Turkey’s Christians like AK despite Islamist past

By Gareth Jones Tue Jun 19, 7:58 PM ET

VAKIFLI, Turkey (Reuters) – Its foes like to accuse Turkey’s ruling AK Party
of plotting to create an Iranian-style Islamic state, but many among the
country’s Christian minority seem to prefer the alleged Islamists to more
secular parties.

In sleepy Vakifli, Turkey’s last surviving ethnic Armenian village, perched
high among orange groves overlooking the east Mediterranean, elderly farmers
say they will probably vote for the Islamist-rooted AK Party in July 22
elections.
"This government has done a lot for us. We want them to get back in. They
show us and our religion respect. Every religion is holy," said Hanna Bebek,
76, enjoying a game of cards with his neighbors in the village tea house.
"The AK Party has tried to help the minorities, while other parties just
talk," said village headman Berc Kartun, 45.
Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim but hosts several ancient Christian
communities — dwindling remnants of sizeable populations that prospered for
centuries in the Muslim-led but multi-ethnic, multi-faith Ottoman Empire.
Modern Turkey was founded on the empire’s ashes in 1923.
Those communities include some 70,000 Armenians and 20,000 Greek Orthodox —
mostly based in Istanbul — and 20,000 Syriac Christians, who speak a form
of Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
Turkey’s Christians have often voted in the past for secular parties such as
the centre-left CHP, analysts say. But the CHP has joined a rising tide of
Turkish nationalism, making Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party a more
attractive option.
Vakifli is located in Hatay province, which once belonged to nearby
Syria and boasts a long tradition of religious tolerance. Its provincial
capital Antakya is the ancient Antioch, where Saints Peter and Paul preached
shortly after Jesus’s death.
Vakifli itself, with a population of 100 mostly elderly people living off
organic farming, is virtually all that remains of eastern Turkey’s once
large, prosperous Armenian community.
NATIONALISM
Patriarch Mesrob II, the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of Turkey’s
Armenians, recently endorsed Erdogan’s party.
"The AK Party is more moderate and less nationalistic in its dealings with
minorities. The Erdogan government listens to us — we will vote for the AK
Party in the next elections," Mesrob told the German magazine Der Spiegel in
an interview.
Though a pious Muslim whose wife wears the Islamic headscarf, Erdogan
strongly rejects the Islamist label.
In power since 2002, his AK Party has pursued liberal economic and political
reforms, including more rights for religious minorities, as required by the
European Union which Turkey hopes to join. Ankara began EU entry talks in
2005.
But Erdogan’s record is far from perfect, analysts say.
"The AK Party is 100 times more liberal than the other parties… They
deserve a bit of credit, but not too much," said Baskin Oran, a political
analyst and human rights campaigner.
Oran is the author of a 2004 report on Turkey’s minorities, commissioned by
Erdogan’s office, which was quietly binned after a furious nationalist
reaction that highlighted the continued sensitivity of the minorities issue
in Turkey.
"The nationalist pressure scared the hell out of the government and they
caved in," said Oran.
Oran himself could draw religious minority votes away from the AK Party in
Istanbul, where he is standing as an independent candidate on a liberal
platform.
Turkish nationalists, who are expected to perform well in July’s elections,
are especially sensitive to claims — pressed by many in the EU and
beyond — that as many as 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey suffered genocide
at Ottoman hands in 1915.
Ankara’s official line is that large numbers of both Muslim Turks and
Christian Armenians died in ethnic conflict as the Ottoman Empire staggered
towards collapse during World War One.
Nationalists are also highly suspicious of Turkey’s ethnic Greeks and their
spiritual leader, Patriarch Bartholomew, whom they accuse of wanting to set
up a Vatican-style mini-state in Istanbul. Bartholomew rejects their
accusation as absurd.
As elections loom, the AK Party does not want to be branded by the
nationalists as kow-towing to powerful Armenian or Greek diaspora lobbies in
Europe and America. Many Turks believe these lobbies are bent on avenging
past wrongs suffered by their kin.
MURDER
Oran said Ankara’s reform zeal had long since cooled. For example, it
shelved a law intended to ease property restrictions on Christian
minorities. It has also failed to re-open an Orthodox seminary near Istanbul
deemed vital for the long-term survival of Greek Orthodoxy in Turkey.
More tragically, the authorities failed to stem a virulent form of
nationalism that claimed the life in January of Turkish Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink. Dink was shot dead by an ultra-nationalist outside his office in
Istanbul, triggering a huge outpouring of grief and solidarity from ordinary
Turks.
The Dink murder still hangs heavy on Turkey’s Armenians.
"Many Armenians wanted to leave this country (after the murder) … but it
is not easy to leave the place where you and your parents were born," said
Aris Nalci, news editor of Agos, Dink’s weekly Armenian newspaper.
The Vakifli farmers said many Turks came from towns hundreds of miles (km)
away to pay their respects at their newly restored village church after Dink
was murdered.
"All forms of extreme nationalism are bad," said Kartun. "But here in Hatay
province, at least, we still live together in peace — Turks, Arabs and
Armenians, Muslims and Christians."