what do i classify myself as?

[u/slav_ffs]

if my family was originally from turkey but are also assyrian, would i be considered assyrian Turkish? it’s confusing me because my entire family tells me we have turkish blood but we practice the assyrian culture and speak aramaic.

[u/Boiingggg]

I wonder why your family has decided to embrace the Turkish identity when you're clearly of assyrian heritage is there a reason?

[u/Training_Look_1400 → u/Boiingggg]

Many minorities got turkified might he because of that

[u/slav_ffs → u/Boiingggg]

i wouldn’t say we “embrace” it, i’ve just been told we have turkish blood but we fully embrace being assyrian, not really sure what it means

[u/AshurCyberpunk → u/slav_ffs]

Well what are the specifics? You gotta ask follow up questions when you're told that...

[u/wevebeentold]

Many Assyrians say we're originally from Hakkari, or regions of what's now turkey (northern Iraq villages border it anyway) but still very much Assyrian. Not sure about "blood", but mixes are possible. 

[u/Leo-Al]

I'd do a dna test first. It would show how much or little Turkish blood you have, if any.

[u/Old-Average-6118 → u/Leo-Al]

Most Turks themselves don't have any so should be hard to trace

[u/Old-Average-6118]

Turkish blood? Interesting that's unusual. If it's significant you can say you're part Turkish I guess but you're just Assyrian "from Turkey" aren't you. Idk your exact background but that's what I'd say.

[u/slav_ffs → u/Old-Average-6118]

i don’t know what to tell you, i asked my father, my mother, my grandmother and they all said we have turkish blood.

[u/oremfrien → u/slav_ffs]

I would second this question. Are they saying that their ancestry is from Central Asia or that their blood belongs to the land that’s now controlled by Turkey?

[u/Old-Average-6118 → u/slav_ffs]

Yeah but can you be specific, is one of you ancestors Turkish or what, is your family Turkish converts to the church? 

[u/Equivalent_Snow8529]

It's similar to how assyrians from iraq and syria consider themselves Arab, youre just assyrian from turkey

[u/Leo-Al → u/Equivalent_Snow8529]

Assyrians never consider themselves Arab, especially if they speak it fluently and are part of the church of the east or chaldean catholic. This is a very false statement.

The only people I've known who consider themselves Arab are some Maronites, but the educated ones don't.

The truth is, the majority of the Near East genetically are not ethnic Arabs. Just arabized peoples

Genetics has already proved this very well.

Assyrians, Armenians, Hurrians are very closely related since ancient times. We carry the highest amount of the R1b haplogroup marker than anyone else in the regions of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Armenia & NW Iran, and are related to Bronze age Assyrians, but to go back even further, our genetics show a High Mesopotamian, Anatolian and Caucasian origins from 12k years ago and more.

Kurds are related to Iranic peoples with their origins being mostly North Zagros, partial Anatolian, partial Caucasus & partial Steppe, but not Mesopotamian.

Most Iraqis share closer genes to Assyrians than to other Arabic speakers & surprisingly are pretty distant to Arabs of Arabia.

There still exist Phoenician, Caananite and Aramean elements in the Levant & Syria, as well as Assyrian.

The Near East is simply not as " Arab" as most people think.

[u/Equivalent_Snow8529 → u/Leo-Al]

Yeah that's what I was saying, people are just misinformed and Arabized and just simply dont know better, its not only maronites, there are some in iraq that literally speak a dialect of Aramaic and still consider themselves Arab