"It feels like a historic event"
The patriarchal visit has raised the morale of Assyrians in the Turabdin Region.
Earlier this week, Mor Ignatius II Ephrem Kerim undertook a pastoral and civic visit to Midyat, a town with a population of 120,000. During the visit, he emphasised the region's profound Assyrian heritage and promoted interfaith harmony.
He met with the mayor of Midyat, Veysi Şahin, as well as local Assyrian community leaders. During the meeting, Mayor Şahin expressed his pride in hosting the Patriarch of the Assyrians in Midyat, the 'city of religions and languages', and affirmed that municipal services are delivered without discrimination. He also emphasised the district’s rich cultural and religious heritage. Patriarch Ephrem Kerim remarked on the noticeable changes and developments in Midyat, praising the hospitality he experienced and the progress seen across the region.
The significance of the visit is evident to Assyrians following the patriarch as he tours the region. "It feels like a historical event", an Assyrian who alternates between living in Germany and Turabdin noted, adding: "One has to keep in mind that this part of the homeland was considered pretty much beyond recovery only two decades ago, but today our community is thriving and the visit of the patriarch and the warm welcome he has received from officials feels assuring as it shows a new mentality of openness and tolerance, the man said to The Assyria Post.
A region with a troubled history
Tur Abdin, located in south-eastern Turkey near the borders with Syria and Iraq, is the spiritual and cultural centre of Assyrians belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church. Some of its churches and monasteries date back to the 3rd or 4th century AD. Before the Assyrian genocide, known as Seyfo, around 1900, it is said that there were more than 200,000 Syriac Orthodox Assyrians in Turabdin. By the 1960s, this figure had fallen to around 75,000. However, when the military conflict between the Kurdish PKK and the Turkish military broke out in the mid-1980s, this figure fell further. By mid-1997, only around 2,600 Assyrians remained in Tur Abdin. Today, it is estimated that around 5,000 Assyrians live permanently in the region. From spring to autumn, Turabdin is visited by large numbers of Assyrians from the diaspora, which doubles the Assyrian population to some 10,000 during the warmer months.
Although there has been a significant improvement in the security situation in recent years, the indigenous Assyrians in Turabdin are still under pressure from local Kurdish tribes who occupy Assyrian lands. A murder of an Assyrian village elder in 2023 by local Kurds fearing the loss of lands they had acquired illegally, spread fear among the community. The swift intervention and apprehension of the perpetrators by Turkish authorities reassured the community and stood in stark contrast to the neglect in earlier decades when the murder of Assyrians went mostly unpunished.
