The first Assyrians came to the Netherlands in the 1970s as a result of fights between the PKK and the Turkish army . Most of them were from the province of Mardin in southeastern Turkey , where the aforementioned conflict took place . In the 1980s , Assyrians from Syria , with almost all of them being from the originally Assyrian city of Qamishli ( Syriac : ܒܬ ܙܠܝܢ Bet Zalin ) , began to emigrate to the Netherlands . The latest group of Assyrians to migrate to the Netherlands are from Iraq , and they have been arriving there since the first Gulf War . The large majority of Turkish and Syrian Assyrians in the Netherlands belong to the Syriac Orthodox Church since they are from the western part of the Assyrian homeland , where the Syriac Orthodox Church is the most prominent . In the 1980s , as with other immigrants in Europe , a strong feeling of nationalism started to develop among the Assyrians in the Netherlands . This sentiment started to make Assyrians be active in working for projects that helped them preserve their identity . A few projects that started out were Assyrian society building , Assyrians churches and Assyrians language classes , which were being given in Dutch schools to Assyrian children and also on weekends in so-called Bible school classes . They also started camps for Assyrians youth and Assyrian music and dance classes were offered in the community . For adult Assyrians , lectures on society building and lots of social events were organized . Since 1981 there has been a Syriac Orthodox monastery in the village Glane near the German border . The Assyrians began to organize demonstrations to bring their situation in the Assyrian homeland to the attention of the media and to bring the 20th century Assyrian genocide to the attention of the Dutch government
Assyrian genocide
Assyrian genocide
Assyrians in the Netherlands