The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> the article.......

the article.......
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Tuesday, June 7 2016, 4:25:33 (UTC)
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...excuse the lapses into horrible German words...I wish scholars wouldn't do things like this.


Perspectives on Assyrian Nationalism
by Sener Akturk
Assyrians are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia.
They pride themselves on being the
heirs of the ancient Assyrian Empire.
They still speak the language of Christ (Syriac) and
were among the first Chr
istians in the world.
Their ‘national’ church sent missionaries to
India, China and Japan as early as the seventh century.
Their national identity, as they
claim it to be, is as old as history; their forefathers founded one of the first civilizations
on Ea
rth, and their religion encompassed the entire Asian continent.
Such claims of
nationality and national history are thought
-
provoking for scholars who have studied the
history of nationalisms.
Thus, I seek to find the particular events and broader processe
s
through which Assyrian nationalism is synthesized, raised and then failed.
In this paper, I will argue that a territorially and linguistically defined group of Semitic
Christians adopted a secular national identity that was constructed for them by the
O
rientalist scholars and European missionaries.
I will further argue that the internal
sectarian division among these Christians and successive massacres and attacks of their
Muslim neighbors necessitated the formation and adoption of a secular identity lik
e the
Assyrian nationalism.
Then I will conclude by proposing that the incorporation of the
Assyrians into a
Verbindungsnetzschaft
will enable a retention of their cultural and
linguistic ties without the bloody repercussions of establishing an Assyrian na
tion
-
state
(i.e.
Gesellschaft
) despite their demographic inferiority.
Mordechai Nisan’s narration of the Assyrian people’s history in his informative
Minorities in the Middle East
provides a starting point for a historical examination of the
Assyrian nat
ional identity.
1
According to Nisan, Assyrians are the heirs of the ancient
Assyrian Empire
2
and the ambiguity of defining this old Eastern community may be
considered resolved if we accept their view, which says “We were Assyrians long before
we were Chri
stians.”
3
Ethnic solidarity assured no intermarriage between the Assyrians
and other Christians or Muslims.
4
Linguistic continuity of Syriac enabled these people to
transfer their life experiences to succeeding generations.
5
Jesus spoke the language of the
Assyrians and a church stood in Urumiyah
6
in the second century.
7
The personality of
Nestorius whose views were condemned as being heretic by the Byzantine Orthodox
Church provided the Assyrians with the
raison d’etre
for a ‘national’ church.
8
Born in
per
secution, these Christians in the Kurdistan Mountains would preserve their Assyrian
identity, Syriac language and now their sectarian Christianity.
9
Yet even Nisan, who asserts an
a priori
Assyrian ‘nationality’ into his interpretation of
Middle Eastern
history, cannot escape from contrasting pacific Assyrian Chaldeans of the
Mosul plain with those brave Assyrian Nestorians in the Hakkiari Mountains, thus
hinting at a fundamental sectarian division among the Assyrian people.
10
Chaldeans are
the followers
of the Chaldean Catholic church which was established by a group of
Nestorian clergy who formed a union with the Roman Catholic church in 1552 and
recognized Papal authority in 1683, thus breaking from the independent Nestorian
church.
11
The conflict betwe
en the two churches invited European involvement while
exacerbating division within the Assyrian community.
12
Assyrians’ cooperation with the
Europeans provoked the enmity of their Kurdish neighbors and Ottoman sovereigns,
leading to the massacre of the As
syrians by the Kurds and the Turks in the First World
War.
The massacres of 1915 catalyzed the fledgling Assyrian national consciousness and
also initiated a series of flights, as a consequence of which, Assyrians finally settled in
the environs of Mosul i
n Northern Iraq.
13
The various attempts to settle the Assyrians in
Canada and Brazil were unsuccessful.
14
By attaching Assyrian nationality to the ancient Assyrian Empire, Nisan asserts an
Assyrian nationality that is ‘as old as history.’
15
On the contrar
y, the usage of the term
‘Assyrian’ as a specific reference to the people that we now know as Assyrians is fairly
new.
The Ottoman Empire, when it finally created a
millet
16
out of the so
-
called Assyrian
people in 1844, created a Catholic Nestorian, that i
s, a Chaldean,
millet
as opposed to an
Assyro
-
Chaldean or an Assyrian
millet
as the Assyrian nationalists would like it to be.
The so
-
called Assyrians were commonly referred to as the ‘Nestorians’ or ‘Chaldeans’
before and at the beginning of the 19
th
cent
ury.
In 1833, Eli Smith published a book about
his research in Armenia and his visit to the Nestorian and Chaldean Christians.
17
The term
‘Assyrian’ did not even appear in the index of his book.
Smith identified the people that
he met as ‘Nestorians’ or ‘C
haldeans’ and draw stark contrasts between these two
groups.
18
The Assyrian myth is likely to have been revived by the publication of the
Orientalist Henry Layard’s “Nineveh” in 1849.
19
But even then, the usage of the terms
Nestorian and Chaldean overwhelm
ed the usage of the ‘Assyrian’ for a while.
What is most remarkable about the 19
th
century is the explosion in the number of books
written about the Assyrians, Nestorians and Chaldeans.
20
This fact alone testifies to an
insightful correlation between Orie
ntalist ‘research’, missionary activity and the rise of
the Assyrian identity in the golden age of colonization.
“Archbishop of Canterbury’s
Appeal for the Assyrian Christians” in 1886 marks the level of legitimacy the term
‘Assyrian’ gained in less than f
ifty years.
21
Even today, the definition of an Assyrian is the topic of a heated debate.
Based on its own
investigations and consultation with scholars versed in historical and ancestry knowledge,
U.S. Census Bureau has classified the following people as
Assyrians: Aramean, Assyrian,
Chaldean, Chaldo, Jacobite, Kaldany, Kaldu, Kassdem, Kasdu, Nestorian and Telkeffe.
22
Yet the Chaldean church insists on preserving the term ‘Chaldean’ as part of its identity.
23
I assert that the Chaldeans’ unrelenting resis
tance to the secular national identity building
effort of their Assyrian brethren points out to the
incompleteness
of Assyrian nation
building in the year 2001.
European
-
originated Christian Missions’ impact over the Assyrian nationhood is an issue
that h
as been and still is debated.
Nisan emphasized the role of the Missionaries in
standardizing Syriac, increasing literacy, and mobilizing nationalist thinking and
encouraging political leadership.
24
On the contrary, Eden Naby, in his close examination
of th
e Assyrian community in the Persian city of Urumiyah, claimed that the coming of
the Christian Missions in effect put an end to Assyrian unity, as they brought Western
education, coupled with Western Christian denominational dissension, to the Nestorian
As
syrians.
25
Moreover, children who attend Missionary schools were taught the
languages of their mentors but the classical Syriac needed for connecting to Assyrian
tradition, philosophy and literature was not taught.
26
Every Missionary school became a
bastio
n of imperialist ambitions.
The Lazarist Mission’s influence was sufficient to
establish Salamas (an Assyrian town in West Iran) as a Catholic, French
-
oriented base.
27
The American Mission became the exclusive organ of the Presbyterian Church, and
rather t
han help the old church, Americans encouraged the establishment of a breakaway,
native Presbyterian congregation.
28
By the beginning of the century the Presbyterian
Church had effectively pushed the Nestorian culture in Urumiyah into the background.
29
Even
though the British and American missions concerted their efforts, Assyrians sought
Russian political protection and favor through mass conversion to the Russian Orthodox
faith.
30
Nestorian Church property was transferred to Russian Orthodox control.
31
As
these examples reveal, religious identity and conversion patterns were correlated to a
clientalist exchange of favors in which indigenous Assyrians converted to the
denomination of the European power that is expected to provide the most benefits.
As a par
tial conclusion, since Assyrians did not have their own sovereign state or their
own ‘national’ education system, external powers were able to manipulate and fragment
Assyrian nationality.
Assyrians needed to be able to form their national identity without
any external (i.e. imperialist European) manipulation.
According to Eden Naby, many Assyrian intellectuals opposed the denominational
fragmentation of the Assyrian community orchestrated by the European imperial powers.
Even though acknowledging the econ
omic and political benefits of the European
interference, these intellectuals also understood that the denominational divisions and
separate spheres of European influence prevent the unification of the Assyrian nation.
The secularist
-
nationalist Assyrian p
eriodical
Kukhva
began its publication in 1906, after
all the Western missions established their periodical presses.
32
Kukhva
served as the
organ of the newly emerging local Assyrian leadership and attempted to keep alive the
nonsectarian Assyrian language
, literature and cultural heritage, despite pressure from the
Mission presses.
33
Kukhva
voiced support for Assyrian unification efforts both inside and
outside Urumiyah.
34
It also promoted efforts to improve inter
-
communal relationships
between Assyrians a
nd their Muslim neighbors.
Kukhva
was a cause for and the expression of the first stirrings of Assyrian nationalism.
Even though the Assyrian national myth was created by the European Missions and
Orientalists,
35
once it is created, Assyrians gradually em
braced this identity as a means to
define themselves in an increasingly ‘nationalized’ world.
Progressive Assyrians of
Kukhva
condemned the sectarian divisions and the foreign Missions, and called for the
unification of the Assyrian nation on a secular bas
is.
“Kukhva editorial declared that although Assyrians had derived much benefit from the
presence of the Missions, they were prepared now to build their own schools and
churches and conduct their affairs by themselves. Struggle and hardship are better th
an
being victimized and exploited by ‘people...who sell their nation for a salary or a
position.’ The editorial ended by requesting that the Missions depart and take their ‘little
disciples’ with them.”
36
Condemnation of the foreign Missions was the end res
ult of a severe sectarian division
that divided the Assyrians into four different
millets
in Persia.
Unlike the Armenian and
Jewish communities in Urumiyah, the Assyrians had four
milletbashis
(community
heads) serving Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Russi
an Orthodox and Nestorians
separately.
37
In another case, the Persian Constitution of 1906 had given the Assyrians
(yet they were referred to as “Chaldeans/Nestorians”) the right to send one delegate to the
legislature.
38
Yet, the Russian interference in t
he relationship between the Assyrian
community and the Iranian government, through the institution of the Russian Orthodox
Mission, had lost the Iranian Assyrians their first opportunity for legitimate participation
in government.
39
The dedication of the
Western Missions to the proselytism of the native Christian church
led to sectarian dissent in a
millet
, which had persevered as a unit for centuries under
Islamic governments.
40
Being aware of this fact, progressive Assyrians attempted to
neutralize the d
iscord wrought by the Missions through fostering better relations with the
Persian authorities, opening channels of communication among Assyrians divided by sect
and separated by geography and improving conditions in Assyrian territories so that
migration
to the West would not be the sole alternative available to the ambitious youth.
41
World and local events conspired to doom the attempt.
42
The First World War was a disaster for the Assyrians.
Threatened by the Kurdish and
Turkish attacks, Nestorians of (O
ttoman) Hakkari fled to the Russian occupied Urumiyah
and once the Turkish troops captured Urumiyah in 1918, most of the Assyrians fled to the
British occupied Northern Iraq.
At the end of the war, the surviving Assyrian community
had become too widely sca
ttered to attempt a unification on the scale of that preceding
World War I.
43
The geographic unity had been destroyed.
44
At the end of the Great War,
very few Assyrians stayed in Turkey and virtually none in Iran.
Many Assyrians moved
to Western European c
ountries and the United States, creating an ever
-
growing Assyrian
Diaspora within the Western world.
As a partial conclusion, the term Assyrian itself, along with the concept of an Assyrian
nationality were created by the Orientalist scholars and foreign
Missions in the 19
th
century.
Yet once created, the Nestorians and some Chaldeans, embraced this national
identity as a means to overcome the religious
-
sectarian confrontations that they face.
We
are also justified to say that the same secular and national
ist minded Assyrians attempted
to integrate the Assyrian society into the political and social framework of the Islamic
society within which they lived.
But their efforts were crippled by the European powers
that benefited from an enmity between Muslims an
d Christians and the ensuing instability
in the Middle East.
At the same time, even though many neighboring Muslim
communities (i.e. Iraqis, Syrians) gradually transformed themselves into societies
(=
Gesellschaft
) with national bureaucracies, national educ
ation and mass media,
Assyrians, due to their failure to establish a nation state, remained as a
Gemeinschaft
.
After the Great War, efforts fo Assyrian nation
-
building concentrated in Iraq since Iraq
became the only Middle Eastern country with a signific
ant Assyrian population.
Assyrian
integration into the Iraqi society was remarkably problematic yet more fruitful was the
construction of an Assyrian nationality and nationalism in the Iraqi territory.
Throughout the years of British Mandate in Iraq, Assy
rians supported and served to
protect the British colonialism from Arab insurrection.
As Hanna Batatu notes, the
British
-
officered, locally recruited “Iraq Levies” were expanded and was now drawn
exclusively from the small, unintegrated racial and religiou
s minority of Assyrians.
45
The
Assyrians Levies’ devotion to protect the British colonialism and the tragic events like
the Arab
-
initiated massacre of the Assyrians in 1933 perpetually alienated Assyrians and
Muslims from each other.
46
Yet still the
Kukhv
a
’s dream of integrating Assyrians into the political structures of the
Middle East was partially realized in Iraq.
Pyotr Vasili, the founder of the Iraqi
Communist Party, was an Assyrian.
47
“Arabized” Assyrians and “Arabized” Chaldeans
made up 22.7% of th
e Iraqi Communist Party in the 1941
-
1948 period,
48
a ratio that is
disproportionately high with regards to the Assyrian minority’s share in the Iraqi
population.
Moreover, the Iraqi government formally recognized the Assyro
-
Chaldean
cultural and linguistic
rights in 1972, but little was done to give a concrete significance to
this declaration.
49
Hanna Batatu divides the people that we think of as Assyrians (in Iraq) into three groups:
1) Arabized Chaldeans, who are two times more politically active and dif
ferent than the
2) Arabized Assyrians who in turn, are politically active and distinct from the 3)
“nonintegrated, unassimilable Assyrians whose name still irritates Iraqis”.
50
In his
narrative of an ex
-
Assyrian Levy and a politically prominent “Arabized”
Assyrian (Tariq
Aziz, Foreign Minister of Iraq), Adam Haddad mentions that at least one third of the
Assyrian people prefer to call themselves as Chaldeans or Christian Arabs.
51
Today, the Assyrians are considered to be the third largest ethnic minority i
n Iraq.
52
In
1991, they were believed to represent 133,000 people, or less than 1 percent of the
population.
53
We would expect this number to be even lower because of the increased
migration of the Assyrians to the Western countries after the Gulf War.
The
demographic
inferiority of the Assyrians makes it impossible for them to establish a
Gesellschaft
in the
form of a modern nation state.
Unless we approach to the problem from a different (i.e.
postmodern) vantage point, Assyrians are doomed to live as a d
eprived “community”
among other communities (i.e. Kurdish, Turkoman) within the framework of an Iraqi
“society.”
Yet, according to the Assyrian representative of Sweden in the Fourth World Conference
on Women, there are over three million Assyrians spread
all over the world.
54
Despite the
nationalist claims of the self
-
identified Assyrians on www.nineveh.com, it is not certain
whether the three million Assyrians around the world would identify themselves as
national Assyrians.
Since both subjective and ob
jective definitions of a nation are unsatisfactory and
misleading, we should treat any sufficiently large body of people whose members regard
themselves as members of a nation as such.
55
Like the 41% of Tamil speakers who
refused to consider themselves nat
ional Tamils and prefer identification as Muslims,
56
at
least one third of the Assyrians in Ireaq refuse to consider themselves as Assyrians and
prefer to be identified as Christian Arabs.
Some Assyrians’ preference of religious identification (Chaldean)
over the national one
(Assyrian) should not surprise us.
Before the advent of the Modern Era, the world was
divided between religiously defined multicultural global orders.
As Richard Eaton
brilliantly demonstrated in his “Islamic History as Global History
,” the pre
-
modern world
had a cosmopolitan atmosphere that was multiethnic.
57
Similarly, Nestorian Christianity
also had a cosmopolitan atmosphere that was multiethnic.
According to the Assyrian
nationalist myth, any historical connection to the Nestorian
Church is considered to be a
mark of Assyrian
-
ness.
Yet, in the 8
th
century, Nestorian Church was described as
the
most missionary church that the world has ever seen
.
58
Nestorian Missionaries traveled as
far as India, China and Japan and converted numerou
s Indian, Chinese and Turkish
people and kings to Nestorian Christianity.
59
From a historical perspective, it is
unreasonable to claim that all the Nestorians and their historical associates, Chaldeans
and Jacobites, are descendents of the ancient Assyrian
s.
It is equally unreasonable, then,
for the self
-
defined Assyrians of the 21
st
century to claim parts (or the whole) of the
ancient Assyrian territory of the 1800 B.C.
History is complicated.
Almost all of the ancient peoples and empires were shuffled a
nd
blended together throughout history; especially throughout the religious cosmopolitanism
of the Medieval Ages.
Thus, as Hobsbawm once noted, nations are not as old as history;
indeed, the modern sense of the word is no older than the 18
th
century.
60
Ass
yrian ‘nation’
is not an exception to this rule.
As my inquiry to the history and the causes of the
Assyrian nationalism shows, the term Assyrian was invented, or rather, revived by
Western acheologists and Missionaries like Layard and the Archbishop of Ca
nterbury.
Once invented, many Nestorians and Chaldeans gradually accepted this term (i.e.
Assyrian) as their national identity.
The massacres of 1915, the need to undermine the
denominational divisions and similar pressures popularized the ‘Assyrian’ natio
nal
identity even further.
What prevented the unification of the Assyrian peoples and the realization of the
Assyrian national identity formation?
The imperialist (i.e. Russian and Western)
opposition to a secular identity formation; competition among th
e European powers to
culturally and linguistically patronize the Assyrian people; and the failure of the Assyrian
attempts for collective participation and representation in the political institutions of Iraq,
Iran and Turkey are all valid answers that exp
lain the
incompleteness
of the Assyrian
national identity formation to a certain degree.
Yet the Assyrians’ failure to establish a
nation state and their successive failure to teach and propagate the Assyrian language,
culture and history on a massive scal
e seems to be the primary reason for the
incompleteness
of the Assyrian national identity.
Nation is a social entity only insofar as
it relates to a certain kind of modern territorial state, the ‘nation
-
state’, and it is pointless
to discuss nation and nat
ionality except insofar as both relate to it.
61
Even though the
aspiration to establish a nation
-
state is enough to mobilize nationalist thinking, aspiration
alone is not enough to construct a full
-
fledged national identity.
Many features of a full
-
fledge
d national identity emerge in the process of constructing
political and legal, social and economic institutions for the nation
-
state.
Karl Deutsch
conceptualized the “making” of a nationality as a historical process of political
integration that increases
communication among the members of an ethnic group or a
“people.”
62
According to Deutsch’s formulation,
since
Assyrians failed in their attempt
for political integration,
then
Assyrians also failed to make the progress from a
people
to
a
nationality
.
The “
printing capitalism,” which Benedict Anderson holds responsible for
the emergence of nationalism,
63
creates nationality insofar as it is a network of
communications with a prevalent stream of national consciousness that flows within,
informing and imposing
national knowledge to the “people” who should be transformed
into a “nationality.”
An alternative scholarly perspective perceives nation
-
building as the
process through which a
Gemeinschaft
(community) is transformed into a
Gesellschaft
(society).
The con
cept of a people is very similar to a
Gemeinschaft
; whereas, the
Gesellschaft
closely resembles a “nationality.” Therefore, I feel justified to substitute
Gemeinschaft
and
Gesellschaft
for a “people” and a “society,” respectively.
A
Gesellschaft
also nece
ssitates a power elite that oversees the communications network
and only allows the information that it approves.
In other words, information is restricted
and the communications network is closed (by a power elite) in a
Gesellschaft
.
Nation
-
states are ver
y capable of creating such closed networks of communication and ‘filtered’
information flows.
Under these conditions, a
Gemeinschaft
can transform itself into a
Gesellschaft
either by establishing its own sovereign state or by becoming a constituent
part o
f a multinational state with full social, economic and cultural rights.
64
Yet in our contemporary ‘postmodern’ world, communication flows through
interpersonal and mass communication networks which often supersede and undermine
the closed networks of the
nation
-
states.
65
In accordance with the German terminology
that was employed in describing the nationalization project, Richmond calls this
transnational information network as the
Verbindungsnetzschaft
.
66
As Richmond observes, in reality,
Gesellschaft
re
lationships never completely replaced
Gemeinschaft
, but were superimposed on them, creating more complex social systems.
67
This is especially true for the Assyrian people, since they were made up of multiple
millets
(officially recognized Chaldean
millet
i
n the Ottoman Empire and four different
millets
in the Persian city of Urumiyah), and a
millet
is a community (i.e.
Gemeinschaft
)
in the modern sociological sense of the term.
Moreover, following the Assyrian
nationalists’ failure to unify these religiousl
y defined communities into a secular
Gesellschaft
, Iraqi elite superimposed its own secular Pan
-
Arabic
Gesellschaft
upon the
Assyrian people through the nation
-
building efforts of the Ba’thist regime.
68
But the
features of the Assyrian communities still pe
rsist and protect the ethnic Assyrians of Iraq
from being integrated into the Iraqi
Gesellschaft
.
Yet some other core features of a
Gemeinschaft
, like its reliance on religious
-
sectarian preferences, prevent the unification
of the various religiously defin
ed Assyrian communities (=
Gemeinschaft
s) into an
overarching secular
-
nationalist Assyrian
Gesellschaft
.
Religious
-
sectarian and secular
-
nationalist propaganda and ideologies compete and
reconcile in cyberspace.
The well
-
preserved, non
-
integrated and unass
imilable Assyrian
Gemeinschaft
s found channels of expression in the emerging framework of the
Verbindungsnetzschaft
: The Internet is probably the most popular and certainly the most
novel of these channels.
Klas Gustafson’s “Neverland in Cyberspace” attest
to this
situation by pointing out to the fact that “Assyria is the land that is not to be found in
geographies, but has an address
–
in the Internet.”
69
Albert Gabrial’s article on the same
issue has a slogan
-
like title which summarizes the relationship be
tween the
Verbindungsnetzschaft
and the Assyrian nationalism: “Assyrians: ‘3,000 years of history,
yet the Internet is our only home’.”
70
But it is also important to note that the representation of the Net as escaping all authority
is simply inadequate.
71
Although the
Verbindungsnetzschaft
broke into the closed
networks of the nation
-
states, it also allowed these states to devise far more sophisticated
and exclusive structures of administration and surveillance by employing these new
technologies.
72
Beari
ng all this information in mind, we can now draft a resolution to the ‘Assyrian
National Question’ from a more contemporary (and postmodern) vantage point.
In the
classical
Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft
scheme of national identity formation, the
establishment
of a nation
-
state was the necessary medium of national identity formation
because only the nation
-
state had enough resources to construct and control a national
network.
However, the advent of the
Verbindungsnetzschaft
created alternative networks
out of s
tate control by making means of communication available to many individuals
and communities.
Individuals and communities can create their own cultural
-
linguistic
-
religious networks by their own initiative.
Thus, they do not desperately need government
endo
rsement to promote their (indigenous) culture and language as they used to.
Yet,
they still need government permission, that is, a right to access the available technology
within the territory of the nation
-
state.
Today, it is easier to give concrete meani
ng to the
concept of social and cultural rights since the implementation of these rights does not
require direct government endorsement or participation anymore.
In conclusion, it is not just the Assyrians of Iraq but all the Assyrian communities
(
Gemeins
chaft
s) around the world can develop their cultural and linguistic networks if
their respective host states build the minimum technological infrastructure to make the
Verbindungsnetzschaft
structures (=Internet, cable TV, e.t.c.) available to the indigenou
s
people.
It is not unrealistic to envision a Northern Iraq that is interwoven with Assyrian
(as well as Kurdish and Turkoman) cultural and linguistic networks (websites and local
broadcasting in Assyrian).
Resolution of the competition between sectarian
i
dentifications (Chaldean, Nestorian) and nationalist aspirations, and the form of the
Assyrian national (re)unification, if it ever happens, may emerge within the relatively
peaceful means of communication (i.e. internet/cyberspace) instead of violent inte
r
-
communal warfare.
Then, Iraq can preserve its territorial integrity while becoming an
increasingly multiethnic state with its respective cyber
-
nations culturally flourishing
within their
Verbindungsnetzschaft
s.
Thus Assyrians can ensure their collective
identity,
not through government agencies, sponsors or subsidies, but through self
-
initiated effort
via the new means of communication.
Moreover, establishment of a separate Assyrian nation
-
state in Northern Iraq is out of the
realm of possibilities becau
se of the remarkable demographic inferiority of the Assyrians
(less than 1 percent of the population) andthe lack of national unity among them.
Yet
preserving the status quo would be synonymous with the
denial of Assyrians’ cultural
and collective rights.
Therefore, the multiethnic restructuring of the Iraqi state through a
technologically advanced communications infrastructure seems to be a realistic solution
to the questions and demands of the Assyrians.
Iraqi government’s formal recognition of
Assyrian c
ultural and linguistic rights is an indication of its tolerance, if not willingness,
of the flourishing of Assyrian culture.
To give a concrete meaning to this formal
recognition is possible if the Iraqi government allows the Assyrians actually to enjoy th
e
cultural and linguistic rights that they ‘officially’ possess.
The transformation of the
Assyrian
Gemeinschaft
s into a
Verbindungsnetzschaft
is already taking place in the
Diaspora; but what is even more necessary is the incorporation of the Assyrian
Gem
einschaft
s of Iraq into a
Verbindungsnetzschaft
.
Thus, we can avoid the violent
consequences of creating a
de jure
Assyrian nation
-
state (i.e.
Gesellschaft
) while actually
allowing the religious
-
sectarian and secular
-
nationalist Assyrian communities to org
anize
themselves around a
Verbindungsnetzschaft
that is capable of fulfilling the need to retain
cultural and linguistic ties among the Assyrians.
Appendix
Sample list of scholars who have published books about Assyrians or Nestorians, ac
companied by the year
of their birth and the year of their death in parenthesis, emphasizing the fact that most of these scholars
lived in the 19th century when Colonialism and Orientalism were very powerful.
1)
Austen Henry Layard (1817
-
1894)
2)
Thomas L
aurie (1821
-
1897)
3)
Asahel Grant (1807
-
1844)
4)
Adrian Fortescue (1874
-
19



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