The Assyrian Confederation of Europe has condemned the recent government confiscation of dozens of properties from one of the world’s oldest Christian communities in Turkey, calling it a “grave violation of human and cultural rights.” The Turkish-Armenian daily Agos recently reported that amid legal and municipal battles over numerous properties, a provincial government has seized about 50 properties belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church. Church leaders told the
news outlet that the government claimed that the deeds to the properties were no longer valid.”Invaluable and historic churches monasteries and cemeteries — many of which are over a thousand years old, and which constitute some of the most profoundly rooted and culturally significant material pillars of the Assyrian identity itself — are now in jeopardy,” reads a statement from the Assyrian Confederation of Europe, which was created by the European Parliament last year to unite the voices of hundreds of thousands of Assyrians across Europe. READ MORE
