HOUSES OF WORSHIP

Religious Compromise

An Armenian church in Turkey is restored thanks to a little give and take.

BY RICHARD MINITER

Friday, June 1, 2007 12:01 a.m.

VAN, Turkey–Our story starts with a small sandstone 10th-century
Armenian church, on an uninhabited rock less than 500 yards wide, in a
remote Turkish lake that changes colors like moods and sometimes
bubbles like soda. If you had seen the ruins of it, as I did in 2000,
you might cry. Its roof was gone. Its bas-reliefs, chiseled by master
carvers a millennium ago, of Adam and Eve, of saints and kings, were
wearing away in the wind. It was an empty husk that had not heard a
Mass in more than 90 years.

In March, after years of painstaking restoration, Turkey reopened the
church as a museum. Among the ambassadors and visitors at the opening
ceremonies, I roamed the grounds. The building is now magnificent. Its
roof is restored and its reliefs cleaned.

The Church of the Holy Cross is one of the holiest sites for Armenian
Christians, who once made up one-third of the population around
Van. They were driven out by the Ottomans in 1915, when some were
suspected of supporting Russia-backed terrorist attacks. During World
War I, the Ottomans were allied with Germany and Austria, fighting
Russia, Britain and France. While most Turkish historians concede
there was a massacre of Armenians (while pointing out that Armenians
slaughtered Turks from 1890 to 1915 and that most Armenians were
relocated, not slain), they hesitate to call it genocide. The
Armenians do not hesitate–and sometimes compare it to the
Holocaust. The Armenian Diaspora has emerged as a real political force
in Western Europe, complicating Turkey’s plans to join the European
Union.

The re-opening of the church was a peace offering by the AKP, Turkey’s
Islam-oriented ruling party, but all did not run smoothly at
first. After spending millions on the structure, the Turkish
government refused to restore the stone cross on the steeple. Turkish
journalists were quick to criticize. Ultimately, common sense
prevailed.

"I cannot say we will have the stone-cross back there tomorrow, but I
do not see any problem in that," Culture Minister Attilla Koc said. He
wanted time for an "academic council" to consider the issue. Mr. Koc’s
answer might not sound "revolutionary" to our ears, but Turkish News
columnist Yusuf Kanli declared it so. Many Christian churches have
been waiting for decades for permission to restore their churches at
their own expense.

At the opening of the Church of the Holy Cross, I met George Kumar,
bishop of Turkey’s some 20,000 remaining Roman Catholics. He said that
five churches in Istanbul alone are still awaiting approval to be
repaired. "I wish they would let us restore all of the churches," he
said softly, but he doesn’t want to push. "We will wait and pray."

Nor did Armenian Christians who attended the opening ceremonies
complain. They told me that they were there for history and for
peace. Of course, the Turks would buy a lot of goodwill by lifting
restrictions on repairing churches. Many Turkish politicians (even
members of the AKP) see it this way. But Egemen Bagis, the prime
minister’s foreign policy adviser and a member of Parliament, says
that "Turkey is a democracy, not a sultanate." Rebuilding churches
here is like building mosques in America and Europe, controversial
among ordinary citizens. Still, the blind machinery of the law lets
mosques go up in Boston, Chicago and the rural plains of
Virginia. Italy and Spain have seen some of the world’s largest
mosques change their skylines.

Mr. Bagis stresses religious tolerance. "In my neighborhood in
Istanbul, there are Christians, Muslims and Jews living
side-by-side. My children have Christian and Jewish friends." He is
right. That is the way forward.

So far, everyone has acted with admirable restraint. The Armenian
Patriarch, who spoke at the opening ceremonies, asked only if a Mass
could be celebrated in the church once a year. The culture minister
may let a cross grace the roof. Some 3,000 people have visited the
church since its re-opening earlier this spring. Turkey’s critics
focus on its Ottoman past and, more recently, its Islam-oriented
ruling party. They miss the spirit of compromise that prevails in the
republic. It is this spirit that unites Turkey with the West and
separates it from its Middle East neighbors. A difference made
manifest by a small church in Van.

Mr. Miniter is the Washington editor of PajamasMedia.com and a fellow
at the Hudson Institute.

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