Turkish Police close church for "offending society"

ISTANBUL, Turkey, July 9, 2002 — Turkish security police ordered a Protestant Christian congregation meeting for 40 years in the southeastern port city of Iskenderun to close its doors in mid June, declaring the church had "no legal basis" and that its activities were harmful to society.

Pastor Yusuf Yasmin, 71, was served official notice by the security police of Hatay province to close and stop all activities of the New Testament Church in Iskenderun.

The abrupt two-page order was dated and delivered on June 14 to Yasmin, who was ordered to remove the church sign and list of worship services from the building by 5:00 p.m. the same day.

According to a copy of the directive obtained by Compass, the church was ordered to close "because your activities will incite religious, sectarian and dervish-order discrimination; will harm religious and national feelings; and will create offense in the society."

Signed by District Security Director Salih Gokalp, the order declared that the church's location had not been approved in the municipal zoning plan and that no religious or other private education of any kind could be allowed on the premises without the express permission of the Ministry of Education.

The church has met in its current location for the past seven years without previous complaints from the Turkish authorities.

Yasmin and the majority of his congregation, averaging 80 to 90 worshippers at Sunday services, are Turkish citizens from a variety of ethnic Christian backgrounds. The Protestant church has met for worship in the city since 1963, although after its original place of worship was torn down in 1970, the congregation met in the church facilities of the local Armenian Orthodox Church for 25 years.

In 1995, the congregation purchased and moved into its own church facility in Iskendurun's Piri Reis district, notifying local authorities on June 26, 1995, of the location and set times of worship, Bible studies and religious seminars.

In compliance with local zoning regulations, Yasmin informed all the other owners of residences and shops in the building that his church had purchased Flat C to be used as a place of Christian worship. "None of them had any problem with this, and all of them signed the notarized forms giving their consent," Yasmin said.

In an indirect admission, the police order acknowledges that "there is no provision in our laws concerning the construction and use of "places of worship.'" But it goes on to insist that "it is not possible for places of worship to be built in random places" under the country's zoning laws.

"We are not enemies of the state," a bewildered Yasmin said today by telephone from Iskenderun. "We love our nation. So why are they doing this to us?" After pastoring and preaching for 43 years, Yasmin admitted he had found it very difficult to be forbidden to worship with his congregation for the past month.

A lawyer retained by the New Testament Church confirmed today that he is preparing to file a case later this week before the administrative courts on behalf of the Iskenderun Protestants to regain their constitutional rights to freedom of worship and religious activities.

Iskenderun is located just 25 miles from Antakya (ancient Antioch), where the New Testament says Christ's followers were first called Christians. With a population of 160,000 population, Iskenderun still bears the name of its 4th century B.C. founder, Alexander the Great.

I am afraid that your references are at odds with facts.

Why did Stalin need to wipe out the Ukranian farmers? They were disrupting the social order. No, not at all. He wanted a new social order, and the farmers represented the old one; he was the disrupting power. So were the Nazis. And the French revolutionaries before them. That's why there was all the mass bloodshed. Not every move foreward is progress.

Why did the Young Turks try to wipe out the Armenians back during WWI? They feared the Armenians would disrupt the social order. No, the Armenians bet on the advancing Russian army and switch allegiance to them. This is much like California and Texas switching allegiance to Mexico.

I am very much troubled by what has been done to Armenians, but to portray them as victims of religious persecution is not quite accurate.

Most certainly, they were not some progressive movement suppressed by the Turks, as you seem to present it. Any nation who holds to such ideas can never be in agreement with the West and liberty or freedom. You should speak for our country only. Where in the West have you seen liberty and freedom in the way we understand it? In Germany, where every citizen pays a Church tax, regardless of his beliefs? Or in Spain, where after the expulsion in 1492 there are no Jews (in contrast, Munich, the capital of the Nazi movement in the 1920s-1930s, even after the Holocaust has about 7,000 Jewish citizens).

Your (and mine) understanding of liberty is a uniquely American phenomenon (yes, it has originated with Germanic tribes; yes, it was preserved in England that has been concurred by them; yes, it was further strengthened through the Magna Carta of 1215 and the First Parliament of 1265; yet its full development this idea has reached here, in the New World). So, it may well be that when we judge countries like Turkey, we should compare them to, say, France or Germany, but not the United States. And you know, when measured by that yardstick, Turkey does not look bad.

Has anyone noticed that this church has retained a lawyer and taking this to court to uphold their constitutional rights?

BTW, young Cleburne, your comparison of Turkey with the USSR is a little like using a sledgehammer to kill a housefly, besides just being plain bloody-minded.

Don't you think that some of your rhetorical devices are mebbe just a little high falutin' ?

Your err, posts, eleni121, remind this casual history student of Edmund Ruffin's suicide note, 17 June 1865:

"I here declare my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule -- to all political, social and business connection with the Yankees and to the Yankee race. Would that I could impress these sentiments, in their full force, on every living Southerner and bequeath them to every one yet to be born! May such sentiments be held universally in the outraged and down-trodden South, though in silence and stillness, until the now far-distant day shall arrive for just retribution for Yankee usurpation, oppression and atrocious outrages, and for deliverance and vengeance for the now ruined, subjugated and enslaved Southern States!
...And now with my last writing and utterance, and with what will be near my last breath, I here repeat and would willingly proclaim my unmitigated hatred to yankee rule--to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, and the perfidious, malignant, and vile Yankee race."

I am reminded of a Pentecostal church that started quite close to a suburban neighbohood and promptly grew by leaps and bounds in a few years.

By the time of their third expansion, the congregation numbered well over a thousand and every Sunday and Wednesday night was a parking nightmare for the poor lost souls who lived close by. Polite requests by the neighbors for some consideration as far as parking was concerned were returned with near manic exhortations to get saved and rebukes of the Evil One and his sinister minions.

Some kind of zoning laws concerning places of worship are obviously appropriate. I would certainly raise this issue up should any new church be built in my neighborhood.

Well, I have been studying argumentive devices: unfortunately, I'm afraid I sometimes take logical fallacies and use them- subconciously, of course.

I did not mean to imply that Stalin was equal to the Young Turks (and certainly not the modern Turkish government), but that their ideas were similar. It's not my theory really, comes from a comparative history study I'm reading, but it's implications make sense- to me anyway. There is a pattern to revolutionary, authoritarian governments in which minorities pose a problem- real or imagined- to the revolutionary government. Revolutionary in particular, as it is necessary to maintain a fairly homogeneous population, preferably a population composed of your supporters. It is in the autoritarian's best interest to eliminate ethnic groups, religous minorities, social classes, etc, that threaten (or at least he percieves them as a threat) his rule.

In modern-day Turkey there is not the added dimension of a revolutionary government, but it is still quite authoritarian- so I would say the patterns of other governments are applicable. Christian (or for that matter, Muslim) groups who are not members of the status quo pose a problem. Perhaps it is understandable, in light of Turkey's situation, but I certainly hope the US never adopts Turkey's solution.

No, the Armenians bet on the advancing Russian army and switch allegiance to them

This would explain why Armenians serving in the armed forces, fighting Russians, where taken off and slaughtered? Why were Armenians living in perfect peace hundreds and hundreds of miles from the nearest battlelines were rounded up and sent to the deserts? Also, the Young Turks desired a state composed of Turks. The Kurds and such were to be assigned their own regions, as they were after all Muslim. The largely Christian minority populations- Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians- did not fit into the Young Turk's scheme of things. They were irregularities in the landscape. I suppose I should have qualified social order- it is more of a case of the ruling group's perception of the social order, so on that point you have me. And you are correct that it was not so much religious as it was ethnic, though one cannot seperate the religious component- why were Armenian children kidnapped and placed in devout Muslim homes?

Most certainly, they were not some progressive movement suppressed by the Turks, as you seem to present it.

It was not my intention to present it thusly (nor did I wish to debate the "troubles" as we shall call them, but did anyway I suppose). But the Young Turks saw a threat in the Armenian population- that of progress and revolution. The other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire had revolted and held their own states, so what was keeping the Armenians from doing so? Certainly there were revolutionary movements in the population, and Armenians had climbed upwards economically all through the nineteenth century, but the movements were hardly widespread. Certainly most of the people who died had nothing to do with any movement, and would have remained perfect citizens.

"...their persecution of Christian groups..."

I lived there, cully, and was paid in Turkish Lira by my Turkish boss. The country I lived in and the country you describe are two different places. The Turkish government, BTW, only recognizes civil marriage ceremonies. Ceremonies performed in houses of worship by clerics are not legally recognized. There is a complete separation of religion from public policy. Perhaps that is what confuses folks.

And no, I don't think a snake handler sect would be allowed to practice there. Thank God.

If the Armenians were the undesirables you, and many others, obviously, say that they were, why is it that in the 19th Century Ottoman Empire:

29 Armenians achieved the highest governmental rank of pasha,
22 Armenians became ministers, including Ministers of Foreign Affairs,
33 Armenians were elected to the Parliament,
7 Armenians were appointed as Ambassadors, 11 as Consul Generals,
11 Armenians served in universities as professors.

Why where were 803 Armenian schools employing 2088 teachers with over 80,000 pupils within the Ottoman Empire in 1901-2?

One would hardly allow such policies for a certain group if one's policy was the destruction of that group.

The Ottoman Empire, with the exception fairly limited massacres in the 1890's, was not the perpetrator of the sweeping campaign of massacre, deportion, "resettlement"- genocide. In the 1890's the Sultan instituted fairly limited massacres and crackdowns. This was largely a reactionary movement to reforms of previous years, and indeed a reaction to the very statistics you cite. Armenians were rising above their traditional status, and to the government at least, this was a threat. For the Sultan it was religious based, for the Young Turks it was more "secular".

Now, let us come to the Young Turks, the perptrators of the genocide (or suppresors of the evil Armenian revolutionaries...). They come into power, what do they want? A state composed of Turks, for Turks. The Armenians are not Turks, what's worse they hold economic power, and are rising politically and culturally. Perhaps they posed a real threat to the Young Turk's dreams (though that hardly gives a good excuse), but probably not: for the reasons you cite- they were good citizens, and the Ottomans had treated them fairly well- why rebel? But authoritarians and their ilk are rarely masters of morals or reason.

Please understand I have nothing against the Turkish people. Indeed, they were often resitant to the perpetrations of their government, and Armenians found much better friends in Turks than Jews would in Germans. But why defend a government that so obviously commited awful acts?

"A state composed of Turks, for Turks. The Armenians are not Turks....."

You haven't spent any time there, have you?

What does a Turk look like? What are the defining "ethnic" features of "Turkishness," if you will? There is no such animal.

I have met Turks with blonde, brown, and black hair, white, yellow, brown, and black skin, blue, green, and brown eyes, asian, caucasian, and negro features, and everything else that reflects a language that spreads from Siberia to Greece, and a former empire, that... well, just look at some maps. Figure it out for yourself.

This Armenian Genocide stuff is a load of crap anyway. There's an Armenian cemetary in my old neighborhood in Istanbul, for instance. Had there been some sort of genocide, that, and all record of it, would have been erased years ago.

>>But why defend a government that so obviously commited awful acts?

I admire your drive to get to the truth and you remind me of myself when I was your age. It is very difficult to discover everything that happened in those days, but one thing is certain: No side in this tells the complete truth. I yet have to discover it, this even though I have read accounts from both sides in this matter of the Armenians and Turks.

Here's my take.. The Russian Empire in the late 18th century started her policy to expand her influence over the Orthodox Christians. Many of these were within the Ottoman Empire. The result of this was the demise of many a Turk and many an Othodox. The Armenian tragedy occured toward the end of the Empire, and this was a most desperate time - the Empire was in it's death throes, noone cared who got stiffed anymore. The Armenians in Eastern Turkey paid a heavy price. All they wanted to be was clients of the Russians.. This was not met with sympathy by the Turks. One decision seemed rational, to move the Armenians away from the Russian front. Sadly, many perished during the moves.

The loss of life during the moves, or deportations as some call it, was not surprising particularly when compared to an army advance on Sarikamis left 100,000 dead to the elements before the army of 125,000 even arrived there...

If we want to find culprits, we can do so on all sides. Yet I have a load of Armenian friends in Istanbul, whom BTW I would entrust my life, which rules out the notion of a genocide. There was no systemic extermination of Armenians in Turkey, but a series of campaigns badly designed to prevent the Eastern provinces to fall to the Russians.

After the Russian revolution the Armenians were left to the French. The French drew some lines on a map, and the Armenians expelled (or killed) all Turks living within those borders. A few years later the French had left no political will to support the Armenian map they had drawn, and so they were swept.

Life is a cruel thing, Cleburne. We have been cruel to each other. Difference is that Armenia is a fly and Turkey is a swatter. Where we go from here depends on how much common sense Armenia is willing to apply.

Adios.

I don't know enough of the history of Turkish nationalism, ethnic perception, and all those wonderful things, to give you an adequate answer. However, you are right in asking "what is a Turk?" This was a problem in Turkish nationalism, and it is a curious question (the idea of ethnic identity has haunted many nationalist movements ever since the inception of modern nationalism). It does not prove anything, however, as the Young Turks held a perception of a Turkish identity. If you do not believe me, simply gather up some books on the subject and read them. There are books from both sides (there is no such thing really as an impartial historian), and plenty of material on the internet (a good bit is sheer propoganda of course- everything from "Turks are vicous baby-eating killers" to "Armenia is the great Christian terrorists state!!- says Baptist preacher").

And you are right, I've never gotten to go to Turkey, but would love to some day. If you're really interested in my enlightenment, I'll give you my address and you can send funds for travel fare: )

I still disagree with you on some points- but I doubt either of us will convince the other of anything. We live in the present. I suppose I am something of an idealist- I desire freedom for people everywhere, and my heart aches at the oppresion of others. Perhaps it is foolish idealism to desire the freedom of others. Oh well- I will anyway. I think Turkey is on an upward scale, and merely hope they do not repeat past mistakes. They certainly have a tough road cut out for them, and I hope them all the best.

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