The tribal areas that form the Assyrian homeland are parts of present-day northern Iraq ( Nineveh Plains and Dohuk Governorate ) , southeastern Turkey ( Hakkari and Tur Abdin ) , northwestern Iran ( Urmia ) and , more recently , northeastern Syria ( Al-Hasakah Governorate ) . The majority have migrated to other regions of the world , including North America , the Levant , Australia , Europe , Russia and the Caucasus during the past century . Emigration was triggered by events such as the Massacres of Diyarbakır , the Assyrian Genocide ( concurrent with the Armenian and Greek Genocides ) during World War I by the Ottoman Empire and allied Kurdish tribes , the Simele Massacre in Iraq in 1933 , the Iranian Revolution of 1979 , Arab Nationalist Ba'athist policies in Iraq and Syria , the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ( ISIL ) and its takeover of most of the Nineveh plains
Assyrian Genocide
Assyrian genocide
Assyrian people