The situation of Christians in Turkey has gotten so bad that even the dhimmis at The Economist have noticed. From The Economist, with thanks to Sparta:
ON THE edge of a village near Midyat is a stone building whose fate may test Turkey's commitment to the European Union. Thirty Kurdish families in Bardakci use it as a mosque. But members of Turkey's Syrian Orthodox Christian minority (or Syriacs) insist it is St Mary's church, which served their community for 200 years until civil strife and economic hardship forced them out. They want it back.Some 3,000 Syriacs in the south-east say their land and houses have been seized, not just by Kurds, but also by the state. In Kayseri, an American couple were recently sent death threats by e-mail because they are "Christian." A Protestant pastor in Izmit province received a menacing letter and found a red swastika painted on his door. In Tarsus, a New Zealand missionary was beaten up and then told to leave by the mayor.
"Protestants are the most persecuted group in Turkey," says Ihsan Ozbek, pastor of the Kurtulus Protestant church in Ankara. That may be exaggerated, but respecting the religious freedom of non-Muslims will be critical to Turkey's hopes of joining the EU. For a while Turkey did well. Laws against Christians repairing churches were scrapped, enabling the Syriacs to restore the ancient Mar Gabriel monastery near Bardakci. Another law was passed to let non-Muslim religious foundations buy land. Timoteus Samuel Aktas, the metropolitan of Mar Gabriel, proudly shows off a new recreation centre for monks at his monastery. Yet recent attacks against Syriacs, including the detonation of a landmine under a car, have rung alarms - and made fellow Syriacs in Europe reconsider plans to return.
The government's failure to denounce these attacks has been aggravated by its attempts to sell land in Bardakci that the Syriacs claim as their own. They have petitioned the authorities in Ankara, who have yet to respond. Some observers see this as a sign of the "reform fatigue" bedeviling the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan ever since he won the date of October 3rd for the start of EU membership talks. Others detect a mounting campaign against Christians by Islamist forces within Mr Erdogan's party.
One shot was fired by the state institution that micro-manages religious life in Turkey, when it issued a sermon on March 11th to be preached at some 75,000 officially registered mosques. The sermon talked of the dangers posed to national unity by missionaries, who "work as a part of a plan to cut the ties of our citizens with the [Islamic] faith." This was followed by a statement by Mehmet Aydin, the minister for religious affairs, calling missionary activities "separatist and destructive." He was praised by nationalists, who fear that Europe has plans to convert Turks to
Christianity. It matters little that only 300 souls have defected in the past eight years - or that proselytizing is legally permitted.Mr Erdogan still resists calls to reopen the Greek Orthodox Halki seminary on Heybeli island off Istanbul that was shut down in 1971. Allies say his hands are tied so long as he is unable to deliver on pre-electoral pledges to his pious constituents, especially to ease the ban on the Islamic headscarf in government offices, schools and universities. European diplomats counter that, by denying Christians their rights, Turkey is strengthening its growing army of detractors within the EU.
Back in Bardakci, Yusuf Ozkahraman, a 64-year-old Kurdish farmer, points smugly at St Mary's church. "Only when the Christian forces become stronger than our state will this mosque be shut to the believers, and that day will never come," he vows...
Do the EU states that want Turkey to join the EU give a damn?
Somehow I don't think so.
Turkey will not be allowed into the E.U. That little dream is over. Turkey has a choice: it can turn to the ally that has, for decades, treated it so well, lavishing foreign aid, including military aid, diplomatic support, and a blind eye both to internal Turkish policies, and to the inability of the inheritors of secularism to extend its reach beyond 25% of the population, and their unwillingness to defend it tooth and nail -- with the results we see.
Or it can turn to the Arabs. There are Syria and Iraq, countries that use the water that Turkey, for its own purposes, covets. Indeed, Turkey's attempt to exploit the waters of the Euphrates may be a casus belli in the way that Ethiopia's attempts, at long last to exploit the headwaters of the Nile have already caused a certain amount of proleptic huffing and puffing, and threats, and more, in Egypt.
The Arabs, in the end, offer only the nightmare of more Islam, more Arabdom, more intellectual and social disarray, more going backward, ever backward.
The Americans are Turkey's only hope. Some of the Turks know that Turkey is no longer so important as a base and listening-post to be used as it was in the Cold War.
Possibly some dream of a pan-Turanian influence in Central Asia, but that involves competing withthe limitless funds of Saudi-financed missionaries. And it also requires choosing: Turkish appeals to some slightly implausible "Turkicness" or the superior model of "Turkish" Islam -- i.e., the usual attempts to constrain, but not change, Islam.
Were I a nice Turk, or even a malignant and a turbaned Turk, I'd pin my hopes on the United States, and cease to make trouble for it -- even if, as one devoutly hopes, a free Kurdistan emerges from that three-vilayet mess in Iraq.
come up against the Wahhabi effort, far more
My dear Hugh, I wish it were. But the same forces that insisted on Turkish entry before - namely, those countries that oppose the very notion of a European Union and wish to reduce it to a mere free-trade zone with no political existence at all - will go on pushing for its admission. Popular will, whuzzat? Britain and Sweden, the enemies within the wall - countries that should never have been let into the EU - want as many countries as possible to join, regardless of suitability or even of sense. Incidentally, this article from the British magazine PRIVATE EYE details a recent example of British corruption and/or dhimmitude that has something to with the religious persecution of Christians in Turkey. It comes from a column dealing with assaults on Britain's built heritage, but read it carefully and the stench of collusion, corruption and dhimmitude will strike your nostrils.
FOR SOME years now, rumblings have emanated from the government that Britain's diplomatic representation abroad is too expensive and our embassies are often an extravagance.
More to the point, perhaps, all those grand palaces built by the likes of Lord Curzon to represent the majesty of the empire give quite the wrong image. Much better, surely, to have an exciting new building resembling a Tesco supermarket, perhaps designed by an award--winning knighted architect, to convey what a go--ahead place Biairite Britain is. Forward not back!
Such thinking may explain the foreign and commonwealth office's (FCO) disgraceful behaviour over St Helena's Chapel in Istanbul, in the grounds of the British consulate. There has been an Anglican chapel on this site in Pera since the 17th century. The present building, which dates from 1882, was designed by W.H. Lynn of Belfast, who was commissioned by Lord Dufferin, who was then British ambassador to the
Sublime Porte.
This chapel used to have its own entrance from the street but this has long been closed and it is now reached from the gardens of the consulate, formerly the embassy (when onstantinople was the capital of the Ottoman empire) - a handsome palazzo built in the 1840s from sketches by Sir Charles Barry.
Both the consulate and chapel were damaged by the Al-Qa'eda bomb that killed the consul-general and many others in 2003. The consulate has since been repaired and made more secure, at great expense, but not St Helena's Chapel, The congregation has been actively discouraged by the consulate from using or even entering the building. Worse, in 2004 the consulate, without informing the church council responsible for St
Helena's, pursued negotiations to lease it to the developer of an adjacent new hotel, possibly for use as a nightclub.
Informal verbal permission was given to the developer to use the churchyard, which has now been wrecked - trees cut down and two gate
lodges demolished. There is now a proposal to build an entertainment bar right behind the east window of the chapel. Well might the chaplain
complain to the current consul-general, Miss Barbara Hay, CMG, MBE, that such plans are ignoble, flout local custom and law on licensed premises and sacred places as well as being hurtful to the church council.
There is an active Anglican community in Istanbul based around three churches. One is St Helena's; another is the Crimean Memorial Church, a distinguished building by G.E. Street, architect of the Law Courts in London, which had been shamefully left derelict until 1993 when it was re-consecrated and revived. Surely St Helena's ought also to be brought back into use if only to show that we will not be intimidated by terrorism?
But perhaps such positive activities give a misleading impression of modern Britain. As is well known, Turkey would like to join the European Union despite being an Islamic country. So perhaps the foreign office is merely trying to help by demonstrating what a modern secular state such as Britain is really like: one in which history and tradition mean nothing and in which old churches are cheerfully abandoned when money can be made.
As I'm sure some Muslim apologist will remind us:
"Turkeys are harassed by Christians every Thanksgiving".
(For "moral relativism" to get its hallucinatory due.)
Surely St Helena's ought also to be brought back into use if only to show that we will not be intimidated by terrorism?
Too right.
I posted last Sunday, on the Anglican Church's international advisory body's vote to urge the church to consider withdrawing its investments in companies that support the occupation of Palestinian territories and mentioned then the diversity of the Anglican comunion worldwide. The dereliction of these churches in Turkey was news to me, so I am obliged to Paolo for the post.
OT on this thread but relevant to last weeks thread I now have the Church Times report on the proceedings. The advice was not universally well received. The Daily Telegraph denounced it as "sanctimonious claptrap". The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks counselled against taking precipitous action. The Bishop of Jerusalem, a Christian arab was the instigator of the suggestion (and it is only advice to disinvest, not a command) supported by Bishops from the South Pacific dioceses. Which lead to the best comment, in my opinion,
The fiercest critic of the ACC decision has been Canon Andrew White, chief executive officer of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, who has been working on the implementation of the Churches' Alexandria peace process.
"Every month I sit with those committed to working for peace on both sides of the divide," he said. "I know the pain and hurt of both communities. I know it is not possible to undermine the pain and suffering of the Palestinians, and know, too, the pain and fear of living under the threat of terrorism that the Israelis have experienced.
"All too often, delegations come out for a few days and write definitive reports. I have spent years in the land, and even now do not understand many of its complexities."
http://www.thechurchtimes.co.uk/80256FA1003E05C1/httpPublicPages/475868B9B4CF118B80257030004AE3CE?opendocument
Granny:
Lots on melaniephillips.com regarding the Anglican church and related charities (Christian Aid and its recent Xmas appeal) and the sick way that the church and charities have been coopted by the jiddists.
Some unnamed Anglican has actually created a website called Christian Hate to expose Christian Aid's biased campaigning.