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Turkey (AP) -- Nine-year-old Ninua Saliba played
hide-and-seek outside a 7th century church as
village men drank tea, chatted in a language similar
to Jesus' and waited for a Christmas visit by the
local Turkish governor.
The politician's stop and the calm in the ancient
village would have been inconceivable just a few
years ago when the tiny Christian community in
southeastern Turkey was caught in the middle of
fighting between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels.
But a sharp decrease in fighting, and Turkey's focus
on democracy and human rights as it seeks to join
the European Union, are boosting hopes that one of
the world's oldest Christian communities can rebuild
itself in its spiritual heartland.
Turkey, which faces European pressure to return
displaced villagers to the region and to grant more
rights to minorities, is encouraging thousands of
Assyrians to come back, and dozens have returned,
Assyrians say.
Gov. Osman Gunes' visit to Assyrian towns and
monasteries underlined the new spirit.
"If there hadn't been peace, we wouldn't have
returned," said Ninua's father, Erden, who left with
his family for Switzerland more than 20 years ago
and was back for his first Christmas in Haberli.
"We're here to live in solidarity with the other
villagers," he said, as his wife Sara offered
cookies to visitors sitting by a Christmas tree in
their house.
Saliba said he easily secured Turkish permission to
return and build a three-story house of stone that
towers over the village. But he said Haberli suffers
frequent power cuts and lacks a public sewage
system.
Unlike officially recognized religious minorities
such as Jews and Greek Orthodox Christians, schools
aren't allowed to teach Syriac, a modern version of
the Aramaic spoken in Jesus' time. So there's no
suitable school for Saliba's three Swiss-raised
children who speak Syriac, but not Turkish.
An EU report in October said "very few" Assyrians
have returned due to harassment by pro-government
Kurdish militiamen and paramilitary police.
The Assyrians encapsulate the complexities of a
country that is mostly Muslim, professes strict
secularism and shrinks from any recognition of
ethnic pluralism. A sign at the entrance to Haberli
proclaims that "THE MOTHERLAND IS A WHOLE AND CANNOT
BE DIVIDED" -- a tacit warning to Kurdish rebels and
anyone else seeking separate status.
The Assyrians have mostly sought to stay neutral
between the government and the Kurdish rebels, but
neutrality has sometimes made their loyalties
suspect on both sides. That, and a lack of jobs,
have pushed many of them to emigrate, reducing the
number of Christians in the region to an estimated
4,000 at most.
Saliba said that 30 years ago, around 75 families
lived in Haberli. About 20 families remain.
Human rights groups say soldiers forcibly emptied
thousands of villages throughout the region to
deprive the Kurdish rebels of local support. Fikri
Turan returned from Germany to the village of
Sarikoy to find his house occupied by pro-government
Kurdish militiamen who refused to leave until the
governor personally intervened.
Turan spent Dec. 25 at the fourth century Mor
Gabriel monastery, one of the world's oldest, where
visitors from Europe attended early morning services
and ate traditional Christmas meals of boiled meat
with onion.
For Assyrians, the clashes of the 1980s and 1990s
were the most recent in a series of challenges to a
community that traces itself to the pre-Christian
Assyrian Empire.
According to tradition, Assyrians began adopting
Christianity in the first century A.D., 600 years
before the region was conquered by Arab Muslims. The
Deyr-ul Zaferan monastery served as home to the
Assyrian patriarchate until 1933.
Assyrians say the community here once numbered
hundreds of thousands, but fell victim to massacres
during World War I that Armenian and Assyrian groups
have labeled a genocide. Turkey denies that, saying
the killings stemmed from civil unrest, the death
toll was inflated, and the Christian population was
never as big as its members claimed.
Isa Gulten, a local Assyrian leader, said Turkey
should ease restrictions on language and religious
education so that Assyrians can preserve their
culture.
But he noted that reforms passed as part of Turkey's
EU bid have made it easier to refurbish ancient
monasteries and churches and start resettling nine
villages.
"It's a small number," he said, "but this is the
first step."
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