Silikyan received the rank of lieutenant general of the Armenian army and held various top military positions.

Silikyan was born on 14 September 1862 in the mixed Armenian-Udi village of Vartashen (present-day Oğuz, Azerbaijan) in the Nukha Uyezd of the Elisabethpol Governorate of the Russian Empire.

After graduating from military school, he was appointed commander of a company in the 155th Kuban Regiment stationed in Kars with the rank of podporuchik.

[5] In the early stages of the Caucasus campaign, Silikyan's regiment crossed into northern Persia with the rest of the 2nd Caucasian Brigade and defeated Ottoman forces at the Battle of Dilman in April 1915.

[9] On 3 March 1918, Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which stipulated the cession of the districts of Batum, Kars, and Ardahan to the Ottoman Empire.

At the battles of Sardarabad and Bash Abaran, Silikyan's forces (the Yerevan detachment) put a halt to the Ottoman advance.

On 28 May 1918, the First Republic of Armenia was declared, which soon after signed the Treaty of Batum with the Ottoman Empire, putting an end to the hostilities at the cost of severe territorial concessions.

[10] On 26 June 1918, Silikyan was appointed commander of the sole Armenian division allowed to be maintained according to the conditions of the Treaty of Batum.

[14] Silikyan was arrested by the Soviet authorities in 1927 and sent into internal exile in Rostov-on-Don by administrative decision, but was allowed to return to Armenia the same year.

[14] He was arrested again in November 1935 and accused of holding monarchist views, persecuting communists during his time as Governor-General of Nor Bayazet, and maintaining contacts with members of the outlawed Armenian Revolutionary Federation.

[15] However, in 1937, during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, Silikyan was arrested once again and sentenced to death by decision of an NKVD troika on 16 November 1937.

[16] Ivan Bagramyan, who served under Silikyan and later became Marshal of the Soviet Union, described him as "the most talented out of all the Armenian commanders" of the period of World War I and the First Republic of Armenia.