Forgotten Christians of Mesopotamia; the Assyrians
By: Alkan Chaglar. May. 5, 2007
Assyrians have lived in South-Eastern Anatolia, Northern Iraq, Eastern Syria and
Western Iran since times of antiquity. Living beneath the shadow of poplar and
mulberry trees amid crimson poppies swaying in the wind, they number no more
than a million in the entire region. Praying as their ancestors had done for
over a thousand years in small earth-coloured churches surmounted by a dome and
joined by a tower with plangent church bells, the community are descendants of a
once great empire.
The Assyrian empire once extended from the Zagros Mountains in the East to the
coast of Lebanon. The Assyrians who are also known more generally under the
umbrella terms for Nestorian Christians are not ‘Christian Arabs’ as some people
believe, but speak a Semitic language, called Syriac. Although semblable to both
Arabic and Hebrew, the language pre-dates both languages and is one of the
oldest languages in the region.
The community has always been entrepreneurial, leading an active economic role
in the jewellery trade in Turkey. Their presence is quite strong in the
rambunctious Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. Assigned to the role of ‘good jewellers’
the community is often overlooked by both the government and the media, which
tend to focus on the situation of the more numerous Kurdish population.
Living in five mostly Muslim states in the Middle-East has often put the
Assyrians in the line of fire. Assyrians claim to have been victim to a genocide
committed by the Ottoman Turks, indeed, according to historian F.P.Isaac in the
early part of the 20th century the Ottomans, faced with the break-up of their
empire, expelled thousands of Assyrians. Sadly, matters did not improve much in
the secular Republic of Turkey, which followed. From a presence of 130,000
Assyrians in the 1960s the number has dwindled down to 5000 today, of which only
2000 of which reside in South East of Anatolia.
Faced with ‘greater problems’
the Turkish state policy has done little to include the Assyrians in recent
years to feel apart of the secular state that Turkey purports to be. This has
fuelled the steady immigration of the community abroad.
Life is not much better for the Assyrians in neighbouring countries either. The
Iraqi Chaldean-Assyrian minority was one of the prime targets of the Ba’athist
party for their role in collaborating with the British during their occupation
of Iraq. Today in post-Ba’athist Iraq Assyrians find themselves the target of
Islamic fundamentalists and insurgents who hold them to blame for the actions of
the ‘Christian occupiers’, the Americans and the British. Faced with growing
Arabisation and Kurdification of Northern Iraq, Assyrians have been making a
steady exit from Iraq to the West, where they account for most Iraqi immigrants.
In Turkey, Assyrians are recognised as a religious minority and not as an ethnic
minority like the Armenians, this might seem as a simple difference in
terminology but in fact it is quite a crippling status for the community. Unlike
the Armenians, Assyrians still cannot teach in their own language, so this
indigenous community is left manacled by the state. Being prevented from
teaching one’s ancestral language to future generations of that community has
been one of the key factors forcing this community to leave the country in
recent decades.
Fortunately, the EU factor in Turkey coupled with the end of the worst fighting
between the PKK and Security Forces in he 1990s is beginning to provide short
term benefits to small minorities like the Assyrians, as the government in
Ankara seeks to harmonise many of her own policies with those of the EU.
Conditions are now improving for the community, which was previously on the
brink of extinction in the region. An interest in Assyrian culture and its
benefits for tourism is currently been explored and even the Turkish governor
now visits the community to offer his support. Five years ago during the height
of violence between the PKK and the Turkish security forces this would have not
been possible.
With funds from the European Union, Istanbul Bilgi University opened an Assyrian
cultural centre in the town of Midyat on the 29th of April 2006 for the first
time and last year the city of Mardin hosted the first international symposium
of Mardin history. Some Assyrians from the diaspora have repatriated to their
ancestral region in recent years.
However, many of the children of those returning diaspora can only speak Syriac
and have little knowledge of Turkish, faced with an absence of classes in Syriac,
they are being prevented from a proper education. The absence of schools that
teach Syriac is the result of an unofficial monoculturalist state policy aimed
at Turkicisation preventing communities like the Assyrians from learning their
language, while on the other hand encouraging the new arrivals to forget theirs.
Without downplaying the positive reforms in Turkey, the state, which strives to
be secular and a “garden of different flowers” needs not only to be cognizant of
the diversity of their country but needs to put this into educational policy.
Policy makers that are negotiating Turkey’s EU accession can encourage the
teaching and use of minority or regional languages without being detrimental to
the use of official languages. It should be government policy to promote,
protect, and preserve the Indigenous languages of the Republic; this would be
mutually beneficial to both the ethnic group and the state in whose confines
they reside.
While Assyrians are faced with uncertainty in Iraq and Iran, where insurgents
are keen to destroy multiculturalism, Turkey should set a precedent by not just
promoting multi-faith communities but multi-lingualism as well. Language like
religion is a fundamental part of a community’s identity; it is used to transmit
a community’s history, poetry, music and literature that will be forever lost
without it. Like other minorities elsewhere without schooling in their own
language, the future generations of Assyrians will be bereft of a future and
unequal in their rights as Turkish citizens. The Turkish state needs to break
away from post-independence policies of Turkicisation and extend full
citizenship to all her citizens.
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