On December 18, a deputy from the opposition, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party, George Aslan, took the floor during General Assembly discussions at the General Assembly.
Aslan concluded his speech by saying:
I celebrate the Christmas of all Christians, especially our Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian-Syriac citizens living in Turkey. I hope that the new year will bring peace and love to our country and to the whole world.
Addressing the deputy president of the parliament, Aslan continued: “If you allow me to, I would like to express my words in the Assyrian language as well for my Assyrian people who do not know Turkish." He went on to convey the same message regarding Christmas in his mother tongue.
Aslan’s speech in Assyrian was recorded in the official minutes of the parliament as “…” and with the footnote that “non-Turkish words were expressed by the speaker in these sections.”
Deputies from the Turkish ultra-nationalist Iyi (Good) Party exploded in anger, verbally attacking Aslan. They shouted epithets such as “Go home,” “We object,” “Are we watching a theater play?” and “Everyone will speak Turkish.” One even said, “You have to speak Turkish here; this is not your father’s farm! Talk [your language] at your father’s farm, not here!”
Members of the Iyi Party originate from the Grey Wolf movement, which espouses a violent, Turkish supremacist ideology responsible for murders and attacks against many non-Turks both in and outside of Turkey, including the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.
Aslan responded:
We did not come here from another planet; we are the indigenous peoples of this land.Let me give you an example from history: Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon ... We have been the native inhabitants of these lands for twelve thousand years.
This language did not come from another planet. You will accept these languages. This is [cultural] wealth for Turkey. Why don’t you accept that?
In Europe, our [Assyrian] language is taught in formal schools.
Most Assyrians are Christians and speak Assyrian (also known as Syriac, Aramaic, or neo-Aramaic), one of the world’s oldest languages and the language of Jesus.
The Assyrians are an indigenous people of Mesopotamia who established and ruled one of the world’s greatest empires, the Assyrian Empire, from 900 BC to 600 BC. They made great contributions to human civilization in fields such as mathematics, geography, art, literature, writing, and technological advancements.
The ancient Assyrians were monumental builders, as evident through archaeological sites at Nineveh, Ashur, and Nimrud located in present-day Iraq. The library constructed by the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (7th century BC) is the world’s oldest known systematically organized library, established in Nineveh, meant to preserve the history and culture of Mesopotamia. Assyrians also developed sophisticated medical practices, which greatly influenced medical science as far away as Greece.
The Assyrian Church of the East records that the Apostle Thomas himself converted the Assyrians to Christianity within a generation after Christ's death. Christianity was "well established and organized" in Mesopotamia by the 3rd century.
Muslim Turks are originally from Central Asia. In the 11th century, they invaded and seized the Armenian highlands and Anatolia--parts of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire--where Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians were indigenous. Throughout the centuries, many Christians converted to Islam under Turkish rule in order to survive. Hence, in present-day Turkey, millions of Turks and Kurds are descendants of Islamized Christian peoples such as Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians. In 2016, some Muslim Assyrians established the Assyrian Culture Association in the city of Diyarbakir “to bring together people who are of Assyrian ethnic origin with Muslim faith and to strengthen the Assyrian identity.” The association was closed by its president in 2023 due to economic difficulties and social pressures.
Assyrians have lived under Muslim tyranny since Islam’s conquest of northern Mesopotamia began in the 7th century. Despite severe discrimination and massacres, the Assyrians preserved their presence and culture throughout the centuries. Assyrians commemorate August 7 as Assyrian Martyrs' Day.
Assyrians have consistently inhabited the lands now part of modern-day Turkey since the beginning of recorded history. The Assyrian cultural and spiritual heartland in southeast Turkey is called 'Tur Abdin' in the Assyrian language, meaning 'Mountain of the Servants [of God].' Aslan is an MP elected from Mardin, a city in Tur Abdin.
Yet, Assyrians are not officially recognized as an ethnic minority in Turkey.
From 1913 to 1923, Assyrians were exposed to genocide alongside Armenians and Greeks in Ottoman Turkey. Approximately 300,000 Assyrians perished in the genocide, and innumerable women were abducted. In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) recognized the atrocities committed against Assyrians and other Christians as genocide. Assyrians call this 'sayfo,' which means 'sword' in their language, as many victims were murdered with swords.
Today, Assyrians are a persecuted, stateless, and genocide-surviving community found across Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran.
Travis Hannibal, Professor of Law at Florida International University, notes:
The Ottoman Empire's widespread persecution of Assyrian civilians during World War I constituted a form of genocide, the present-day term for an attempt to destroy a national, ethnic, or religious group, in whole or in part. Ottoman soldiers and their Kurdish and Persian militia partners subjected hundreds of thousands of Assyrians to a deliberate and systematic campaign of massacre, torture, abduction, deportation, impoverishment, and cultural and ethnic destruction.
The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne recognized the boundaries of the modern state of Turkey. It granted some rights to non-Muslims (including Greeks, Armenian, and Jews), but failed to recognize Assyrians. So, despite being a non-Muslim community, Assyrians have been unable to establish their own schools because of their exclusion from the Lausanne Treaty.
The last Assyrian school in Turkey was closed in 1928. Until the establishment of an Istanbul kindergarten in 2014, Assyrians had no schools. They continue to lack schools at the primary and secondary levels where they can learn their native language and culture. Assyrians are thus forced to rely on their families and churches to learn their language.
Hence, MP Aslan’s speaking his language at Turkey’s parliament has symbolic significance given Turkey’s historical and current discrimination against Assyrians.
Persecution against Assyrians in Turkey did not end after the genocide. Assyrians in the region of Hakkari were exposed to further deportations and massacres in 1924--25 at the hands of the Turkish army.
Murders, arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, sexual assaults, harassment, threats of violence, forced evictions from their villages, unlawful confiscations of their lands and properties, and violations against their cultural and religious heritage (including churches) are among the many abuses that Assyrians in Turkey have endured following the genocide. These severe human rights abuses are ongoing.
For instance, in a village in Mardin’s Midyat district, 91-year-old Assyrian Gavriye Akgüç was shot to death in the garden of his house on November 7. An Assyrian couple, Simoni Diril, 65, and Hurmüz Diril, 71, were kidnapped and murdered in 2020 in southeast Turkey. All victims had returned to their homeland from the Assyrian diaspora in Europe.
Assyrians in Turkey are the most oppressed, ignored, silenced, and forgotten minority in the country. MP Aslan’s voice and representation in Turkey’s Parliament are of monumental importance and ought to be supported by the international human rights community.
Western governments should also pressure the government of Turkey to recognize and respect the Assyrian language, religious freedom, and right to an education in their native language, as well as their right to return to their ancestral homeland in Turkey.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkey-born journalist formerly based in Ankara. She is a research fellow of the Philos Project.
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