-Religion and Identity among the Assyrians of the Netherlands-
According to my mother, I was only a few years old when I contracted a fever and was on the verge of death. My family, believing I was living my last moments, took me, half-dead, to the Syriac doctor Edvard Tanrıverdi, while weeping. As I write these words, Dr. Edvard's treatment must have worked. Midyat, where I was born and raised, was the heart of the Syriac "Turabdin" region and, as I recall, once had a large Syriac population. When I noticed that many of my Syriac friends, from my playmates in the neighborhood to my deskmates at school, were disappearing one by one and never returning, I learned that they had emigrated abroad. Perhaps influenced by my haunting past, I decided to study Syriacs who had emigrated abroad, using the example of the Netherlands. The following narrative, which I heard while conducting fieldwork on Syriacs in the Netherlands, essentially summarizes the situation of Syriacs in the diaspora. "A church named Mort Şmuni and Mart Mary was built in Hamburg. During this construction process A Syriac community of 150 families is bearing this burden. Their German neighbor is quite trying to help. Of course, when they finally built the bell tower, this German "Excuse me, but there is something I don't understand, why do you put a minaret on this mosque? "Did you wear a cross?" he asks. The Assyrian who narrated the incident said, "We have known this man for 6-7 years, We tell that we are Assyrian and Christian, but they still see the bell tower as a minaret and us as He thinks he is a Muslim.” This study includes the migration stories of Assyrians from their homeland to Europe, the identity crisis they experienced, and their religious and social lives.
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