Turkish threats would empty northeast Syria of Assyrians
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Turkish threats to launch a military operation against northern Syria poses a great threat to the region, most importantly is emptying the region of the Assyrians, according to the fears of the residents of villages in northeast Syria.
“Turkey opposes all ideas and doctrines that contradict it, so it wants to empty the region of the Assyrians, and the rest of the communities, to make it easier to invade the tenth line,” the Assyrian journalist, Samer Hanna, says.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a plan on May 3 to settle one million Syrian refugees to those parts of northern Syria under Turkey’s control.
Hanna points to the drought that those villages witness. No crops grew this year. He also points to the destroyed churches and schools.
The journalist mentions that he belongs to the Nojiayi tribe, consisting of 400 families, but he is the only one who remained in Syria.
“When we see large villages with no people, it greatly affects our sense of belonging to the land,” he adds.
The number of Assyrians in those villages was about 40 thousand people in 1996. However, a study in 2011 showed that their number was reduced to 37 thousand people. In 2015, 242 Assyrians were kidnapped by ISIS and 4 of them were killed. In late 2018 their number was only 765 people, according to press reports.
How did the Assyrians inhabit the Khabur Basin?
In 1933, the Iraqi government committed the notorious Simele massacre against the Assyrians who were living in Mesopotamia in Iraq. More than 700,000 Assyrians were massacred in 132 Assyrian-Chaldean villages, Hanna told North Press.
The Simele massacre, also known as the “Assyrian affair”,[5] was committed by the Kingdom of Iraq led by Bakr Sidqi during a campaign systematically targeting the Assyrians in and around Simele in August 1933. An estimated 600 to 6,000 Assyrians were killed and over 100 Assyrian villages were destroyed and looted.
Iraq was then under the British mandate. When the Assyrians sought refuge in Iraq, the Iraqi government sent them to Syria, which was also under the French mandate.
In the same year, the first tent for the Assyrians was set up in al-Hilaliya neighborhood in the city of Qamishli. After which the Assyrians remained on the banks of the Khabur River. Their villages were in the form of camp. The Assyrian still uses the word camp before mentioning the name of his village, according to Hanna.
Hanna explains that these villages were named after the Assyrian tribes that inhabited them, such as the Dznai, al-Tiyaryi, Serbisnai, Nougiyayi and others. The Assyrian people worked in agriculture, transforming the banks of the Khabur River from a site filled with basalt stones to a place famous for the Assyrian grapes, figs and the quality of wheat.
“The Assyrian people are known to be peaceful. They used the water of the Khabur River to irrigate their crops on which they depended for their livelihood. But in return they were subjected to many restrictions and marginalization,” he said.
When did the marginalization of the Assyrians begin?
Hanna believes that the beginning was with the Syrian government’s lack of interest in them. It began cutting off the waters of the Khabur River, through the establishment of several projects along its course, which led to its drying up. It then began the Arabization of the names of their villages, so the Assyrians began to think of migration.
In the beginning, the immigration began in very simple proportions. Only one person of each family immigrated. However, the Turkish attacks has had the most dangerous and largest role for the Assyrian people, according to Hanna.
“Turkey was the biggest supporter of several armed factions, such as Jabhat al-Nusra (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham now) and ISIS and others. Perhaps the frightening ISIS attack in 2015 on the villages of the Khabur Basin was what made the Assyrians think about emigrating by the thousands. This played a key role in emptying the region of the Assyrians.
Hanna, who was living in Raqqa, when the Free Army and ISIS factions entered, mentions that they were subjected to humiliation, as he put it. They were described as devil worshippers. They were also forced to wear Islamic dress, and their men were prevented from wearing bright colors.
“Every week they would patrol our homes, to search for any religious symbol that belonged to us to remove it. Each family had to pay a tribute estimated at 17 grams of gold, because they told us to choose between leaving our homes, leaving our religion or paying the tribute, so most of us emigrated,” he said.
Are the Assyrians targeted?
Furthermore, Hanna believes that Turkey is not targeting the Assyrians only in the region. But due to what they were experienced earlier, they have a feeling that they are directly targeted, especially with the facilitation of the displacement of the Assyrians in the region.
Following the Turkish “Peace Spring” military operation in October 2019, which resulted in the occupation of the two cities of Tel Abyad, north of Raqqa, and Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain), north of Hasakah, Turkey signed two ceasefire agreements, one with Russia and the other with the US.
The agreements stipulate halt of all hostilities there and the withdrawal of the SDF 30 km in depth away from the Turkish border in addition to conducting Turkish-Russian joint patrols in order to monitor the implementation of the agreements.
In the recent period, villages of the countryside of Tel Tamr have been undergoing intensive shelling by the Turkish forces and the SNA factions on an almost daily basis, spreading panic among the residents, according to what North Press monitored.
The danger of the recent threat lies in the fact that “Turkey cannot accept the existence of peoples with ancient and historical civilizations in the region, so its hostility towards the Assyrian people is rooted in history,” according to Hanna.