Turkish Christians in distress

[zefs]

Turkish Christians in distress
by Jamie van Wagtendonk

30-05-2008
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Pastor Ihsan Ozbek does his best to shield his flock and his young children from the daily threats that arrive at his doorstep. Leading one of the largest congregations of the tiny Christian minority in Turkey, Ozbek has watched a troubling transformation of the relationship between his parishioners and the large Muslim majority in recent years.

A surge of religiously motivated violence has resulted in the violent murder of three church members and brazen attacks on priests and has created a general sense of isolation and trepidation amongst Turkish Christians. This has been compounded by a growing nationalist sentiment in Turkish society that Christians seek to undermine the nation's sovereignty by promoting a faith that is seen by many as Western.


Remains of a Turkish church.
Photo: Scott Henderson
Today, the Christian population has not kept up with the population boom that Turkey experienced over the past century. Out of the seventy-one million inhabitants of Turkey, it is estimated that less than 200,000 are Christian. There are signs, in recent years, that even as the Christian minority shrunk in Turkey, it has become a symbol for ultra-nationalists of a group disloyal to the Turkish state.

This has boiled over into religious violence, which has been fuelled by television programmes that utilize Christian antagonists and nationalistic publications that attack the minority group as a tool of the United States and Europe. Unfortunately, this nationalistic mindset forgets the importance of Christianity to the historical story of Turkey.

Rich history
Turkey is a land with a rich and complex religious history. It prides itself upon being a bridge between the East and the West, connecting Europe to Asia. Over time, the area has enjoyed an incredible amount of cultural diversity that combines many traditions of the various groups that live within its borders. The history of Christianity is deeply intertwined in this diversity. Istanbul, a huge cosmopolitan metropolis spanning the geographical boundary between the two continents, became the capital of the Roman Empire in 324 AD at the directive of Constantine the First, the first Christian emperor.

At the height of the Ottoman Empire's power, it controlled large swaths of majority Christian lands, including what is today Greece, Hungary and Serbia. The Ottomans adopted progressive policies for religious minorities, welcoming Christian and Jewish refugees fleeing violence in Europe and Asia and instituting a Christian school system in many parts of the empire.

This story was approved by and featured on: The State We're In, Radio Netherlands programme on human rights and human wrongs


When Kemal Ataturk established the Turkish republic in 1923, he specifically included provisions of religious freedom in the constitution, ensuring that the rights of the Christian minority would be protected.

Pauline Year
Some changes are being made today to solve the anger directed at the Christian minority. The Turkish government, now led by the Islamist AKP party, has faced increasing pressure to improve conditions for religious and ethnic minorities in the county. One of the main requirements for membership in the European Union is to reach an acceptable level of rights for minorities.

This has prompted laws promoting religious freedom and has led to strong condemnations by government officials of the Anti-Christian violence. Pope Benedict XVI has also symbolically declared the latter half of 2008 to be the ‘Pauline Year' after Saint Paul, a Christian martyr born in southern Anatolia, in order to promote religious tolerance in Turkey. For Christians in Turkey like Pastor Ozbek, however, the religious tensions are just a part of daily life. He admits that his congregation cannot flee the problems, nor can they easily be solved. "I have to continue my life, otherwise they will win."


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[Draco]

I'm so used to hearing western Bulgars call us "Turkish Christians" I forgot the genuine meaning of the expression.