The Aramean Genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo) was committed against the Aramean (Syriac) population of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The Aramean population of northern Mesopotamia (the Tur Abdin, Hakkari, Van, Siirt regions of present-day southeastern Turkey and the Urmia region of northwestern Iran) was forcibly relocated and massacred by Ottoman (Turkish) and Kurdish forces between 1914 and 1920.

The death toll of the Aramean genocide was approximately 250,000, according to contemporary and more recent sources. The Los Angeles Times reported in 1918 that US Ambassador Morgenthau said that the Ottoman Empire had "massacred fully 2,000,000 men, women, and children -- Greeks, Arameans, Armenians; fully 1,500,000 Armenians." With 250,000 Greeks among the dead, that makes Ambassador Morgenthau's estimate of Aramean deaths about 250,000.



The Aramean genocide took place in the same context and time-period as the Armenian and Greek genocides. Modern sources usually describe the events as an Aramean genocide, along with the Armenian genocide and Greek genocide by the Ottoman Empire, listing the Greek Orthodox, Syriac Christian and Armenian Christian as victims together. For example, the International Association of Genocide Scholars reached a consensus that "the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Arameans, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks." After this resolution, the Dictionary of Genocide, co-authored by eminent genocide scholar Samuel Totten, an expert on Holocaust education and the genocide in Darfur, contained an entry on the "Aramean genocide."[7] The President of Genocide Watch endorsed the "repudiation by the world's leading genocide scholars of the Turkish government's ninety-year denial of the Ottoman Empire's genocides against its Christian populations, including Arameans, Greeks, and Armenians."


The Aramean genocide is sometimes also referred to as Sayfo or Seyfo in English language sources, based on the Aramaic designation Saypā (ܣܝܦܐ), "sword", pronounced as Seyfo, and as Sayfo in the Western dialect (the term abbreviates shato d'sayfo "year of the sword"; compare the use of Shoah in English based on the Hebrew ha-Šoah).

The Aramaic name Qeṭlā ḏ-‘Amā Ārāmāyā, which literally means "killing of the Aramean people", is used by some groups to describe these events. The word Qṭolcamo (ܩܛܠܥܡܐ) which means Genocide is also used in Aramean diaspora media. The term used in Turkish media is Süryani Soykırımı.


Recognition
On 11 March 2010, the Genocide of the Arameans was officially recognized by the Parliament of Sweden, alongside that of the Armenians and Pontic Greeks.