Posted on 06/24/2017 7:44:55 PM PDT by Texas Fossil
The AKP government has usurped churches, monasteries and graveyards belonging to the Syriac community in Mardin and handed them over as state property to the Diyanet, Turkey's Presidency for Religious Affairs.
According to the Armenian newspaper Agos many churches, monasteries, graveyards and other assets of the Syriac community in the city of Mardin have been usurped and transferred to the state's Treasury and other relevant state institutions.
After Mardin became a Metropolitan Municipality, its villages were officially turned into neighbourhoods as per the law and attached to the provincial administration. Following the legislative amendment introduced in late 2012, the Governorate of Mardin established a liquidation committee. The Liquidation Committee started to redistribute in the city, the property of institutions whose legal entity had expired. The transfer and liquidation procedures are still ongoing.
In 2016, the Transfer, Liquidation and Redistribution Committee of Mardin Governorate transferred to primarily the Treasury as well as other relevant public institutions numerous churches, monasteries, cemeteries and other assets of the Syriac community in the districts of Mardin. The Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation appealed to the decision yet the liquidation committee rejected their appeal last May. The churches, monasteries and cemeteries whose ownerships were given to the Treasury were then transferred to the Diyanet.
Inquiries of the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation revealed that dozens of churches and monasteries had been transferred to the Treasury first and then allocated to the Diyanet. And the cemeteries have been transferred to the Metropolitan Municipality of Mardin that was usurped by the government through a trustee appointed in place of the elected co-mayors.
The maintenance of some of the churches and monasteries are currently being provided by the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation and they are opened to worship on certain days. Similarly, the cemeteries are still actively used by the Syriac community who visits them and performs burial procedures. The Syriacs have appealed to the Court for the cancellation of the decision.
"We started to file lawsuits and in the meantime our enquiries continued" said Kuryakos Ergün, the Chairman of Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation. Ergün said they would appeal to the court for the cancellation of nearly 30 title deed registries.
Mardin's HDP MP Erol Dora raised the issue in a parliamentary question he submitted to Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, in which he asked if the government engaged in any efforts to return the usurped assests that belong to the Syriac community . Dora also asked if the government considered working at the return of usurped properties belonging to minorities in Turkey (Armeniens, Greeks, Jews and Syriacs).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Background Information
----
----
The city and its surrounds were absorbed into Assyria proper during the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365-1020 BC)
It survived into the Assyrian Christian[disambiguation needed] period as the name of Mt. Izala (Izla), on which in the early 4th century AD stood the monastery of Nisibis, housing seventy monks.[7]
During World War I Mardin, among many other regions of eastern Turkey, north east Syria, northern Iraq and north west Iran, was one of the sites affected by the Assyrian Genocide and Armenian Genocide, both of which ran in conjunction to the Greek Genocide. On the eve of World War I, Mardin was home to over 12,000 Assyrians and over 7,500 Armenians.[15] In June 1915, most of the city's Christian notables and its Armenian male population were slaughtered and thrown into caves near Şeyhan. Others were sent to the infamous camps of Ras al-'Ayn, though some managed to escape to the Sinjar Mountain with help from local Chechens.[16] Kurds and Arabs of Mardin typically refer to these events as "fırman" (government order), while Syriac Christians call it "seyfo" (sword).[17] The Assyrians managed to strike a deal with the Turks, sparing them from most of the bloodshed. Unfortunately, the Armenians, Catholics, and Assyrians who did not manage to escape were massacred in totality, and never came back to the region. Many Assyrian survivors of the violence later on left Mardin for nearby Qamishli in the 1940s after their conscription in the Turkish military became compulsory.[17]
----
Diyanet wins the church lottery from Mardin
----
This gives the details of the legal processes and the case made to the courts for the Syriac Christian Churches to remain in hands of original Foundation.
----
----
A year after founding modern Turkey in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate and created a government directorate of religious affairs, or the Diyanet. Through the management of mosques and religious education, the new body would make Islam subservient to the state to secure the republic’s ostensibly secular identity.
Today, the Diyanet has largely been turned on its head. In the lead-up to June parliamentary elections, Western news outlets have fretted about Erdogan’s crackdown on free speech and his broader authoritarian drift. Meanwhile, his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), in power since 2002, has wielded a beefed-up Diyanet to promote a conservative lifestyle at home and, increasingly, to project Turkish Islam abroad.
----
This gives a table of all the massacres in Turkish history. The first beginning in 532AD. Some of the earliest "massacres" were huge in numbers. It was in the past 100 years that the term Genocide was applied to such mass killing. This is a long list.
So why would he want to do this? What do Islamists do when their history and is contradicted by historic artifacts? They destroy the artifacts. So there is nothing contrary to their story.
Here we have Mardin targeted. Why Mardin? It is one of the seats where the Assyrian and Armenian Genocides took place. And it is in the same time frame as the Greek Genocides. And as a consequences of the Alevi helping some of the Armenian and Assyrian victims escape, the same thing happened to the Alevi.
And there is much more. The list of "Massacres" is huge.
It's clear where Turkey is going. It is no longer secularist. What is the fate of the minorities left there? I read recently that 6,500 of the remaining Jews in Turkey plan to leave soon. (out of about 12,000 total)
Have they seen what is ahead?
This with Erdogans actions should be enough to sound the Klaxon Alarm. How many people see this coming?
88 days to go. Hold fast it will get worse.
Well, he’s seized buildings. The question now is what the people who used to meet in those buildings do.
The church classically didn’t need government sanction in order to carry on. When it was able to get it, that was a respite, but led to troubles of its own. Christianity was diluted by the concept of a church-state mix. It might be that this very enmity is the stage now prepared upon which God shall make the church awaken and show new life.
Not that I wish evil on Christendom, which is absurd, but Christendom was born again to fight in God’s power. And it can meet the enemy in various ways.
Does DC have a clue how bad this is?
We will see a real shift at the end of Ramadan.
And another at the end of Raqqa, assuming it happens later.
A blind man should sense some of this. But unfortunately our current media is worse than blind. So many have no clue what is happening.
The stupid stunt in DC by Erdogan’s bodyguards should have woke some up. Not sure it did enough.
It says they are still allowed to use them on some days.
What does that mean?
That sounds like a curious state of affairs; maybe worship services are still going on and this is like a military use seizure?
I’d be pretty careful if I were a Christian there. That could be a sucker arrangement. One day boom, wipe out the congregation. I’d get outta there and worship in a cave if I had to.
But before I did it, maybe God would give me the nerve to preach a gospel message to the occupying sentries. To persuade them to give up this Islamic beast that is hanging over their heads.
I think this is an age in which many churches of Christians are going to awaken in various ways, and God will speak through them in manners true to history and the bible, but rarely seen lately.
You have all valid points.
Seldom do I get wrapped up in Revelation thought, but this really could be the final alignment.
I’m not into trying to predict, but just saying.
Many think Iran will be the last battleground.
Rosh Hashana? begins
Well anyhow, martyrdom is one possible door for any part of Christendom. What will we do if faced with a stiff enough enemy, but God is still pulling on our heart saying “Win them, win them”?
I think God can give Christians a supernatural sense about that, and when they are thus guided, we will see effectual martyrdoms, in which the supernaturally wrong aspect of what the enemy has done will dawn on the enemy, even though he killed the body. And then God will speak saying “Repent and I will forgive you.”
That’s a frequent biblical theme at least, even though the American Christian bent tends to be “take the sword, take the sword, what, are you stupid? take the sword!” I think Romans 13 is a better way to square what we know as the 2A, than a positive charge to be armed (the object lesson that followed with Peter seems to suggest to me that this was a permissive command on the Lord’s part).
While not wanting to take exposures to danger that God doesn’t want me to take, at the same time I don’t want to refuse a role that the Lord plans for me.
Anyhow, times ahead should be interesting.
About Revelation, I believe I have noticed that biblical events have many pre-echos, and so something that has the vague shape of a final judgment doesn’t necessarily have to BE that final judgment.
Rather, I’d take it that the final judgment, when it does transpire, won’t be anything fundamentally new in character — just final. God’s ringing down the curtain after that particular fat lady sings. The play script and the score has ended.
Kind of a soft conquest. Maybe the Turks still understand that you just don’t jump on the Christians... for one thing, both Putin and Trump are staring hard at the situation. Still some divine protection there. God knows what He is doing. I pray for a witness to arise from events no matter what they be.
Long ago I learned we don't plan our future. I've seen so many thing just come together and there was ZERO probability of happening yet it did.
Recently have seen some awesome one. But many other times. My wife and daughter talk about it a lot. They to have seen it and do not try to argue with it. Especially my daughter.
We can make general preparations for our best guess at our future, which God will then respond to in some way.
And yet. What might have seemed a toss-off decision in your life years ago might prove to be the basis of an entirely different direction of your future.
I’m looking at the possibility that (for example) music, and not engineering, will be my medium in the future. Even though music was only a hobby to me. It could still happen, and yet the spark that would make it happen might not be anything I ever struck (though I have struck many in an attempt), but the result of an encounter that to me looked entirely chance. I was thinking God polish my life HERE and God was busy THERE. It is breathtaking.
God has always used unusual people to accomplish his plan.
Almost never chose the “rulers”, but chose the people who could see, had vision, and listened.
Someone a few days ago mentioned the scripture with Balaam and Balak to me. The one where the donkey could see the angel but Balaam could not.
Those things happen.
agree.
The rulers could come into the picture, but they were almost as seeming afterthoughts (of course God had planned it all along). For example King Ahasuerus (Xerxes?) of the book of Esther. He wouldn’t have given a hoot about Haman’s edict to slaughter Jews if Esther hadn’t charmed his heart and let him know, even at the risk of her life, that her beloved people were in trouble. And the tendency of the Babylonian kingdom to find the Hebrew people worthy of keeping around rather than slaughtering them.
I think we all hate to show God the worst part of our lives. But the illness is what we call the doctor for.
Another was Cyrus.
He did free the Jew and helped rebuild the Temple.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.