By Philos Project
Uzay Bulut
The new school year has started this month in Turkey, but Assyrian
Christians, otherwise known as Syriacs or Chaldeans, still do not have a
single primary school in the country where they could learn their
native language and culture.
The Istanbul-based newspaper Agos reported that the activists of the
Syriac community applied to the Ministry of National Education in 2012
to get its permission and support to open a Syriac kindergarten in
Istanbul. When their application was rejected, they took on a legal
struggle and were finally able to open the Mor Efrem kindergarten
without any economic support from the government.
The Mor Efrem kindergarten currently has 50 students and will be open
for the fourth semester this year, but unfortunately, there is not a
Syriac elementary school in Istanbul where its graduates would be able
to enroll.
The Virgin Mary Ancient Syriac Church Foundation in the Beyoğlu
district of Istanbul is still struggling to open a Syriac elementary
school in the city. The officials of the foundation stated that it is
impossible for them to open an elementary school without governmental
support.
Sait Susin, the head of the foundation, said: “We started our
preparations for the school but we are faced with a huge financial
burden. It is impossible for us to overcome it, not even with donations.
We do need economic support.”
Susin added that their most important need is a building and if the
government provides it for them, they will be able to afford other
costs. “We have applied to the ministry for that, but we still haven’t
received a result,” said Susin.
Assyrians are a Christian people indigenous to the Middle East.
Istanbul has an Assyrian community, estimated in around 15,000, but the
number is only an approximation. The Turkish government does not
officially recognize Assyrians as a distinct ethnic community, so it
does not conduct a census on them.
However, in the Ottoman Empire in 1913-1914, there were 2,580 schools
belonging to non-Muslims, 29 were Assyrian schools. The last Assyrian
school in Turkey, which was located in the city of Mardin, was closed
down in 1928 and afterwards, Assyrians were not allowed by Turkish
governments to open a primary school where they would be educated in
their native language for the next 90 years.
The Assyrian people have inhabited the region since the beginning of
recorded history and for 300 years, Assyrian kings ruled the then
largest empire of the world. A stateless people today, Assyrians have
been continuously brutalized by Muslims in the territory – Turks, Kurds,
Arabs, and Persians. The greatest systematic violence against Assyrians
and their civilization took place before, during, and at the aftermath
of WWI at the hands of the Turkish regimes in what is now Turkey.
According to a report by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights (CGHR) of the Rutgers University–Newark,
“The Assyrian people have been repeatedly victimized by genocidal
assaults over the past century. They first suffered, along Ottoman
Greeks and Armenians, from Turkey’s simultaneous genocides during and
immediately after World War I… Massacres, rapes, plundering, cultural
desecrations, and forced deportations were all endemic. Around 750,000
Assyrians died during the genocide, amounting to nearly three quarters
of its prewar population. The rest were dispersed elsewhere, mostly in
the Middle East.”
After the 1914-1923 genocide, Assyrian Christians were left out of
the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which set the boundaries of republican
Turkey and became the defining document for the rights and freedoms to
be provided for the non-Muslim minorities.
However, the rights of Assyrians were not even mentioned in the
treaty. And ever since, not a single Turkish government has carried out
democratic reforms to change this situation and finally grant Assyrians
their rights. As a result, Assyrians still do not have schools or other
government-funded institutions in the country.
The persecution of Assyrians such as the plundering or expropriation
of their properties continued after the Turkish republic was established
in 1923 and is still going on.
In late June, for example, the Turkish government seized dozens of
properties belonging to Assyrian Christians − such as churches,
monasteries and cemeteries − and transferred them to public
institutions.
On July 15, the Syriac monthly paper, Sabro, reported that,
“In the Sur district of Diyarbakir, a historic church belonging to
Syriacs-Chaldeans as well as 12 shops and 2 homes belonging to the
church foundation have been expropriated with a cabinet decree.”
In the meanwhile, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on September 13:
“In the 15 years since St Hurmizd was founded, the Assyrian primary
school in Western Sydney has grown from a cohort of 85 students, to more
than 700. All of the students come from non-English speaking, Assyrian
backgrounds, and nearly 200 are new refugee arrivals. Many were welcomed
to Australia as part of the Government’s intake of 12,000 Iraqis and
Syrians earlier this year.”
If the Australian government can provide Assyrian refugee children
with a primary school, why does the Turkish government, a member of NATO
and perpetual candidate for EU membership, not do the same for the
indigenous Assyrian children in Turkey?
It seems that Turkey’s Assyrian community is going through the latest
stage of genocide. US officials should immediately urge the Turkish
government to respect the Assyrian right to education as well as their
religious liberty. For the Assyrian civilization to survive, the
religious and cultural values of Assyrians – and particularly their
native language – should be freely used, learnt, and preserved by the
community.
But it would not be very realistic to assume that the Turkish
government, which is busy with seizing Assyrian properties, would soon
provide Assyrians with basic human rights. Hence, it appears to be the
ethical and urgent responsibility of Christian leaders in the US and
across the world to support the dwindling Assyrian community in Turkey
economically as well as psychologically. For if they do not do that,
nobody else will. And if the current community plundering and a lack of
cultural rights continue, yet another native Christian community in
Turkey will eventually be extinct.
