The ownership of around 50 churches, monasteries, and cemeteries that belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Church for more than 1,500 years was transferred to the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Dinayet), hence turned into public facilities. The Syriac properties, which total hundreds of thousands of square meters, were annexed by the directorate following the decision by the government committee assigned the liquidation of assets whose ownership deeds expired. The decision sent shock waves across members of the Syriac community who started fearing that this could be the first step towards the extinction of their heritage. Kuryakos Ergun, chairman of the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation, said that an appeal filed against the confiscation, which included the fifth-century monastery, was rejected and highlighted the danger of losing this monastery, one of the world's oldest operational monasteries, and other Syriac houses of worship. "Our churches and monasteries are what root Syriacs in these lands; our existence relies on them. They are our history and what sustains our culture," he said. "While the country should be protecting this heritage, we instead see our culture is at risk." Ergun added that the fifth-century Mor Meliki monastery is also among the confiscated properties. "This monastery is set beside a spring revered by pilgrims for its healing powers and was tended by two Syriac families." Both monasteries are located in the Tur Abdin region in southwest Turkey between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and which is known to be the historic center of Syriac heritage and the heart of its monastic history. The name of the region is Syriac for "mountain of the servants of God" and the region is home to more than 80 monasteries. Robert Nicholson, the executive director of the Philos Project, which addresses the problems of Christians in the Middle East, attributed the confiscation of Syriac properties to new policies adopted by Erdogan's government to control minorities in the restive southwest. "In the case of the Syriac Christians, Erdogan is using legal pretexts to seize and redistribute lands and churches that have been owned by Christians for over a millennium," he said. Nicholson noted that Christians were generally not persecuted by Turkish authorities and did not face discriminatory practices under Erdogan, yet he argued that this seems to be changing. "But Turkish politics are changing, and it's still unclear how minority groups like the Syriacs will fare in the end." Turkish journalist Uygar G