page_title: Assyrians in Turkey
section_title: Republic of Turkey
hierarchical_section_title: Assyrians in Turkey / Republic of Turkey
caption_attribution_description: Türkçe: Türkiye etnik haritası
context_page_description: Assyrians/Syriacs in Turkey are an indigenous Semitic-speaking ethnic group and minority of Turkey who are Eastern Aramaic–speaking Christians, with most being members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, Assyrian Pentecostal Church, Assyrian Evangelical Church, or Ancient Church of the East.
  The Assyrian were once a large ethnic minority in the Ottoman Empire, living in the Hakkari, Sirnak and Mardin provinces, but, following the Assyrian genocide, most were murdered or forced to emigrate to join fellow Assyrians in northern Iraq, northeast Syria, and northwest Iran. Most of those who survived the genocide and stayed in Turkey left the country for Western Europe in the 2nd half of the 20th century, due to conflicts between the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the Turkish Land Forces. As of 2019, an estimated 18,000 of the country's 25,000 Assyrians live in Istanbul.
context_section_description: Unlike other persecuted Christian groups like the Greeks and Armenians, The Assyrian community of Turkey managed to sustain its numbers after the Assyrian Genocide- but they had many hardships nevertheless. By the 1980s the Assyrian population of Turkey was at around 70,000 people, although down from the 300,000 or so in total who survived after the genocide. The currently diminished number of 28,000 Assyrians today was caused largely due to Kurdish insurgencies in the 1980s and the bad state of most of the Middle East, along with the forever looming issue of Turkish governmental discrimination. By the end of the conflict in the late 1990s, less than 1,000 Assyrians were still in Tur Abdin or Hakkari, with the rest living in Istanbul.
  In 2001, the Turkish government invited Assyrians/Syriacs to return to Turkey, but some speculate that the offer was more of a publicity stunt, as a land law passed a short time before caused Assyrians who owned untilled farms or land with forests on them (which a large amount did, as those in diaspora could not till or maintain the properties they owned while living elsewhere) to have the land they owned confiscated by the state and sold to third parties. Another law made it illegal for non Turkish nationals to purchase land in Mardin province, where most Assyrians would have immigrated to. Regardless of those laws a few did come, such as those who still had their citizenship and could buy property and managed to avoid having their land taken – but many more who could have come back could not due to the laws passed.
  Some Assyrians who have fled from ISIL have found temporary homes in the city of Midyat. A refugee center is located near Midyat, but due to there being a small Assyrian community in Midyat, many of the Assyrian refugees at the camp went to Midyat hoping for better conditions than what the refugee camp had. To their supine, many refugees were in fact given help and accommodations by the local Assyrian community there, perhaps wishing that the refugees stay, as the community in Midyat is in need of more members.
caption: Süryani in ethnic map of Turkey.
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