eastern aramaic-speaking populations who follow the syriac orthodox church and syriac catholic church and live or descend from those who lived in northern iraq, northeast syria, southeast turkey, northwest iran and the southern caucasus tend to regard themselves as assyrian, whereas formerly western aramaic-speaking and now almost exclusively arabic-speaking levantine members of these churches from the rest of syria, lebanon and south-central turkey often espouse an aramean, phoenician (more common among maronite christians) or even greek heritage (see arameanism and phoenicianism.