Abstract: The article attempts to explore the efforts of political emancipation of Assyrians in the post-Saddam Iraq. Assyrian people are ancient ethnic, linguistic and religious minority which has for centuries been the target of persecution. Assyrians, as other Iraqi suppressed minorities, intensified their calling for self-determination after the fall of the Iraqi totalitarian regime, but without any perceptible eff ect. The Assyrian question is rooted in complicated history, geopolitics, ethnic mosaic and religious differences which are explained in the text. Assyrians do constitute a coherent nation. That is why the article examines Assyrian identity problems which influence the political attitudes of Assyrian groups. This text deals with the current social status and political activities of the Assyrian people in Iraq and in Iraqi Kurdistan. The author focuses on the issue of an Assyrian autonomous area in northern Iraq, dwells on the most viable proposal and outlines which intrastate and foreign political actors support the idea of Assyrian autonomy and which do not.

Keywords: Assyrians, Iraq, politics, discrimination, emancipation, autonomous tendencies