By Tuma Çelik | former Syriac MP in the Turkish Parliament for Merde (Mardin) During the 1915 Genocide (Sayfo), a vast majority of the Eastern Syriacs remaining in Van were massacred. Survivors fled their ancestral homelands to safer regions. Similarly, the Syriacs of Hakkari sought refuge in Urmia. Following the end of the Genocide and World War I, the surviving Nestorians from Hakkari and surrounding areas began returning to their original homelands.