after Christianity found its way to the region from Antioch in the very early centuries after Christ. There were other Christians in those areas, too: Armenians and Greeks, for example. Their Islamic neighbors lived in the area, but the Christian families often lived together in towns.
A number of these ancient churches and monasteries still exist today, even though the population in the region was dramatically reduced after what I will describe here shortly.
Leaving Tur Abdin at the threat of a sword
So what caused the people living there to leave this area and make their way to other parts of the world (for our purposes, Western Europe, in particular, Germany)?
In two phases, once in 1895 and then again in 1914/15, the political rulers of the countries wanted to gather Muslim peoples and thereby strengthen their national identity.
In 1912, the Christian peoples had gained their independence, but the turmoil of the First World War and the losses suffered meant that the Ottoman Turks wanted to expel them to strengthen their territory.
How do you get rid of non-Muslims? In this case, the Holy War (“Jihad”) was declared in 1914, declaring the Christian peoples enemies and traitors.
A plan called for the elimination of the Christians: they should pay gold to avoid being drafted into the war. All Christian males, Arameans, Armenians, Catholics, Chaldeans, and Protestants aged 20-45 should pay fifty dinars gold. Such a coin was minted from 4.25 grams of 22-carat gold! Today's value would be around $11,200 (€11,0000). Who should pay for that?
Shortly after that, however, the actual plan came to light. In particular, the bishops, priests, monks, and people with good school education, were rounded up, tortured, and then killed.
By the end of the massacres, 500,000 Arameans—men, women, and children—were dead or died fighting in the resistance. In addition, 1.6 and 2.7 million Christian Armenians, Arameans/Assyrians/Chaldeans, and Pontic Greeks died during this terrible time.
We are speaking of horrible massacres and must uphold the memory of the people killed. But unfortunately, Turkey, as the legal successor government to the Ottoman Empire, refuses to call these killings “genocide" or to entertain conversations about them.
Journey to the West
The survivors fled to places like Istanbul and other locations in the area. By the early 1960s, the legislation in the Federal Republic of Germany had shifted to allow so-called "guest workers" to come to Germany with full work permits. West Germany was experiencing labor shortages after World War II, and the effort to rebuild forced the government to recruit temporary ‘guest’ workers. As a result, bilateral agreements were made with Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Portugal, and Yugoslavia, through which some 2.6 million mainly male low-and un-skilled workers arrived in the FRG. And so, in 1961, Turkey joined the round of nations that were entering Germany with often unskilled workers who would help Germany resurrect from the effects of World War II. Among them were the Syriac Orthodox sons of survivors of the Sayfo and eventually their families.
More on their experiences in their new home next.