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Concept
German Assyrians
Summary
German Assyrians are Germans of Assyrian descent or Assyrians who have German citizenship. The Assyrians in Germany mainly came from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
The immigrant community of people of Assyrian descent in Germany is estimated at around 100,000 people. They are known in German either as Assyrer ("Assyrians") or as Aramäer ("Arameans"). Significant local communities exist in certain cities and towns such as Munich, Wiesbaden, Paderborn, Essen, Bietigheim-Bissingen, Ahlen, Göppingen, Köln, Hamburg, Berlin, Augsburg and Gütersloh.
Being oppressed and persecuted throughout the 20th century for their religion, many arrived from Turkey only seeking a life. The first wave arrived in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the German economic plan of "Gastarbeiter". As Germany was seeking immigrant workers (largely from Turkey), many Assyrians saw an opportunity for freedom and success and applied for visas along with Turks. Assyrians started working in restaurants or as construction workers for companies and many began running their own shops. The first Assyrian immigrants in Germany started organizing themselves by forming culture clubs and building churches. The second wave came almost immediately after the first, as a result of two events.
The first event was when the Assyrian mayor of Dargecit was assassinated in 1979 in what has been looked at as a takeover of the local government by Kurds of the Assyrian homeland in Turkey. The new mayor was a Kurd, and that caused the local government to allow huge influxes of Kurds to start squatting on land and driving people off their land. The second event was when the Kurdish–Turkish conflict began in 1984. The area was effectively turned into a sectarian warzone between Turkey and the PKK with Assyrians caught in the middle. Nearly all Assyrians ended up fleeing the area, seeing as how both the Turks and Kurds were hostile, and they would be defenseless now that the local government is out of their hands.
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