of 2000, along with a Jewish population of 600. A massacre of Christians took place in August 1915, after which the Christian community of Nusaybin diminished to 1200. Syrian Jacobites, Chaldean Catholics, Protestants, and Armenians were targeted. As agreed upon by the governments of France and the new Republic of Turkey in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Turkey-Syria border would follow the line of the Baghdad Railway until Nusaybin, after which it would follow the path of a Roman road leading to Cizre. After the establishment of the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon, Nusaybin lost over 60% of its population to the settlements there, most prominently Qamishli. Nusaybin was a place on the transit routes of Syrian Jews leaving the country after the 1948 formation of Israel and the subsequent Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. Upon reaching Turkey, after a route that took them through Aleppo and the Jazira sometimes with the help of Bedouin smugglers, most headed for Israel. There had been a large Jewish community in Nisbis since antiquity, many of whom moved to Qamishli in the early 20th century for economic reasons. A synagogue in Jerusalem practises the Nisibis and Qamishli rites today. 21st century Nusaybin made headlines in 2006 when villagers near Kuru uncovered a mass grave, suspected of belonging to Ottoman Armenians and Assyrians killed during the Armenian and Assyrian genocides. Swedish historian David Gaunt visited the site to investigate its origins, but left after finding evidence of tampering. Gaunt, who has studied 150 massacres carried out in the summer of 1915 in Mardin, said that the Committee of Union and Progress's governor for Mardin, Halil Edip, had likely ordered the massacre on 14 June 1915, leaving 150 Armenians and 120 Assyrians dead. The settlement was then known as Dara (now Oğuz). Gaunt added that the death squad, named El-Hamşin (meaning "fifty men"), was headed by officer Refik Nizamettin Kaddur. The president of the Turkish Historical Society, Yusuf Halaçoğlu, following the Turkish government's policy of Armenian genocide denial, said that the remains dated back to Roman times. Özgür Gündem reported that the Turkish military and police pressed the Turkish media not to report the discovery. The Turkish Interior Ministry looked into dissolving Nusaybin city council in 2012 after it decided to use Arabic, Armenian, Aramaic, and Kurmanji on signposts in the town, in addition to the Turkish language. Tensions and violence