Assyrian International News Agency AINA
April 19 2015

Churches in Turkey on the Verge of Extinction

By Uzay Bulut
Gatestone Institute
Posted 2015-04-19 18:54 GMT

The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, once the grandest cathedral in the
Christian world (Antoine Taveneaux/Wikimedia Commons).While Eastern
Orthodox Christians recently celebrated their Easter holy week, a
historic church in Istanbul — the once magnificent Christian city of
Constantinople — is witnessing yet another abuse at the hands of its
current authorities.

Even though Christians are a tiny minority in Turkey today,
Christianity has a long history in Asia Minor, the birthplace of many
Christian Apostles and Saints, including Paul of Tarsus, Timothy,
Nicholas of Myra, and Polycarp of Smyrna.

All of the first seven Ecumenical Councils were held in what is today
Turkey. Two out of the five centers (Patriarchates) of the ancient
Pentarchy — Constantinople (Istanbul) and Antioch (Antakya) — are
also situated there. Antioch was the place where, for the first time,
the followers of Jesus were called “Christians.”

Turkey is also home to the Seven Churches of Asia, where were sent the
Revelations to John. During the centuries that followed, countless
churches were established throughout the region.

One of them, Hagia Sophia, was once the grandest cathedral in the
Christian world — until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans on
May 29, 1453, followed by a three days of unbridled pillage.[1]

Hagia Sophia was not exempt. Pillagers made their way to the Hagia
Sophia and battered down its doors. Trapped in the church, congregants
and refugees became spoils to be divided among the Ottoman invaders.

The historian Steven Runciman writes in The Fall of Constantinople, 1453:

“They slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women and
children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the
steep streets from the heights of Petra towards the Golden Horn. But
soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that
captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit.”[2]

After the fall of the city, the Hagia Sophia Church was converted into a mosque.

A mosque with the name Hagia Sophia (in Greek ???a S?f?a, “Holy
Wisdom”) is possible if the church is brought under the control of an
Islamic theocracy. It is like having a mosque called “the Armenian
Mosque of the Holy Cross”.

In the 1930s, the Turkish government made it into a museum. But
turning a church into a museum is also not a trait of a truly
democratic state. One of the common features of the Ottoman Empire and
modern Turkey seems to be their intolerance of churches.

In 2013, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister, Bulent Arinc, expressed his
hope to see the Hagia Sophia Museum be used as a mosque, and even
referred to it as the “Hagia Sophia Mosque.”

“Turkey is not converting churches into mosques because there is a
need for more mosques, and Turkey does not have the resources to build
them,” wrote Constantine Tzanos. “The message conveyed by those in
Turkey who have achieved the conversion of Christian churches into
mosques and demand the conversion of Hagia Sofia is that Turkey is an
Islamic state and no other religion is tolerated.”

In November 2014, Pope Francis paid the fourth ever visit of a Pope to
Turkey. Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Tanju Bilgic told
reporters that during the trip, the issue of an “alliance of
civilizations, dialogue between cultures, xenophobia, the fight
against racism and political developments in the region” would be on
the agenda.

The agenda of Pope Francis should actually have included the churches
of Turkey that have been destroyed, damaged or converted into many
things, including stables — like the historical Armenian Gregoryan
Church in the province of Izmir (Smyrna). “Some citizens put their
cows and horses inside the church, while the inhabitants of the
neighborhood complain that the church has been turned into a site of
drug addicts and alcoholics,” reported the newspaper Milliyet.

Another victim of Turkey’s intolerance of churches, the Agios
Theodoros Byzantine Church in Istanbul, was first converted into a
mosque during the rule of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II; it was named
after Mollah Gurani, the fourth Sheikh-ul-Islam (the authority that
governed religious affairs of the Muslims in the Ottoman Empire).

It was reported in March 2014 that the entrance area of the former
church-mosque has become a “house,” and its upper story turned into a
“flat.” A shanty has been built inside its garden. The priest’s room
is now a toilet.

Centuries later, the habits of Ottoman Turks seem not to have changed.

Today, Turkey has less Christians as a percentage of its population
than any of its neighbors — less than Syria, Iraq and Iran. The
greatest cause of this was the Assyrian, Armenian and Greek slaughters
or genocides between 1915 and 1923.

At least 2.5 million indigenous Christians of Asia Minor were killed
— either massacred outright, or victims of deportations, slave labor
or death marches. Many of them died in concentration camps of diseases
or starvation.

Many Greeks who survived the slaughter were driven from their homes in
Asia Minor in the 1923 forcible population exchange between Turkey and
Greece.

The physical devastation was followed by a cultural devastation.
Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, countless Christian
churches and schools have been destroyed or turned into mosques,
storehouses and stables, among other things.

The columnist Raffi Bedrosyan reported in the Armenian Weekly that

“There are only 34 churches and 18 schools left in Turkey today,
mostly in Istanbul, with about less than 3,000 students in these
schools.”

“Recent research pegs the number of Armenian churches in Turkey before
1915 at around 2,300. The number of schools before 1915 is estimated
at nearly 700, with 82,000 students. These numbers are only for
churches and schools under the jurisdiction of the Istanbul Armenian
Patriarchate and the Apostolic Church, and therefore do not include
the numerous churches and schools belonging to the Protestant and
Catholic Armenian parishes.”

Walter Flick, a scholar with the International Society for Human
Rights in Germany, says that the Christian minority in Turkey does not
enjoy the same rights as the Muslim majority.

“Turkey has almost 80 million inhabitants,” he said. “There are only
around 120,000 Christians, which is less than 1 percent of the
population. Christians are certainly seen as second-class citizens. A
real citizen is Muslim, and those who aren’t Muslim are seen as
suspicious.”

According to a 2014 survey, 89% of the Turkish population said that
what defines a nation is belonging to a certain religion. Among the 38
countries that participated in the question of if belonging to a
specific religion [Islam] is important in defining the concept of a
nation, Turkey, with 89% of its population agreeing, ranked number one
in the world. [3]

“In some ways, Ankara’s policies against Turkey’s Christian citizens
have added a modern veneer and sophisticated brutality to Ottoman
norms and practices,” wrote political scientist Dr. Elizabeth H.
Prodromou and historian Dr. Alexandros K. Kyrou. “In the words of an
anonymous Church hierarch in Turkey fearful for the life of his flock,
Christians in Turkey are an endangered species.”

On April 4, 1949, the signers of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) in Washington D.C. announced: “The Parties to this
Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the
Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with
all peoples and all governments. They are determined to safeguard the
freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on
the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.
They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic
area. They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence
and for the preservation of peace and security.”

Being part of the European Union and NATO requires respecting the
Jewish, Christian, Hellenic and secular humanist values that have
characterized Western Civilization, and contributed to civil rights,
democracy, philosophy and science, from which everyone can benefit.

Sadly, Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and reportedly a candidate for
membership in the European Union, has largely succeeded in destroying
the entire Christian cultural heritage of Asia Minor.

All this is reminiscent of what ISIS and other jihadist armies have
been doing in the Middle East. In Turkey, the remaining Christian
population, the grandchildren of genocide survivors, are still exposed
to discrimination. The old habits of Ottoman Turks do not seem to die.

Notes:

[1] Runciman, Steven (1965). The Fall of Constantinople, 1453.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[2] Ibid.

[3] In 2014, Professor Ersin Kalaycioglu of Sabanci University and
Professor Ali ?Carkoglu of Koc University conducted a survey,
“Nationalism in Turkey and ?in the world,” based on interviews with
Turkish citizens ?above the age of 18 in 64 cities across Turkey. “So
according to [Turkish] citizens in the streets, a Turk is the one who
is a Muslim,” said Prof. Carkoglu.