The Vanishing Act of the Church in Turkey

A church worn down by Christian rivalry and Islamic Jihad hangs on in the
land of Nicea and Ephesus.

Collin Hansen

10/15/2004 9:00 a.m.
Christianity Today

Only those who are mindful of history can fully appreciate
the significance of Turkey’s expected admission to the European
Union. The bitterness spawned by centuries of warfare and political
rivalry has now given way to a new era of diplomatic and economic
engagement. Yet, Turkey’s troublesome record of human-rights abuses
remains a considerable stumbling block for a few wary EU nations. In
particular, the Ankara government is still prone to crack down
on ethnic and religious minorities when perceived as a threat to
nationalist identity. A sign of the government’s suspicion: non-Muslim
clergy are still forbidden from training there.

Many Greek and Armenian Christians in Turkey suffer the double ignominy
of religious and ethnic marginalization. Though the government
is officially secular and many Turks are only nominally Muslim,
conversion to Christianity is considered a betrayal of heritage and
homeland. Persecution stemming from this perspective has stunted
church growth and crippled the small Christian community.

But for these Christians, EU admission offers hope. A handful of
Greek Christians remain in Turkey, holdovers from a bygone era of
Hellenistic influence in Asia Minor. Their hope is that increased
trade activity with Europe will invite Greeks to return to Istanbul,
where they can broker business and diplomacy between Western Europe
and the Muslim world.

The hope is different for Turkey’s approximately 45,000 Armenians,
a traditionally Christian people. They believe Ankara’s engagement
with the West will stimulate further reforms in the democratic system,
possibly even allowing the government to admit the murder of nearly
1.5 million Armenians by Turkish authorities during World War I.

In both cases, EU access functions as a sort of reverse “Macedonian
call” for these beleaguered Christians. Acts 16 records a vision seen
by Paul while traveling through Phrygia and Galatiaâ^À^Ômodern-day
Turkey. The vision showed a man from Macedonia (ancient Greece),
begging for Paul to come and preach the gospel in that land..

Of course, far from being historically unreached like ancient
Macedonia, Turkey is home to many of Christianity’s pivotal
events. Present-day Turkey hosted the Christian church’s foundational
church councils, including Nicea, which laid the groundwork for
orthodox theology. The seven churches of Revelation were there. And
one of Paul’s most important epistles, Ephesians, was addressed to
believers in a city on Turkey’s Mediterranean Sea coast.

So how did Turkey’s Christians end up like the Macedonian in Paul’s
dream, begging for help from abroad?

Byzantine collapse While modern territorial spats between Greece
and Turkey occasionally garner headlines, the peoples in these two
regions have been in conflict for millennia. About 1,500 years ago,
the rivalry assumed a doctrinal dimension. In 431, the Council of
Ephesus condemned Nestorianism, followed by the Council of Chalcedon’s
dismissal of Monophysitism in 451. At these councils, the chief
defenders of these theological offshoots represented churches in the
East, ranging from Assyria and Persia (Nestorians) to North Africa
and Armenia (Monophysites). The situation only worsened when the
Greeks attempted to subjugate the Eastern churches by seizing their
monasteries and churches.

The theological denunciation of the Eastern churches coincided with
ongoing ethnic and geopolitical infighting. The Persians warred
with the Aramaeans, Egyptians, Armenians, and Greeks, greatly
destabilizing the Christian territories’ frontier with the newly
Muslim land on the Arabian peninsula. A struggle in the Byzantine
capital of Constantinople between Emperor Phocas (602-10) and his
general Heraclius instigated a military mutiny. Then in 632, Emperor
Heraclius ordered the conversion of the Jews, which resulted in mass
murder and tremendous resentment of his rule.

All in all, there was a great deal of resentment toward the Byzantines,
even among other Christians. Thus, when Islamic Bedouins began raiding
Christian territories, they allied with displaced Arabs and disaffected
local Christians. The Persians and Greeks dismissed these sorties
as common, unsophisticated nomadic activity. But they were wrong. The
first wave of jihad was underway.

The second wave of jihad overthrew the Byzantine Empire
altogether. The key for the Islamic conquerors was enlisting the
support of the recently converted Turks. The Turks were a warlike
group, quick to battle, skilled in the slave trade. Once converted,
the warrior doctrine of jihad motivated them to subdue Armenia and
the Greek territory in Anatolia, where the Turkish capital of Ankara
is today. Osman Ghazi (1299-1326), founder of the Ottoman Empire,
led these Turks in military campaigns against Christians, and his
successors carried on his war against the Byzantine Empire and Europe.

Boasting extraordinary leaders and a ruthless military, the Ottoman
Turks capitalized on Christian weaknesses and rivalries to subdue all
of Asia Minor, conquering Constantinople in 1453. They also captured
the Balkans during the mid-15th century, and even reached the gates of
Vienna in 1683. It was this crisis of encroaching Islam that provided
the backdrop for the Protestant and Catholic Reformations.

Armenian genocide Even while the Byzantine Empire collapsed, however,
the Armenians managed to withstand the Islamic onslaught. Though
part of the Ottoman Empire, they maintained their culture, language,
Orthodox religion, and a large measure of political autonomy. But
some fatal miscalculations and the weight of world events, not to
mention the Ottoman Empire, conspired to nearly annihilate them.

The Armenians desired true freedom from the Ottomans. They hoped to
gain this freedom by earning European sympathy for their plight,
combined with some help from the Russians, who sought to weaken
their Ottoman enemy. World War I upset their strategy. In the middle
of a bloody war, the Ottomans could not afford an insurrection. The
Europeans had no sympathy to offer, given their staggering losses in
the trenches. And the Russians were already fighting two frontsâ^À^Ô
one with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the other with
Marxists.

These factors also provided cover for the Turks to solve their
“Armenian problem” once and for all. The Turks simply shot many of
the Armenians. Others they rounded up and marched toward the Middle
East without food, water, or shelter. For the Muslim crowds along
the Armenian “parade route,” deportation was an opportunity for rape,
pillage, and slave internment. Some women survived by converting to
Islam and immediately marrying a Muslim. But the rest were slaughtered
when they reached their destination in modern-day Syria. Up to 1.5
million Armenians died. This 20th-century genocide motivated Hitler,
who when discussing mass murder of the Jews said, “Who remembers
the Armenians?”

Lessons of a disturbing past The state of the contemporary church
in Turkey, home to so many seminal moments in Christian history,
looks bleak for now. Perhaps integration into the European Union
will galvanize the small Greek Orthodox community in Istanbul and
allow the Turkish government to honestly examine the grizzly fate of
the Armenians.

Hopefully the spread of religious freedom there will ease
hostility toward missionaries and converts from Islam to
Christianity. Regardless, we should heed the warnings of
historyâ^À^Ôbeware the dangers of political infighting between
Christians with earthly interests at heart, and never underestimate
the seriousness of Islamic jihad.

Collin Hansen is assistant editor for Christian History &
Biography. More Christian history, including a list of events
that occurred this week in the church’s past, is available at
ChristianHistory.net. Subscriptions to the quarterly print magazine
are also available.