Zaman, Turkey
March 15 2005

Muslims Converting Christianity of Other Religious Origins
By Istanbul
Published: Tuesday 15, 2005
zaman.com

It was determined that approximately 2,000 people who converted from
Islam to Christianity in the past 88 years were of Armenian, Syrian,
Greek or Jewish origin.

The weekly news magazine Aksiyon in its latest issue drew attention
to a subject that to date has not come to the agenda, “Converted
Christian Turks”. According to the article, thousands of “house
churches” have opened across Anatolia and tens of thousands of
Turkish youths have converted to Christianity.

However, Aksiyon’s article indicated that the reality is very
different. The article indicates that hundreds of Turkish Citizens
who have Turkish names and therefore for many years have been assumed
to be Muslims have recently returned to their former religions and
names. It was noted in the report prepared by Hakan Guven that about
100 people converted to Christianity through marriage.

Among the converted who provided statements for the article are the
relatives of soldiers, politicians and academics.

Some of the political arguments relating to and the actual number of
“Converted Christian Turks” can only be answered by looking at the
official population statistics, and what nationality individual come
from can only be established by researching the population records
through a few generations.

Today, the grandparents of an individual who bears a Turkish-Muslim
name can be from different nationalities. A report that has been in
the media recently is an example of this. The Hurriyet newspaper
reported on February 22 that Ergun Caner who was elected as the
theology dean at Liberty University, known as the castle of
Evangelist Christians, was the son of an imam who immigrated to the
US to spread Islam.

According to the article by Aksiyon, although Caner’s mother Inez
Manica has been considered as Muslim, in reality she is a Swedish
Christian. According to research conducted into those who converted
to Christianity, the conversions mostly take place in Istanbul,
Diyarbakir, Adiyaman, Batman, Sivas, Tunceli, and Malatya.