June 25, 2005

Europe reacts to Turkey’s missionary phobia
Protestants call government rhetoric ‘active disinformation.’
By Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass)—For the past six months, both Islamist and nationalist circles in Turkey have launched strident broadsides against what even state officials are calling “dangerous” Christian activities.

In the context of a conservative backlash against the secular but overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey’s push to join the “historically Christian” European Union (EU), the campaign is not surprising.

For decades, charges that Christian missionaries have a political agenda have been a staple of the Turkish media, often fueled by self-serving political circles. But until now, the government itself has rarely given these claims such open backing.

Yet ever since the EU’s decision last December to begin membership accession talks with Turkey, religious freedom has been on Europe’s short list of major issues for Turkey to resolve, both on paper and in practice.

During dinner meeting last week in Ankara with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, EU ambassadors voiced direct criticism of comments made before the Turkish Parliament by State Minister Mehmet Aydin, whose portfolio includes the state-run Religious Affairs Directorate.

“The goal of missionary activity is to break up the historical, religious, national and cultural unity of the people of Turkey,” Aydin had said on March 27. Accusing Christian missionaries in Turkey of “ulterior political motives,” he claimed their activities “have a historical background,” and that “a significant part of missionary activity is done in secret.”

According to Cumhuriyet newspaper, during their June 15 meeting with Erdogan, the EU ambassadors labeled Aydin’s comments “exaggerated and divisive.” Belgian Ambassador Jan Mattysen openly questioned Ankara’s repeated insistence that Turkey’s religious minorities experienced “no difficulties,” Radikal newspaper noted.

Back on March 22, Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu had weighed in on the controversy, accusing missionaries of taking advantage of sectarian and cultural differences inside Turkey – as well as natural disasters like earthquakes and floods – to evangelize among low-income families.

Answering a deputy’s query in parliament, Aksu said that over the past seven years, 338 Muslim Turks had changed their religious identity to Christianity, with six converting to Judaism.

Fabricated Statistics

The interior minister’s statistics clearly refuted wild claims in the Turkish media, topped by an unsubstantiated article in the Aksiyon weekly of March 28, alleging that 35,000 “house churches” were meeting clandestinely across Turkey.

On a somewhat smaller scale, pages of fabricated charts published by Ilker Cinar, a self-proclaimed ex-missionary from Tarsus, claimed there are 1,800 house churches led by 1,883 foreign missionaries in Turkey, with congregations totaling nearly 60,000.

But in reality, there are only 95 known Protestant congregations, 40 of them meeting in homes. The remainder worship in rented or purchased facilities registered with local authorities as places of worship. Their combined congregations total no more than 3,000, according to the Protestant research group SILAS based in Istanbul.

“There’s a reaction against Christianity by Islamists and nationalist groups,” observed Ihsan Ozbek, chairman of the Alliance of Protestant Churches (APC). “The missionary issue is being used by them to spoil the relationship between Turkey and the EU.”

To these sectors of society, joining the “Christian club” of the EU means risking the loss of their cultural and religious identity.

Back in February, the Turkish Daily News had reported that a sermon prepared by the Religious Affairs Directorate would be read in all the nation’s mosques on March 11, portraying Christian missionaries as the “new Crusaders.” Reportedly this came “as a reaction to missionary activities in Turkey and EU demands for religious expression.”

But in an apparent backdown, the directorate’s website indicates that a different sermon was preached in its place.

According to Yeni Safak columnist Ahmet Tasgetiren, the inclusion of missionary activities as a threat to Turkey’s national security is rooted in “the Islam that lies in the deep conscience of the people of this country.”

But Hurriyet newspaper columnist Ozdemir Ince, writing on May 2, linked it rather to a common government thesis that Protestant missionaries helped “in the creation of the imaginary [Armenian] genocide” perpetrated 90 years ago by the Ottoman Empire.

Escalating Prejudice

Whatever the root causes, religious tolerance has suffered in the wake of the ongoing media hype and government comments.

“In January there were small incidents of attacks and beatings of Protestants,” Ozbek told Compass, “but this has escalated,” as demonstrated by recent Molotov cocktail attacks against churches in Ankara, Gaziantep and Izmit. “It’s political, because these groups see the EU as the enemy.”

Now, Ozbek admitted, “There’s an extreme prejudice against Christianity. If we showed the ‘Jesus’ film now, we could easily be beaten up,” he said, even though the Christian documentary on the life of Christ is legally distributed in Turkey.

Last month, the government agency controlling radio and television programs ordered Shema Radio, a Christian radio station in Ankara, to pull its May 18 Bible-reading program.

“We were told to replace it with a documentary on Mersin which they provided,” station manager Soner Tufan said. “If we hadn’t, they would have fined us $40,000.”

The censored Bible text was the first three chapters of the book of Daniel, from the Old Testament.

“We wrote them a reply, saying that if we were committing a crime, then the whole Bible should be outlawed!” Tufan said. “But they didn’t accept our arguments.” Shema Radio has opened a court case over the issue, to prevent similar censorship in the future.

In addition, seven libel cases have been opened to date by various Turkish Protestant church leaders against prime-time programs on three TV channels which aired slanderous accusations against local Christians. The slurs ranged from spying for foreign intelligence agencies and paying people to change their religion to trying to divide and destroy the nation by alienating Turks from their communities, families and culture.

On June 11, Cumhuriyet newspaper devoted nearly a full page to a new state intelligence report titled “Reactionary Elements and Risks.” According to the article, the first half of the report examined religious terrorist groups, and the second section focused on missionary activities.

Secularists Disagree

Even secularists have taken up the cause, with public complaints from Rahsan Ecevit, the outspoken wife of leftist ex-prime minister Bulent Ecevit, that “Turkish citizens, sometimes by persuasion and sometimes for their own material benefit, are becoming Christians.

“We cannot ignore this activity,” Ecevit warned on January 2. “At the time we say that we are entering the EU, we’re losing our religion.”

But other secularists deride the anti-missionary tirade. With Turkey’s non-Muslim population less than two out of a thousand, Cumhuriyet columnist Oral Calislar noted, it was hard to see how it could be considered a political threat.

“Think of Germany,” Calislar wrote on January 9. “Almost three million Muslims from Turkey have settled there, setting up hundreds of mosques and propagating their faith. Most of their imams are sent and paid by the Turkish state.” So in Turkey, Calislar declared, “Just as Muslims consider it a right to propagate their faith, so Christians, Jews and atheists have the same right.”

Turkey’s Mazlum-Der human rights organization has also criticized the overt campaign against missionary activities, declaring back in mid-January that this “supposed threat” was being used to restrict freedoms of expression and religious practice in the name of national security.

“People who campaign against missionary activities make non-Muslims a target,” argued Mazlum-Der director Ayhan Bilgen. “These people also fabricate fears, to legitimize the restriction of religious freedom.

“In Turkey, where secularism has been interpreted unilaterally … some believe it is their right to intervene in religions as they like,” Bilgen told Turkish Daily News on January 14. “The freedom of expression should be guaranteed by the law and its implementation.”

On paper, Turkey’s new reform package of laws put into effect on June 1 makes it crystal clear that it is legal to express and promote one’s religious beliefs and meet for worship accordingly.

“Missionary activity not a crime, but a right” declared a front-page banner headline in Radikal on June 12. According to the details of Articles 115 and 215 of the new penal code, the daily stated, it is actually a crime punishable with three years in prison to “prevent or obstruct anyone from expressing or changing their religious, political, social or philosophical views or from meeting for religious worship.”

But unless the ruling Justice and Development Party changes its rhetoric, one Turkish Protestant pastor told Compass, it will be guilty of spreading “active disinformation.”