Tel Keppe
Mikhail Yuhanna ( ) was born on 28 April 1936, in the Chaldean Catholic town of Tel Keppe in northern Iraq, to an ethnic Assyrian family. He studied English at Baghdad University and later worked as a journalist, before joining the Ba'ath Party in 1957. He changed his distinctly Christian name in Syriac to the more Arabic sounding Tariq Aziz to gain acceptance by the Arab and Muslim majority. In 1963, he was editor of the newspaper "al-Jamahir" and "al-Thawra", the newspaper of the Ba'ath party.