Assyrians in Syria
The Arameans and Assyrians in Syria ( Suryoye ) have lived in the northeastern half of the country since 2000 BC. Parts of the region were an integral part of the actual Assyria and during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-608 BC) the entirety of today's Syrian national territory was under Assyrian rule.
A total of around 900,000 to 1.2 million Assyrians / Arameans live in Syria. In Syria in particular, however, the majority is increasingly assimilated into the Arab population and no longer speaks any of the Aramaic languages (instead, the only official language is now Arabic as the mother tongue). Eastern Aramaic is still spoken by the approximately 20,000 Chabur Assyrians in the north-east of the country before the civil war , but this number has rapidly declined after fleeing abroad due to the Daesh reign of terror . Western Aramaic is only spoken in two localities ( Dschubb-'Adin and Maalula , before the civil war also in as-Sarcha ) in the Qalamun Mountains . The main settlements are the governorates al-Hasakah and Homs , as well as the cities of Damascus , Aleppo and Jaramana . The most common denominations are the Syrian Orthodox Church , the Syrian Catholic Church , the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East .
Another influx settled there at the beginning of the French mandate over Syria (from 1920) as refugees from what is now the Turkish areas north of current Syria, then in 1933 as refugees from the newly independent Iraq until after the crimes against Assyrians in the Semile massacre .
In 1936, at the height of local uprisings, religious and political leaders in the Syrian province of al-Jazeera (now al-Hasakah ) asked the French authorities for a province with autonomous status, taking into account their mixed Aramaic / Assyrian , Kurdish , Armenian , Jewish and Arab population - as in the Sanjak Alexandrette , the Alawite state and the Druze state . However, this had no other results than that the Arab nationalists in Damascus rejected any statute of autonomy within the future independent Greater Syria .
After independence in 1946, the Assyrian Democratic Organization was founded in 1957 by center-left intellectuals from the Assyrian ethnic group and Christian religious communities . The Assyrian Democratic Organization is a member of the Syrian National Council. The organization is banned today.
In 2005 the Syriac Christian Unity Party (ܓܒܐ ܕܚܘܝܕܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ ܒܣܘܪܝܐ) was founded. This party claims to represent the interests of the Assyrian / Aramaic people. During the civil war, the Syrian Christian Unity Party set up the Mawtbo Folhoyo Suryoyo army and the Sutoro police unit , which control the Assyrian / Aramaic cities, districts and villages.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Syria Population ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , worldpopulationreview.com
- ↑ RIGHTS: Assyrians Face Escalating Abuses in "New Iraq" , IPS Inter Press Service, May 3, 2006
- ^ ADO Assyrian Democratic Organization ( Memento from April 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
