The calculated disrespect of Turkish authorities toward Turkey’s Christians, and its disdain for its Christian heritage, is manifested most strikingly in the hostility toward the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Order urgently asks Turkey’s government to heed the message of mutual respect preached by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and allow the Church to operate in a normal manner, and Christians to live and worship freely.
The Order reiterates our hope that the international human rights community will direct its attention to the plight of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and of all Christians and other religious minorities in Turkey, and that the Turkish government will heed the repeated calls to grant full religious freedom to its embattled Christian minority.
“Turkey: hate speech incites violence against Christians,” by R.B. Klama, Mission Network News, March 25, 2019:
Turkey (MNN) – There’s a saying that goes ‘To be Turk is to be Muslim and to be Muslim is to be Turk’. It’s also been the root ideology behind increasing pressure on Christians in Turkey.
The recent high-profile case of American pastor Andrew Brunson seems to have coincided with a spike in public hate speech against Christians in Turkey. It’s an alarming trend, notes Miles Windsor of Middle East Concern. Where other countries might have citizens who would take the state-controlled press with a ‘grain of salt’, the same cannot be said in Turkey.
“There is an unfortunate trend in Turkey that the society often accepts and is motivated by what the government and the press are saying.”
Persecution detailed in reportThe reality is, he points out, that hate speech towards the Christian community in Turkey isn’t new. What’s more, this is not simply the result of the Andrew Brunson case.
As a campaign, Windsor remarks, ”It’s hard to say exactly what the end goal is of it. It certainly seems to be part of some wider narrative and agenda and we need to acknowledge within that, that Turkish press can’t really be described as a ‘free press’. It is, in many ways, a mouthpiece of the Erdogan government.”
In the 2018 annual human rights report released by the Turkish Association of Protestant Churches, Turkey’s media outlets (national, local and social) published information designed to incite hatred of Protestants “due to their beliefs”. Brunson’s arrest, incarceration, and trial provided plenty of fodder.
Windsor explains that as a result, ”There is a sense of concern and insecurity amongst the religious minorities, including the Christians in Turkey. What we’re seeing in these spurious articles with terrible allegations, often photos, names, and activities of churches are being published.”
A climate of uncertaintyOpen Doors observed the trends in their annual World Watch List, which ranks the top 50 countries around the world where persecution of Christians is the worst. On the 2019 list, Turkey moved up to 26th place, up from 37th last year.
This is due, in part, to continued fallout from an attempted coup in 2016. In the name of ‘national security’, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gradually took on more powers and eventually his government dropped the democracy façade and began openly restricting freedom.
Converts from Islam face the most pressure. Turks regard leaving Islam as a betrayal of Turkish identity, Islam and family. The training of Christian leaders is legally impossible, and it is extremely difficult to register as a new church, although small congregations can register as “associations.”
In trying to shift the government from a secular one to one under Sunni Islam, there’s little space left for religious minorities like Christians. That creates a climate of uncertainty, according to church leaders in Turkey.
Windsor observes, “Whether it is in relation to these articles or whether it is in relation to some of the actions, some of the verbal assaults or the vandalism that seems to come off the back of these provocations, police are not acting in response to these situations.”…
