"I am telling you this for I have seen it": The Sayfo diasporic politics of memory and the genocide recognition struggle of the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean migrant communities in Western Europe

Many genocides have been studied in the light of diasporic politics of memory such as the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and the Rwandan genocide. Yet the genocide on more than 70 percent of the Arameans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Sayfo, is much under researched. Studying this genocide can enrichen the body of literature of diasporic politics of memory because it leads to insights on several aspects, such as: long-term postmemory since this genocide has more generations than many others; the impact on the Sayfo politics of memory of a despotic regime that suppresses memory; the impact of migration from a despotic state to democratic Western European countries where the freedom of speech and language loss arise. To gain insights and to contribute to the state of art in the diasporic politics of memory of genocide, this dissertation focusses on various aspects of the diasporic politics of memory of the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean communities, which leads to the following research question: How is the diasporic memory of the Sayfo transmitted throughout generations, the Sayfo recognition struggle of the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean migrant communities in Western Europe organized, and what are the institutional responses? This dissertation includes four independent and interrelated empirical studies on the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean genocide postmemory, memory of gender¬cide and the role of women, the Sayfo recognition struggle and the institutional responses of their host states.