Most of those who survived the genocide and stayed in Turkey left the country for Western Europe in the 2nd half of the 20th century, due to conflicts between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Turkish Land Forces.

As People of the Book (or dhimmi), Jews, Christians and Mandaeans (in some cases Zoroastrians) received second-class treatment but were tolerated.

The Christians that the Ottomans conquered gradually but definitively with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 were already divided into many ethnic groups and denominations, usually organized into a hierarchy of bishops headed by a patriarch.

They wanted to deal directly with the Porte, across ethnic lines (even if through a Muslim administrator), in order to have their own voice and not be subjected to the rule of the Patriarchal system.

[11]) Gaunt has estimated the Assyrian population at between 500,000 and 600,000 just before the outbreak of World War I, significantly higher than reported on Ottoman census figures.

Midyat, in Diyarbekir vilayet, was the only town in the Ottoman Empire with an Assyrian majority, although divided between Syriac Orthodox, Chaldeans, and Protestants.

[12] Syriac Orthodox Christians were concentrated in the hilly rural areas around Midyat, known as Tur Abdin, where they populated almost 100 villages and worked in agriculture or crafts.

[14] Outside of the area of core Syriac settlement, there were also sizable populations in the towns of Diyarbakır, Urfa, Harput, and Adiyaman[15] as well as villages.

[21] The remaining population lived in submission to Kurdish aghas, and were subjected to constant harassment and abuse which pushed them to emigrate.

The currently diminished number of 28,000 Assyrians today was caused largely due to Kurdish insurgencies in the 1980s and the bad state of most of the Middle East, along with the forever looming issue of Turkish governmental discrimination.

[7] Unlike Armenians, Jews, and Greeks, Assyrians were not recognized as a minority group in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and could not open schools teaching their language.

[33][34] On 18 June 2013, the Ankara 13th Circuit Administrative Court ruled in favor of Assyrians' right to use their mother tongue as stated in the Treaty of Lausanne.

[42] Additionally, there are a few Syriac Orthodox Christian communities in İzmir, Ankara, İskenderun, Diyarbakir, Adıyaman, Malatya, Elazığ, and a few other places.

[43][44][42] The second largest denomination is the Chaldean Catholic Church in Turkey, which has around 7,000–8,000 members who live primarily in Diyarbakir, Mardin, Sirnak province, and Istanbul.

A large community lived in the southeast in the Tur Abdin region until they were massacred and forced to flee during the Sayfo to Lebanon, where the See was reestablished.