A windswept hilltop here in southeastern Anatolia has become the site for a reunion that once would have been unthinkable, as thousands of Assyrians from across the region have converged to openly celebrate their New Year in Turkey for the first time.
Like many other expressions of minority ethnic identity, the Assyrian New Year, or Akito, had been seen by Turkey as a threat. But this year, the government, with an eye toward helping its bid to join the EU, has officially allowed the celebration by the Assyrians, members of a Christian ethnic group that traces its roots to ancient Mesopotamia.
Yusuf Begtas, one of the celebration's organizers, said that because most of Turkey's tiny Assyrian population -- about 6,000 people in all -- lives in a heavily Kurdish region that has seen frequent clashes between the Turkish government and Kurdish militias, strong assertions of Assyrian ethnicity have long been politically impossible. But Turkey's political culture has been changing rapidly.
"Turkey is showing itself to the EU," Begtas said. "When we asked the authorities for permission to celebrate this year, we knew it wouldn't be possible for them to deny us now. Turkey has to show the EU that it is making democratic changes."
The festivities on Friday were the culmination of a celebration that started on March 21, the first day of the Assyrian New Year. Behind Begtas, on a raised stage near the wall of the Mar Aphrem monastery, a balding baritone sang in Syriac, the Assyrians' language, a Semitic tongue similar to Aramaic.
He was followed by a group of girls wearing mauve satin folk costumes, dancing in lines with their arms linked. They were cheered on by an audience of about 5,000, including large groups of visiting ethnic Assyrians from Europe, Syria and Iraq.
Iraq, where Akito is celebrated openly, has the world's largest population of Assyrians, about a million. Most of Turkey's Assyrians were killed or driven away during the Armenian massacres early in the last century, and the bullet scars on some of Midyat's almost medieval-looking sandstone buildings still bear witness to those times.
In recent years, Assyrians have suffered quieter forms of persecution and discrimination. Since the 1980s, under those pressures, thousands of Assyrians have emigrated abroad. Kurds, with whom Assyrians have long had a tense relationship, are now the majority in Midyat, which until just a generation ago was 75 percent Assyrian.
Haluk Akinci, the regional governor of Nusaybin, a district next to Midyat, suggested that the Turkish government might see allowing the New Year celebration as a partial atonement for past persecutions.
"In the past, freedoms for minorities were not as great as they are now," he said, though he noted that in years past, private Assyrian New Year celebrations had generally been ignored by the authorities. "The Turkish government now repents that they let so many of these people leave the country."
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