Anti-Assyrian sentiment, also known as anti-Assyrianism and Assyrophobia, refers to negative feelings, dislikes, fears, aversions, racism, derision, and/or prejudice towards Assyria, Assyrian culture, Syriac Christianity, and Assyrians.
Anti-Assyrian sentiment largely manifested itself during the time of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, reaching its peak with the Assyrian genocide (Sayfo), and has continued throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in varying forms across Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, that is, all the countries that were established on the territory of the destroyed indigenous Assyrian homeland of Assyria. The most notorious and destructive examples of violence towards Assyrians include the Simele massacre, the Anfal campaign, forced assimilation campaigns (Arabization, Kurdification, Turkification), and systematic persecution by the Islamic State terrorists. Similar to Anti-Armenian sentiment, Anti-Assyrian sentiment has historically also been fueled by an Anti-Christian sentiment. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that anti-Assyrian sentiment in Western academia is linked to systematic Armenian genocide denial.
Turkey
In 1894–1897, during the Hamidian massacres in the Ottoman Empire, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed. Kurdish and Turkish forces carried out attacks in some regions, and it is estimated that around 55,000 Assyrians were also brutally killed.
George Aslan, an Assyrian-Turkish politician, was harassed in the Turkish parliament for speaking Turoyo. In 2023, around Christmas, he sent a Turoyo message to the Assyrians in Turkey, with permission from Sırrı Süreyya Önder, although members of the Good Party interrupted his speech with racial insults.
He responded to the Good Party by stating, "I want to repeat what I said in the Parliament: We did not bring this language from another planet. Syriac is a language of this land. We have been the indigenous people of this land for 12,000 years. We were here when no one else was on these lands. Why they react so strongly is incomprehensible. However, we know that this is a denial of real history." In 2024, also around Christmas, he delivered another Turoyo message before Bekir Bozdağ turned off his microphone, to which Aslan replied that "Some deputies are reading Arabic verses from the Quran on the podium. Please turn it off when the verses are read. If it doesn't turn off, I, who never tease anyone, will tease you very much, believe me. If there is holiness, all holiness is given importance."
Kurdistan
In 1843, Assyrian Christians in Hakkari faced a series of massacres, which lasted until 1846, orchestrated by the Kurdish emirs Bedir Khan Beg and Nurullah Beg of Bohtan and Hakkari, with support from some Assyrian tribes opposing Shimun XVII Abraham’s authority. Gaunt, David (2020). "The Long Assyrian Genocide". Collective and State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State. Berghahn Books. pp. 62. According to Dr. Smith, the death toll from these events ranged between 10,000 and 15,000, with roughly 10,000 killed during the initial campaign. Another American missionary, Justin Perkins, estimated that about 7,000 Nestorians were slain in Tkhuma alone in 1846.
In 1911, Jessie Payne Margoliouth, a British Assyriologist, while describing the Ottoman Empire, stated that the Kurds "are natural enemies of the Assyrians, and live side by side with them. Struggles are almost constantly going on between them, frequently producing actual conflicts."Kurds & Christians, pp. 12-13, Jessie Payne Smith, 1911 In October 1917, the Ottomans launched the Persian campaign with the hopes of capturing more land. The Assyrians, led by Agha Petros, held them off until June 1918; however, up to 100,000 Assyrians left Persia in 1918, but around half died of Turkish and Kurdish massacres, starvation, disease, or famine. About 80 percent of Assyrian clergy and influential leaders had perished.Baumer, Church of the East, at 263
The Associated Press reported that in the vicinity of Urmia, "Turkish regular troops and Kurds are persecuting and massacring Assyrian Christians." The victims included 800 massacred near Urmia, and 2,000 dead from disease. Two hundred Assyrians were burned to death inside a church, and the Russians had discovered more than 700 bodies of massacre victims in the village of Hafdewan outside Urmia, "mostly naked and mutilated", some with gunshot wounds, others decapitated, and others chopped to pieces. The New York Times reported on 11 October that 12,000 Assyrian Christians had died of massacre, hunger, or disease; thousands of girls as young as seven had been raped in sex attacks, or forcibly converted to Islam; Christian villages had been destroyed, and three-fourths of these Christian villages were burned to the ground.
In the Kurdistan Region, Assyrians claimed that Kurdish authorities often attempted to portray Assyrians as Christian Kurds.Annual Report on International Religious Freedom 2002: Report Submitted to the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate and the Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives. United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. 2000. pp. 545 In 2008, Assyrians formed the Qaraqosh Protection Committee, aiming to protect Assyrian towns, villages, and regions. In 2008, Paulos Faraj Rahho was assassinated. Some Assyrians accused the Kurds, while others accused the Arabs. Some Assyrians have claimed that Kurdish forces, namely KDP, often used to practice shooting targets on Assyrian cultural heritage sites.Human Rights Report on Assyrians in Iraq 2013, by Assyria Council of Europe and the Assyria Foundation
In 2009, Benham Benoka, an Assyrian priest and community leader, complained that a group of Shabaks, supported by the Kurdish government, entered Assyrian neighborhoods in the Nineveh Plains and provocatively held Muharram mourning rituals in front of a church on Christmas.Religious Minorities in Iraq: Co-Existence, Faith and Recovery After ISIS, Maria Rita Corticelli, 2022, p. 134,
The United States Department of State reported that "Kurdish authorities abused and discriminated against minorities in the North, including Turcomen, Arabs, Christians, and Shabak", and that Kurdish authorities "denied services to some villages, arrested minorities without due process and took them to undisclosed locations for detention, and pressured minority schools to teach in the Kurdish language."Iraq report, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2005. March 8, 2006. "The Kurdish parties also control "the pursuit of formal education and the granting of academic positions". In 2015 Kurdish security forces in Bartalah reportedly broke up a peaceful demonstration by Shabak people, thereby assaulting several demonstrators. The US State department reported on allegations that the KRG discriminated against Christian minorities. Christians living in areas north of Mosul said that the KRG seized their property without compensation and that the KRG began building Kurdish settlements on their land. Assyrian Christians also said that the "KDP-dominated judiciary routinely discriminated against non-Muslims and legal judgments in their favor were not enforced". The Kurdish political parties "encouraged and supported resettlement of Kurds in Kirkuk outside the framework of the IPCC". However Arabs remained "in antagonistic and extremely poor conditions, facing pressure from Kurdish authorities to leave the province". In 2015 elections, many of the mostly Christian residents in the Nineveh Plain were unable to vote, "polling places did not open, ballot boxes were not delivered, and incidents of voter fraud and intimidation occurred". Kurdish militia refused to "allow ballot boxes to pass to predominantly Christian villages". The KRG also reportedly "pressured NGOs into hiring only Kurds and dismissing non-Kurds on security grounds"."
Assyrians accused the Kurdish school curriculum of Kurdification, and accused the KRG of confiscating and occupying Assyrian lands, claiming that "the Kurds invent new and impossible laws when the legitimate owners ask for their lands." Some Assyrians claimed that while Kurds were well funded, the Assyrians received almost no funding for their schools. They also accused Kurdish authorities of changing traditional Christian names to Kurdish names, and even portraying Christian biblical figures as Kurds in some textbooks. Assyrian activists claimed that Kurds who attacked Assyrians were either allowed to walk freely or given light sentences. They claimed that Kurds also targeted Assyrians who supported the KRG.
The US State government reported that in the KRG, Assyrian schools and classes were not permitted to teach in Syriac and were even prevented in some cases. There were also incidents of mob violence by the PKK against Christians. Assyrian activists criticised the KRG for the lack of investigation of bombings in 1998 and 1999 targeting Assyrians in Erbil. According to the US Department of State, the KDP had blockaded Assyrian villages in 1999 and "later entered the villages and beat villagers." However, the KDP withdrew from the villages after pressure from the Red Cross. Assyrian organizations accused Kurdish criminal organizations of forcing Assyrian girls into prostitution and threatening their families.
The 2011 Duhok riots began on 2 December in the Duhok Governorate, Iraq, after sermons in Zakho called for attacks on businesses. The unrest spread to other towns, where Assyrian- and Yazidi-owned properties were looted and burned, causing around four million dollars in damages.
Iraq
Christian priests were prime targets; eight Assyrian priests were killed during the massacre, including one beheaded and another burned alive. Back in the city of Duhok, 600 Assyrians were killed by Sidqi's men. In the end, around 65 Assyrian villages were targeted in the Mosul and Dohuk districts."Modern Aramaic Dictionary & Phrasebook" By Nicholas Awde. Page 11.International Federation for Human Rights — "Displaced persons in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraqi refugees in Iran", 2003."The Origins and Developments of Assyrian Nationalism", Committee on International Relations Of the University of Chicago, by Robert DeKelaita (PDF) The Simele massacre of the Assyrian people is often regarded as a phase of the Assyrian genocide beginning in August 1914, in the early days of what became World War I. Today, most of these villages are inhabited by Kurds. The main campaign lasted until August 16, but violent raids on Assyrians were being reported up to the end of the month. After the campaign, Bakr Sidqi was invited to Baghdad for a victory rally. The campaign resulted in one-third of the Assyrian population of Iraq fleeing to Syria.
In 1962, thirty-three Assyrians were killed in Barwar, Iraq, by forces under the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani.
In 1969, 39 members of the Iraqi Chaldean community were killed in the Soria Massacre during a military attack.
In 1980, before the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War, thousands of Iraqi citizens of Persian descent, including many Assyrians and Kurds, were deported to Iran. During the conflict, an estimated 10,000 Assyrian men from Iraq lost their lives.
On 2 March 1985, three Assyrians were executed in Iraq by the Ba’ath regime for opposing the government’s Arabization policies.
After the Invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Assyrians became victims of Islamist violence. During the period of 2003–2013, there were increasing amounts of Church attacks, beheadings, and bombings of Assyrians.