January 11, 2003
BECOMING WESTERN:
Death Watch: One of the world's earliest Christian cultures totters on the edge of extinction. (Thomas C. Oden, 01/10/2003, Christianity Today)Our Turkish-speaking drivers were taking us through the Fertile Crescent, that crossroads of great civilizations, but it did not appear very fertile. On this visit to eastern Turkey, religious freedom advocate Paul Marshall and I saw little cultivated land and a striking level of depopulation. We met the only two monks remaining in the monastery of the village of Sare (or Sarikoy). They were resigned, calm, and ready for the apocalypse.Syriac-speaking Christians in this area have persisted through more than a dozen centuries of Muslim, Ottoman, and now Turkish rule. They languish between the secularizing government of the Republic of Turkey and an Islamic culture that views them as heathen outsiders. The government has long given them minimal "freedom of worship" while decisively restricting property rights for local congregations. Nor do authorities allow them any avenues of new growth-communication, speech, normal press freedom, or economic development.
Syriac-Aramaic comes as close as any living language to what Jesus spoke. It is the liturgical and poetic language of these Christians. Yet authorities forbid Christians on Turkey's southeastern border with Syria, Iraq, and Iran to teach that language-nor can their schoolchildren learn any subject in it. Christians in Syria, by contrast, legally teach and worship in that language.
Besides the secular and Islamic opposition, modern forces also threaten. Dams for electric power and irrigation are filling up the great valley of the Tigris, threatening to submerge lands-including churches and monasteries-on which Christian families have lived for more than a millennium. In any case, as in the rest of Turkey, Christians cannot buy property.
In short, the government would be pleased to see the Christian communities quietly disappear altogether.
As much as we look forward to Turkey becoming a full security and trading partner of the United States, this is a worthwhile reminder that part of that process has to include their liberalizing the treatment of peaceful religious and ethnic minorities. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 11, 2003 11:18 AM
Wouldn't membership in the EU compel the Turks to change these laws so that Christians could worship, buy property and use their language? Here's an opportunity for the EUnuchs to get something positive done in Turkey, by making clear that this has to change as part of the process by which they'll consider Turkey for membership.
And we should start pointing out to the Turks the benefits of a pluralistic society. One of the reasons we're more religious than much of the world is that pluralism. This is something that far-sighted generals and moderate Islamists in Turkey should support.
Yeah, Turkey has come a long way. The
western world first became self-conscious on
the southern shore of Asia Minor. Now it is
inhabited by superstitious, ignorant murderers.
A perfect example, it would seem, of your
ideas about progress.
Steve:
The heck with the EU, we should offer Turkey a full alliance ourselves.
Don't believe what Mr. Oden writes. I know a Christian family in Turkey who own their own property. It is a funny thing about much of what I read: when I have personal knowledge of a subject, I frequently find lies like these. Christians might have a difficult time in court in Turkey, but since 1923, Kemal Ataturk decreed that the Turkish government remain strictly secular and, with the exception of their reaction to armed insurrection by the Kurds, they have respected that decree.
Posted by: Michael Gersh at January 11, 2003 4:46 PMWrong, Gersh. The current campaign against
the Bulgarians proves it.
In fact, there is no such thing as Turkey. If you
subtract all the social/religious/ethnic groups
that have no loyalty to the Turkish state
(Bulgarians, Kurds, Syrian Christians, Greeks,
Armenians, Circassians etc.), there's not much
left.
Orrin can urge on the Turks a program of
inclusion, but they won't take his advice,
because it means the end of their state.
This isn't just a Turk problem. In all of western
Asia, there are only two states that are
more or less congruent with natural borders:
Bahrain and, more doubtfully, Saudi Arabia.
Harrry, you are over-generalizing -
"If you subtract all the social/religious/ethnic groups that have no loyalty to the Turkish state (Bulgarians, Kurds, Syrian Christians, Greeks, Armenians, Circassians etc.), there's not much left."
The US has members of all these groups and a lot more. Do US Greeks have no loyalty to the US? Our Armenians? Italians? Irish? They may want changes, and individuals may have no loyalty to the US, but if you cull every minority there is nothing
left. Or if you get selective, you can eliminate until all that is left are the Hmong immigrants.
Turkey has a long way to go, yes, but give them credit for what has been accomplished. A century ago, US women could not vote or hold office. A century ago Turkey was Ottoman and women couldn't leave the house.
Turkey is especially fortunate in its army's approach to politics, which believe it or not is similar to our own. The army does not interfere or back one vs another - unless they percieve a threat to democracy. At that point, they hold true to their oath to uphold the constitution - but not by grabbing and keeping
power, more by taking control until a new round of un-rigged elections is held.
That's true about American immigrants. But
the Turks do not, as Americans do, offer any
reason for their minorities to Turkize.
The army's devotion to secularism -- Ataturk's
legacy -- sets it far outside civil society in
Turkey.
That might be more helpful if the army was not
a genocide machine as well.
The political problem of the Ottoman Empire
was its minorities. When it was dismantled,
the job was only part done. Unable to give
its minorities their minimum demands,Turkey's only
options are to break up or repress.