in Midyat. Midyat, in
Diyarbekir vilayet, was the only town in the
Ottoman Empire with an ethnic
Assyrian majority, although denominationally divided between the
Syriac Orthodox Church,
Chaldean Catholic Church, and Assyrian Protestants. On the eve of the
First World War, various sources report a total population of about 8,000 people. Most of them being Syriac-Orthodox Christians, plus some Protestants, Syriac-Catholics, Chaldeans, Armenians, and Muslims (mostly
Kurds). The
Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate of Constantinople recorded 1,452 Armenians in the kaza of Midyat before the First World War. Midyat is an historic centre of the Assyrians in Turkey, and as late as the
Assyrian genocide in 1915 they constituted the majority of the city's population. During the early 20th century, the Assyrian population of the city started to gradually diminish due to emigration, but the community was still very large. The Assyrians of
Tur Abdin were the only significant population of Christians outside of
Istanbul, until 1979, when panic ensued over an act of war and an exodus of local Christians overtook the city as a result, because a mayor and major Assyrian figure in Turabdin of the city of Kerboran, now named
Dargecit, was assassinated and replaced with a Kurdish representative against the peoples will. The Assyrians up until then had control over the local government, and could therefore unify to resist threats. Panic ensued as the local Muslim population made a symbolic declaration of war against the Assyrian people and soon after the takeover, local
Mhallami and Kurdish inhabitants started immigrating into the traditionally Assyrian areas, causing a demographic shift which – along with the start of the
Turkish-Kurdish conflict a few years later in 1984 – sounded a death toll to the community not only here, but in all of
Tur Abdin. From a 1975 population of 50,000 comprising 10% of Mardin Province's demographic structure: barely 2,000 were left by the end of the conflict in 1999. Now only around 3–5,000 live in Tur Abdin, with the other 15–17,000 living in Istanbul and other still functioning Syriac Diocese like
Adiyaman,
Harput, and
Diyarbakir. The churches and houses belonging to the Christians have been preserved although many of them are empty, with their owners living away in Europe. At present 500 Assyrian Christians live in Midyat, and they have been joined by 100–300 Syriac refugees fleeing the
Syrian Civil War who have settled in the city and region according to different estimates, and comprise less than 1% of the population of Midyat. There are five churches in the city, and all are Syriac. ==Composition==