The Eastern Aramaic speaking indigenous Chaldeans of Iraq , southeastern Turkey , who number 2 million , have suffered both ethnic and religious persecution for many centuries , such as the 1915 Genocide that was committed against them by the Ottoman Turks and their allies , leading many to flee and congregate in areas in the north of Iraq and northeast of Syria . The great majority of Aramaic speaking Christians are followers of the Assyrian Church of the East , Chaldean Catholic Church , Syriac Orthodox Church , Ancient Church of the East , Assyrian Pentecostal Church and Assyrian Evangelical Church . In Iraq , the numbers of Iraqi Christians due to exodus from Iraq declined to between 300,000 and 500,000 ( from 0.8 to 1.4 million before 2003 US invasion ) . Chaldean Christians were between 800,000 and 1.2 million before 2003 . In 2014 , the Chaldean and Syriac population of the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq was scattered to Dohuk province , Syria , Jordan and Iraqi Kurdistan - 700,000 people of more than 1 million - due to an ISIS forcing the Chaldean and Syriac Christian community out of their historical homeland
1915 Genocide
Assyrian genocide
Christianity in the Middle East