Assyrian independence movement

The Assyrian independence movement is a political movement and ethno-nationalist desire of ethnic Assyrians to live in their indigenous Assyrian homeland in northern Mesopotamia under the self-governance of an Assyrian State.

The tumultuous history of the traditional Assyrian homeland and surrounding regions, as well as the Partition of the Ottoman Empire, led to the emergence of modern Assyrian nationalism.^[1] To this respect, Assyrian independence movement is a "catch-all" term of the collective efforts of proponents of Assyrian nationalism in the context of the modern nation state. As a result of genocide and war, the Assyrians were reduced to a minority population in their indigenous homeland, resulting in political autonomy being unattainable due to the security risks,^[2] and the rise of the movement for Assyrian independence as it exists today.^[3]

The territory that forms the Assyrian homeland is, similarly to the rest of Mesopotamia, currently divided between present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria.^[4][5] The efforts are specifically in the regions where larger concentrations still exist, and not the Assyrian homeland in its entirety, those regions with large concentrations being Erbil, and the Duhok Governorate in Iraq, the latter two being located in the Iraqi Kurdistan region and the Al-Hasakah Governorate in Syria.^[6][7] Mosul and the Nineveh Governorate had a sizable Assyrian presence prior to the takeover and forced expulsion of the Assyrian population by the Islamic State in 2014.^[8]

In his 53 years as Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII petitioned the League of Nations,^[9] and then the United Nations^[10] for an Assyrian Homeland before stepping down as Patriarch in 1973.^[11] The assassination of Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII in 1975^[12] was a demoralizing moment to Assyrian freedom fighters, as he was a significant spiritual and temporal leader.^[13]

The independence movement is active both within the homeland and throughout the global diaspora,^[14] with much resistance from the local Middle Eastern states and regions,^[15] as well as the Kurdish.^[16] The movement has spanned centuries, with the initial conceptualization of modern Assyrian statehood occurring in the 19th century with the waning of the Ottoman Empire and rise of European control of the region, notably by the British and Russian Empires, as well as the French Republic.

There have been many hindrances to the movement, including events such as the Assyrian genocide, Simele massacre, internal conflicts over naming disputes and Assyrian churches, portrayals in media, and Arabization, Kurdification, and Turkification policies. Most recently, the primary problem for them has been ISIS, which took over and expelled a massive portion of the population from the Nineveh Plains in Northern Iraq. The Assyrian Aid Society of America has requested that the U.S. government designate these actions as a genocide against Assyrians in these regions.^[17]

Austen Henry Layard, the British Empire's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, stated that the Assyrians had survived the Arab, Mongol, and Kurdish conquests in the mountains of Hakkari and northern Mesopotamia, where they had fought to maintain their independence in the nineteenth century.^[18]

In 2016, the Iraqi Parliament voted against a new Christian province in Nineveh Plains, which was a stated political objective of all major Assyrian political groups and institutions. Assyrians, including the leader of the Assyrian Christian party Bet al-Nahrain, Romio Hakkari, protested the Iraqi parliament's decision and stated "We do not want to be part of the possible Sunni (Arab) autonomous region in Iraq".^[19]