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A surprisingly good report on the quiet persecution of Christians in Turkey, from the usually reliably dhimmi Economist. "Turkey and its Christians: The cross and the crescent," from The Economist (thanks to Chris):
THIS has been a bad year for Orhan Ant. As a Protestant missionary in Samsun, on the Black Sea, he has had death threats and his church has been repeatedly stoned. Local newspapers called him a foreign agent. A group of youths tried to kidnap him as he was driving home. His pleas for police protection have gone unheeded.Mr Ant is not alone. All over Turkey, Christians are under attack. In January Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian newspaper editor, was shot dead in Istanbul by a teenager who said he had “insulted Turkishness”. In April two Turks and a German, all evangelists, were murdered in Malatya. Their killers bound and tortured them before slitting their throats. In December an Italian Catholic priest was knifed by a teenager in Izmir. Another Italian priest was shot dead in Trabzon in 2006.
[...]
The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, resists calls to reopen the Greek Orthodox Halki seminary on Heybeli island off Istanbul, shut down in 1971. Turkey refuses to recognise the ecumenical title of the Greek Orthodox patriarch, Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of over 200m Orthodox Christians. The patriarch, a loyal Turkish citizen, has lobbied hard for Turkey's EU membership. But this has only reinforced suspicions among ultra-nationalist detractors, who accuse him of trying to “Christianise” Turkey and wanting a Vatican-style state in the heart of Istanbul.
Never mind that the Greek Orthodox church in Istanbul has dwindled to 4,000 souls, many of them too old to follow their children abroad. Nor that the patriarch must under Turkish law be a Turkish citizen, a rule which is making it difficult to find a successor to Bartholomew I. “They [ie, the Turks] apparently won't regard the conquest of Constantinople as complete until the patriarchate ceases to exist and all Christians have been frightened away,” suggests one restorer of icons in Istanbul.
The government has yet to approve a draft bill to help non-Muslims recover thousands of properties that have been confiscated by the state and either sold or left to decay. The Aya Yorgi church in Istanbul's Edirnekapi district, which was badly damaged in an earthquake, is one sad example. Its walls are cracked, its roof is leaking; a marble angel lies in pieces on the floor. “All we ask is to be permitted to rescue our church, but we cannot hammer a single nail,” complains Bishop Dionysios, a Greek Orthodox prelate who still conducts services there.
Many Christians concede that AK has treated them better than its secular predecessors did. They blame the deep state for their recent troubles. But the excuse of the deep state's power is wearing thin after AK's big victory in July's general election. “With such a strong mandate, the government's failure to meet our demands can only mean one thing, that the deep state is still in charge,” says a Christian priest. Or perhaps that AK believes in religious freedom for Muslims, but not Christians.
Posted by Robert at January 3, 2008 7:40 AM
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"THIS has been a bad year for Orhan Ant. As a Protestant missionary in Samsun, on the Black Sea, he has had death threats and his church has been repeatedly stoned. Local newspapers called him a foreign agent. A group of youths tried to kidnap him as he was driving home. His pleas for police protection have gone unheeded."
....sounds like there are some misunderstanding Muslims in the neighborhood.....
Posted by: exsgtbrown![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 3, 2008 8:07 AM
Naturally, one of the greatest victims of Turco-Islamic supremacy in Turkey were and still are the Armenians. Presently in Turkey, there are an estimated 40,000 Armenians left mainly in the large cities, most of whom have to play down their ethnic and correlated Christian identity. At the turn of the 20th Century there were, according to various estimates, between 1.2 million (from negatively biased Turkish historiographic sources) and 3 million ethnic Armenians within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire. At best, that is around a 95% reduction ("religio-ethnic cleansing") of the Armenian population.
Also, this article mentions the AK Party having restored a church in Eastern Turkey. This is the famous church/cathedral of St Akhtamar, which has only been preserved as it is on a peninsula/island in the middle of the giant Lake Van which happens to be a caustic lake - so it is an accident of geography that has preserved it, and it is such a well-known church that it would be hard to destroy it discreetly in the modern age. However, this was not so when hundreds of other Armenian Churches, cemeteries and monuments were systematically destroyed by the military, the state, the Kurds and general neglect since the formation of the Turkish state till the 70's and 80's.
The "restoration" of St Akhtamar is simply a public relations exercise with many Islamic rooted conditions - at its opening last year, as an important illustration, the request to have a crowning crucifix placed on the main spire was naturally declined by the "authorities" and many of the Armenian inscriptions have not been allowed restoration. So it is all show and a nice local earner from the diaspora Armenians who are retracing their historical roots and spending their pounds and dollars there.
Posted by: Pilisopa at January 3, 2008 9:55 AM
If this was reported on by the Economist, then you KNOW the anti-Christian persecution must be bad. I stopped subscribing to the Economist a couple of years ago because, while it is an excellent publication overall, the editors' dhimmitude generally knows no bounds. Truly, I'm stunned they have reported on this.
Posted by: kaffirchick at January 3, 2008 12:19 PM
Isn't the fall of constantinople to the Muslims one of the signs of the end-times, as prophesised by Mohammad?
Posted by: Jimmy the Dhimmi at January 3, 2008 12:34 PM
Too bad the USA is too much in bed with Turkey and simply ignores these astrocities. My late Papoo was a Greek from Istanbul but his family was forced out and relocated to around Edirne and later kicked out again during the exchange in the 1920's. I am afraid if the Turks ever ceded more Greek territory it would happen again.
EU membership for Turkey - NO!!
But, then again who would really want to be part of the EU dictatorship, Greece should pull out before they lose they nation state.
The average Turkish person I respect and most are really good people. I was in Istanbul for five months.
at January 3, 2008 5:09 PM
Those supposedly "secular" Turks at it again, showing us how modernized and western they are! Religion of peace and so on...
Posted by: HereticInfidel at January 4, 2008 11:17 AM
The spin in the mainstream media is that Turkey is "western,democratic,secular" . What a joke.
Jews and Christians in Turkey are scared of the very real potential for muslim violence against them so they "behave" themselves in the eyes of the muslims.
I saw this myself in Turkey . They are all good dhimmis who know their place .
Posted by: purplemarbles at January 4, 2008 12:09 PM
eaglecap wrote:
"Greece should pull out before they lose they nation state."
I understand the Greek sympathy with Serbia on the Kosovo issue. The ethnic Greeks in Cyprus know that recognition of Kosovo is analogous to the secession of the Turkish part of Cyprus.
Did Cyprus just adopt the Euro currency this year?
at January 4, 2008 3:13 PM
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