The Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac diaspora (Syriac: ܓܠܘܬܐ Galuta) refers to the communities of Assyrian people who live throughout the world outside of their native lands. The still Eastern Aramaic- speaking Assyrians are the modern day descendants of the Ancient Assyrians (see Assyrian continuity), and are known to be one of the few ancient Semitic ethnicities in the Near East who resisted Arabization, Turkification or Islamification during and after the Arab conquest of Iraq. The indigenous Assyrian people's homeland is a geographic area within the borders of northern Iraq, northeastern Syria southeastern Turkey and northwestern fringes of Iran, a region roughly corresponding with what had been Assyria between the 25th century BC and 7th century AD. They are a Semitic Christian people, with most being members of the Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Pentecostal Church or Assyrian Evangelical Church.
Contents
- Historic census
- History
- USSR census
- Russia
- Armenia
- Georgia
- Ukraine
- Kazakhstan
- Lebanon
- Canada
- United States
- Belgium
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Netherlands
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Syria
- References
As well as the ethnic designation of Assyrians, more historically recent purely religious terms such as Chaldo-Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean are also sometimes used to describe Assyrians, dependent upon religious affiliation. The terms Syrian/Syriac originally derive from Assyrian (see Etymology of Syria), and Chaldean is the name of a 17th century originating church only, rather than an ethnicity (see Names of Syriac Christians).
Prior to the Assyrian Genocide, the Assyrian people were largely unmoved from their native lands, which they had occupied for some five thousand years. Although a handful of Assyrians such as Hormuzd Rassam and Alphonse Mingana had migrated to the United Kingdom in the Victorian Era, the worldwide diaspora of Assyrian communities first began in earnest during World War I with the Assyrian Genocide by the Young Turks government of the Ottoman Empire, with the aid of local Kurdish, Iranian and Arab tribes. Three more exoduses of Assyrians out of the Middle East began after that. The first began during the 1980s from Turkey (due to the Turkish-Kurdish conflict) and Iran (due to the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran), then in the 1990s and early 2000s from firstly Ba'athist Iraq and then post Saddam Hussein era in the face of persecution and attacks from both Sunni and Shia fundamentalists, and most recently a fresh exodus from Iraq and north east Syria due to a genocide and Ethnic cleansing by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other Sunni Islamist groups.
Historic census
From 1937 to 1959, the Assyrian population in the USSR grew by 587.3%
History
Assyrians came to Russia and the Soviet Union in three main waves. The first wave was after the Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828 that delineated a border between Russia and Persia, The second wave was a result of the Assyrian Genocide during and after World War I, and the third wave came after World War II, when Moscow unsuccessfully tried to establish a satellite state in Iran. Soviet troops withdrew in 1946, and left the Assyrians(which supported the coup) exposed to exactly the same kind of retaliation that they had suffered from the Turks 30 years earlier.
As a result of the Soviets atheistic ideology, the Soviet authority persecuted Assyrian religious and community leaders, and in the same way as they persecuted native Russians who remained in some way connected to the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Assyrians have tended to assimilate within the Armenian community within the Soviet Union, but their cultural and ethnic identity, strengthened through centuries of hardships, found new expression under Glasnost. Most Assyrians are members of the Assyrian Church of the East, with others including the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Chaldean Catholic Church.
USSR census
Russia
Armenia
Georgia
Ukraine
Kazakhstan
Lebanon
estimates on December 31, 1944, by province (Muhafazat)
1932 census and further estimates
Canada
United States
Belgium
Assyrians in Belgium came mostly as refugees from the Turkish towns of Midyat and Mardin in Tur Abdin, most of them belong to the Syriac Orthodox Church, some to the Assyrian Church of the East and Chaldean Catholic Church. Their three main settlements are in Brussels (municipalities of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode - where they've got their only elected municipal councilman, the Christian Democrat Ibrahim Erkan, originally from Turkey -, Brussels and Etterbeek), Liège and in Mechelen. Since the October 8, 2006 municipal elections they've got two more councilmen, in Etterbeek, the Liberal Sandrine Es (whose family came from Turkey) and the Christian Democrat Ibrahim Hanna (originally from Syria's Khabur region). The Christian Democrat candidate in Mechelen, Melikan Kucam, was not elected. The Flemish writer August Thiry wrote the book Mechelen aan de Tigris (Mechelen on Tigris) about the Assyrian refugees from the village of Hassana in SE Turkey, district of Silopi. Melikan Kucam was one of them. On October 14, 2012 municipal elections, Melikan was elected in Mechelen as member of the Flemisch Nationalists N-VA.
France
There are believed to be some 20,000, mainly concentrated in the northern French suburbs of Sarcelles, where several thousands Chaldean Catholics live, and also in Gonesse and Villiers-le-Bel. They are drawn from the same few villages in what is now south-east Turkey.
Germany
The number of Assyrians/Syriacs in Germany is estimated at around 100,000 people. Most of the Assyrian/Syriac immigrants and their descendants in Germany live in the following places like in Munich, Wiesbaden, Paderborn, Essen, Bietigheim-Bissingen, Ahlen, Göppingen, Köln, Hamburg, Berlin, Augsburg and Gütersloh.
Being oppressed and persecuted throughout the 20th century for their religion, many Syraics arrived from Turkey seeking a better life. The first large wave arrived in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the German economic plan of "Gastarbeiter"; as Germany was seeking immigrant workers (largely from Turkey), many Assyrians/Syriacs saw an opportunity for freedom and success and applied for visas. Assyrians started working in restaurants or as construction workers for companies and many began running their own shops. The first Assyrian/Syriac immigrants in Germany started organizing themselves by forming culture clubs and building churches. The second wave came in the 1980s-90s as refugees from the Turkish-PKK conflict in the region of Turkish Kurdistan in which they lived.
Greece
The first migrants of Assyrian stock in Greece came in 1934, and settled in the areas of Makronisos (today uninhabited), Keratsini (Pireus), Egaleo and Kalamata. Today, the vast majority of Assyrians live in Peristeri, a suburb of Athens, and they number about 2,000. There are five Assyrian Christian marriages recorded at St. Paul's Anglican Church in Athens in 1924–25 (the transcripts can be viewed on St. Paul's Anglican Church website), thus indicating the beginning of the appearance of refugees at that time. The absence of further marriages at St. Paul's possibly indicates the arrival of a Nestorian clergyman in Athens shortly after 1925.
Netherlands
The first Assyrians came to the Netherlands in the 1970s; most of them belonged to the West Syrian Rite from Turkey. Today the number of Assyrians is estimated to be between 25,000 and 35,000 and they mainly live in the east of the country, in the province of Overijssel, in such cities as Enschede, Hengelo, Almelo and Borne.
Sweden
In the latter part of the 1970s, about 12,000 Assyrians/Syriacs from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria immigrated to Sweden. They considered themselves persecuted for religious and ethnic reasons but were never acknowledged as refugees. Those who had already lived in Sweden for a longer period were finally granted residence permit for humanitarian reasons.
As with other Northern European countries, there is a dividing line in Sweden between the Assyrian speaking Christians. They are mostly members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, but its important to note that not all Syriac Orthodox members identify with being Assyrians only, as the majority of those who call themselves Assyrians are Syriac Orthodox as well.
Södertälje in Sweden is often seen as the unofficial Assyrian capital of Europe due to the city's high percentage of Assyrians. The international TV-channels Suryoyo Sat and Suroyo TV are also based in Södertälje.
Between 2005 and 2006 and since 2014, there is an Assyrian/Syriac minister in the Swedish government, Ibrahim Baylan.
Switzerland
Assyrians in Switzerland came mostly as refugees from the towns of Midyat, Mardin and Beth-Zabday (Idil) in Tur Abdin, most of them are Syriac Orthodox (about 1,600 Families). The seat of the Syriac Orthodox bishop of the Swiss and Austrian diocese is in the St. Avgin (Eugene) Monastery in Arth, near Lucerne, where a big part of the Assyrian community lives. They also live in the east of the country in the Canton of St. Gallen (Wil-Area) and in Baden about 20 km from Zurich. A big part of the Assyrians in Switzerland also live in the Italian part of Switzerland in the Canton of Ticino, mostly in Lugano and Locarno.
United Kingdom
There are approximately 8,000 Assyrians in the United Kingdom, with the largest concentrations in London and Manchester. The very earliest presence of Assyrians in the United Kingdom dates back to the 1850's, however the vast majority migrated from the 1950's onwards.