Agricultural Lands of Arameans Burned to Ashes in Tur-Abdin, Southeast Turkey
- Post 01 August 2019
In the last two weeks, agricultural land of Aramean villages in three different areas in Southeast Turkey was completely burned. Although nobody got injured, the local population suffered a huge material loss after four years of growing various fruit trees went up in flames. The causes of these distinct fires during this summer-dry climate vary from place to place.
Local Aramean extinguishing the fires in Tur-Abdin.
In the night of 25 July, a nearby land of the Saffron or St. Ananias (Mor Hananyo) Monastery was consumed by fire (the convent, founded in 493 AD, was the seat of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch from 1166 to 1923 and lies a few kilometers east of Mardin). This fertile place, called ‘Ayn-ı Crun because it is rich in water, has a well where locals regularly meet in the evenings. The firemen who extinguished the fire claim that the land was set on fire. A local Aramean leader commented as follows: “Earlier this year, it rained a lot and the grass has grown high. Currently, it is hot and the dry grass may have caught fire from a dropped or tossed cigarette butt. However, it cannot be said whether it was deliberate or not.” Up to 350 olive and almond trees have been burned with their sprinkler irrigation systems. This is a great blow, because the Monastery invested four years to grow these trees and it will take four more years to recover from this material loss.
Southeast in the Mardin province lies Mount Izlo, close to Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq. This ancient place is still entirely populated by some of its native Arameans. As a result of the struggle between the Kurdish separatist organization PKK and the state in the 1980s and 1990s, Turkish security forces evacuated all Aramean villages except Arkah (Ücköy) from this hilly area to prevent the PKK from establishing itself there. Changing developments since the early 2000s, led to permanent and temporary remigration of tens of Aramean families in this former no-entry zone. As they began to rebuild their houses, lands, churches and villages in the last two decades, during some of the summers many fertile lands were destroyed by fire – sometimes on purpose by Kurdish neighboring villagers who didn’t appreciate the return of Arameans, sometimes as a result of an unreliable electric network combined with the summer-dry climate, a strong wind and the lack of resources and modern fire equipment to quickly and effectively put out a fire.
Recently, around 10 am on 28 July, the latter was the case. The account of a WCA Member from the Netherlands, who is visiting his village with his family during the summer, is in agreement with explanations given to WCA by other Arameans who returned to their villages. He explained that in his own backyard, in the village of Sederi (Üçyol), “a dove hit the transformer and caused a spark. This ignited a fire and the wind blew it out of control. My neighbor witnessed how this happened.”
From there, the fire spread to neighboring villages such as Harabemishka (Dağiçi), Arkah/Harabale (Üçköy) and Lower Kafro (Elbeğendi), where it even reached the houses. Even with the help of nearby places, the fire was contained no earlier than the next morning. A substantial part of forest land and this year’s crop, including cultivated fields and vineyards, has been reduced to ashes. The economic loss of the Arameans is colossal and should be measured soon.
Northeast of Mount Izlo and in the adjacent province of Şırnak, a fire broke out twice in Miden (Turkish Öğündük), one of a handful of villages in the Tur-Abdin region that are still exclusively inhabited by its indigenous Arameans. The first one was on 17 July and the 40-year-old electric grid may have triggered the fire; this outdated power grid has also caused fires in earlier summers. The second blaze was on 27 July and either may have had a similar cause or, as some local Arameans tend to believe, the dry land may have intentionally been set on fire to destroy their crop and to instill fear in them. That same day, Miden’s 50 Aramean families, assisted by surrounding villages, were able to quench the fire. The village leader estimates that “the first fire destroyed 200,000 m2 (square meters) of land, of which 150,000 m2 consisted of agricultural lands and vineyards where grapes, pistachio, figs, pomegranates and more were grown in the last four years. In addition, the second blaze was difficult to control and almost 4,000,000 m2 (400 hectares) of forest land was destroyed. Now that we have lost everything, we must start all over again.”
The WCA President, Johny Messo, responded to these latest incidents as follows: “We call upon the local authorities, NGOs and fellow Arameans worldwide to aid Tur-Abdin’s last Arameans. First, to compensate them for their enormous loss, while investigating the causes of the fires. Secondly, to provide them with the necessary resources to extinguish such fires more effectively in the future.”
Less than 2,000 Arameans have remained in Tur-Abdin, which is Aramaic for “Mountain of the Servants” of God. This formerly Aramean Christian region in Southeast Turkey is sometimes called ‘The Mount Athos of the East’. Between the mid-1960s and 1990s, tens of thousands of Arameans from the Tur-Abdin region, who speak the ‘language of Jesus’, have left their ancestral homeland.
Click here to download this press release (pdf).
