ANCIENT CHRISTIAN SECT PRAYS FOR TURKEY TO JOIN EU
By Gareth Jones

Reuters, UK
April 3 2006

MARDIN, Turkey (Reuters) — Like most Turkish men, Gabriel Oktay
Cilli likes to drink tea with his mates and go to soccer matches.

However, one detail marks him out sharply in this overwhelmingly
Muslim country: every Sunday he goes to church.

On the wall of his jewellery shop, next to the more familiar portrait
of modern Turkey’s founder Kemal Ataturk whose image decorates stores,
restaurants and offices throughout the country, hangs a picture of
Jesus Christ and his disciples.

Cilli belongs to one of Turkey’s most ancient communities, the Syriac
Christians, who still speak a form of Aramaic, the language spoken
by Jesus. In Turkey they number barely 20,000, down from 250,000 when
Ataturk founded the republic in 1923.

The 20th century was hard on the Syriacs, bringing religious
persecution and economic hardship, but Cilli is confident about his
future in a democratic Turkey that aims to join the European Union.

He has no plans to follow relatives into exile.

“I plan to stay here, this is my home. If we all left, who would look
after our churches and monasteries?” he said in his shop in Mardin,
a town in southeastern Turkey near Syria.

“Twenty years ago, life was quite difficult but now I have no
problems. Things are changing, thanks partly to the EU,” he said,
serving home-made red wine rather than the customary tea offered
to visitors.

A fresh wave of Syriacs emigrated as recently as the 1980s and 1990s
as fighting raged in their historic homeland between Turkish security
forces and Kurdish separatists. Kurds are the biggest ethnic group
in the region.

The violence fell sharply after the 1999 capture of Abdullah Ocalan,
leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and the
government eased language and cultural restrictions on its minorities
as part of EU-linked reforms.

WE HAVE PEACE NOW

“Some Syriacs are even coming back here now. Up to 50 families have
returned in the last few years,” said Cilli.

At his residence in the ancient, ochre-coloured monastery of
Deyrulzafaran — which means the Saffron Monastery in Arabic — Saliba
Ozmen, metropolitan (bishop) of Mardin, was also cautiously optimistic.

“We have peace now, we can draw breath,” the bearded, Oxford-educated
clergyman told Reuters.

He is worried that his fifth century monastery will receive fewer
visitors this year because of the conflict in Iraq and tension between
the Muslim world and the West triggered by Danish cartoons depicting
the Prophet Mohammad.

The monastery receives more than 100,000 visitors a year, most of
them Turks. Britain’s Prince Charles and Turkey’s President Ahmet
Necdet Sezer are among recent visitors.

Any increase in tensions between Muslims and the West puts non-Muslim
minorities in countries such as Turkey in a delicate position,
although Ozmen said the cartoon crisis passed quietly for the 3,000
Syriacs in the southeast region.

“We were a little nervous. People blamed Christians generally for
the cartoons, but here in Turkey the crisis was less acute than in
the Arab world,” said Ozmen.

Turkish authorities acted sensitively, for example ensuring that
protests against the cartoons in Mardin were held in the Muslim,
not the Christian, part of town, church members said.

“We need to overcome prejudice between religions…Muslims and
Christians alike, we are all citizens of Turkey. We too pay our
taxes and do our military service. The most important thing for us
is freedom and trust,” Ozmen said.

RIGHTS RESTRICTED

Ozmen said the worldwide community of Syriacs, also known as Jacobite
Christians, now numbers up to 15 million, three million of them in
India where they trace their roots to the decades after Christ’s
crucifixion.

Since the collapse of the relatively tolerant Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s
Syriacs have seemed vulnerable and beleaguered.

They are not an officially designated minority in Turkey like the
Greeks or Armenians and so have no special protection for rights such
as private education under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne’s provisions
for non-Muslim minorities.

Turkey’s Syriacs — who include up to 15,000 people in Istanbul —
attend state schools where teaching is in Turkish and where they can
learn about Islam.

They can be taught about their own language and religion only
informally outside school hours by priests, monks and nuns. About 20
boys live and study at Deyrulzafaran.

Would-be priests have to study in Damascus, home to the Syriac
patriarch, head of their church, or in the West.

There are other problems, too. Isa Gulten, a teacher of Aramaic, says
local Kurds are taking land that still legally belongs to Syriacs
residing abroad.

“The state turns a blind eye to this. It should be protecting the
rights of minorities more vigorously,” he said.

However, the overall picture is one of live-and-let-live.

Cilli said Christians and Muslims in Mardin celebrated each other’s
religious festivals. Christians would offer painted eggs at Easter
while Muslims would invite them to eat lamb during the Islamic Feast
of the Sacrifice.

Ozmen’s monastery is due to receive 600,000 euros ($726,900) from
the European Commission for major renovation work.

“As a religious minority we look to the EU. But it is important for
Turkey too, as a bridge between East and West, to preserve its ethnic
and cultural mosaic,” he said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress