FOR EVERY TURKISH DITIB MOSQUE IN GERMANY BUILD ONE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN TURKEY!
Gottingen
ail.asp?id=279
11/25/2008
Germany
IN THE NEWS – The Society for Threatened Peoples, an international
human rights organization which campaigns with and on behalf
of threatened and persecuted ethnic and religious minorities,
nationalities and indigenous peoples, published an article on October
28, 2008, entitled: For every Turkish DITIB mosque in Germany build
one Christian church in Turkey!
For every Turkish DITIB mosque in Germany build one Christian church
in Turkey!
by the Society for Threatened Peoples
The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) welcomes in the spirit
of religious diversity and tolerance the construction of places of
prayer for all faiths in our country. It is worth noting that the
new mosque in Duisburg falls under the jurisdiction of the Islamist
society DITIB, which with its 880 branches is an arm of the Turkish
"Ministry of Religious Affairs" in Ankara. At the same time the
Turkish administration persecutes and suppresses to the present day
the Christian minorities.
"We call for the licence for one Christian church in Turkey for each of
the many hundred DITIB mosques opened in Germany. As long as the DITIB
propagates the anti-Kurdish and Kemalist ideology and takes no action
for freedom of religion in Turkey it damages the reputation of Islam in
Germany. Many European Moslems, among them Bosniaks, Sanjaks, Albanians
and Roma have already turned their backs on the German DITIB mosques",
said Tilman Zulch, General Secretary of the Society for Threatened
Peoples. "Our human rights organisation draws attention to the fact
that the Turkish state, which is still dominated by Kemalist ideology,
is still suppressing and persecuting the indigenous Christians."
Thanks to the policies of Kemal Ataturk and his Young Turk predecessors
the proportion of Christians in the population has dropped inside the
frontiers of today’s Turkey from 25% to 0.1%. From 1913 until 1922
there was genocide and from 1923 onwards ethnic cleansing took place
(today played down as "population exchange") against Armenian, Aramaic
Assyrian and Greek-Orthodox Christians, by pogroms and expulsion in
the so-called "Istambul Kristallnacht" of 1955 and during the Cyprus
crisis of 1974 and the discrimination and persecution of Christians
since then.
The Catholic and Evangelical churches in Turkey have to the present
day no legal status of their own, are therefore not independent public
bodies having no legal capacity. Their religious services must for the
most part be held in private houses. The building of new churches is
as a rule not allowed except in tourist areas. The Orthodox Patriarch
of more than 250 million Orthodox Christians throughout the world, who
resides in Istanbul/Constantinople, is recognized in Turkey only as the
head of about 3,000 Greek-Orthodox believers still remaining. Work and
residence permits are generally not allowed for ministers of religion
who have no Turkish citizenship. Although according to Para. 20 of
the Lausanne Agreement non-Muslims have the right to hold property,
religious minorities were until 2002 not allowed to acquire such
properties. There have been countless cases of confiscation.
According to estimates of the Society for Threatened Peoples there
are living in Turkey about 60,000 Apostolic, United or Evangelical
Christians of Armenian nationality, some 3,000 Greek-Orthodox in
Istanbul, 2,000 Syrian orthodox in Tur Abdin in the south-east of the
country and about 3,000 in Greater Istanbul, 3,000 Syrian United and
about 10,000 each of the Catholic and Evangelical Christians mainly
of non-Turkish nationality.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
