On Sunday, June 12, 2011, Assyrian attorney Erol Dora became the first Christian in 50 years to win a seat in Turkey’s Parliament.  Erol Dora, 47-years-old, was a born in the village of Hassana, and became a refugee when the village was evacuated by the military during the fighting between rebels and soldiers in the 1990s.

Erol Dora, ran as an independent backed by the Party for Peace and Democracy, or BDP, Turkey’s main Kurdish party.  He ran as a representative of the district of Mardin, which is the traditional homeland of Turkey’s Assyrians (Syriacs-Chaldeans).  Mr. Dora won one of the five alloted seats to the Mardin district.

During his campaign, Mr. Dora promised to speak for Syriac Christians in the national assembly and "work for democracy as a Turkish citizen".  It is worth noting that Turkey’s Christian and Jewish communities number about 150,000 people in a country of roughly 74 million.