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An article advocating the formation of an Assyrian region in northern Iraq on Feb. 2 made the rounds on Turkish social media. Appearing on The Assyria Post, a platform serving the global Assyrian diaspora of 3 to 5 million people, the article advocated for Türkiye to sponsor an Assyrian state in northern Iraq to curb Kurdish separatism.
As one would expect, Kurdish social media was not too pleased with the article’s argument, especially because much of the proposed Assyrian state/region would take land from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq.
Like many non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East, Assyrians have a tragic history. Proud descendants of the ancient Assyrian Empire, they were once the center of a thriving cultural and economic zone at the crossroads of present-day Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria, with a large community in Iran. But the group experienced massacres and forced deportations amidst the chaos of World War I.
Still, Assyrians maintained a considerable presence in Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion, with their population estimated at as many as 1.5 million and many holding prominent positions. Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein’s close confidante and foreign minister, was an Assyrian Christian. Alongside related communities—Chaldean Catholics and Nestorians (terms many Christian youths in Iraq prefer to use collectively)—they saw their numbers decline sharply during the Syrian civil war, particularly amid the Daesh onslaught.
A common truism about the Middle East’s post–World War I order is that, with the exception of Türkiye and Iran (and perhaps Saudi Arabia and Egypt), most regional states did not fully determine their own borders. “Artificial” borders were imposed on ethnic, religious, tribal, and other social realities by outside powers—or so goes the argument. Within those borders, states have tried to impose a “one size fits all” political culture and economic order, creating great backlash and chaos across the region.
Those are valid points, but there is hardly anything “natural” about international boundaries in other parts of the world that have experienced peace and prosperity in recent decades.
What has made the other parts of the world more peaceful than the Middle East is accepting political borders as a given but then working around them. That is why the European Union project succeeded—it started as a modest cooperative framework over iron, coal, and steel, evolved into a single market with free labor and capital movement and common legal frameworks. Political borders were treated not too differently from administrative lines between municipalities. The result: The EU has become the world’s third-largest economy with just above 5% of its population.
The EU is hardly perfect. As a bloc, its average annual GDP growth hovers around 1%. Yet, the 27-member union has grown so accustomed to wealth that its members are still trying to adapt to the geopolitical threats of the 21st century—at a time when the United States is signaling its intention to draw down forces and Russia, despite its demographic catastrophe and the quagmire in Ukraine, is appearing more dangerous than ever.
But the alternative—such as the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the more recent Russian war on Ukraine, where bloody efforts try to adjust political borders to demographic and historical claims is much worse.
Today, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the African Union, and Mercosur in Central and South America are striving to repeat not the political land-grabbing attempts of Russia or Israel, but the EU’s economic and social success.
As amusing as it may be to witness Kurdish social media reactions to calls for an Assyrian state—resembling Turkish reactions to Kurdish territorial claims within Türkiye—debating such issues, particularly when it spills into violence, is a dangerous proposition.
In an ideal world, any group of people ought to demand separate statehood for whatever reason through peaceful means. The problem is, other people would have to have a right to oppose those demands peacefully as well. Politics and international relations could reach a deadlock.
At any rate, geopolitical realities would bar the implementation of a Turkish-sponsored Assyrian state. As several high-ranking active-duty and retired Turkish officials told this author after The Assyria Post article, Türkiye is unlikely to endorse the idea of an Assyrian state in Iraq because it would ruin its relationship with both Baghdad and the Erbil-based KRG, where the prominent Kurdish nationalist party, the KDP of the Barzani family, which also has sport irredentist claims on southeast Türkiye, are nonetheless a close partner of Ankara.
In addition, the officials told me, besides fueling religious radicalism in the Middle East, a Christian state in the region would risk new Western vectors of interference. Finally, numbers matter: An Assyrian state of a mere few million is unlikely to fare too well surrounded by millions of Turks, Arabs and Kurds.
In 2006, former U.S. Army officer and commentator Ralph Peters offered new borders for the Middle East—especially with an independent Kurdistan (mostly at Türkiye, Iraq and Syria’s expense). With a hint of irony, Peters’s article was titled “Blood Borders.” Much of what we have seen in the last 20 years proved that any new attempts at border drawing end poorly, even for people across distant lands. Daesh proved that. Peters does not comment on politics as much as he used to.
Meanwhile, a better idea seems to be in the works. In an interview with Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas published on Jan. 29, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan identified the Middle East’s problems in a concise fashion and offered a straightforward solution: When one interacts with others and dedicates themselves to the security of others, that is ultimate trust. The problem in our region is the lack of trust between the region’s nation-states. If we can increase the trust between our nations, that will help to bring stability and peace. There will be no domination—no Turkish domination, no Arab domination, no Persian domination nor any other type of domination. Regional countries come together and act responsibly. Look at how the European Union reached from zero to where it is now. Why can’t we?
One does not need to be a fan of Fidan or his boss, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to see the wisdom here.
At the very least, working on models of economic and social cooperation and integration across the region’s borders rather than continuing the same style of demands for territory and security at the expense of others might offer new solutions to the region’s old problems.
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