800 Thousand to 3 Million Christians of Turkey
	From: "Katia M. Peltekian" <kpeltekian@yahoo.com> To: "Armenian News Network" <groong@usc.edu> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 1:28 PM Subject: TURKEY: Is There Religious Freedom In Turkey? TURKEY: IS THERE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN TURKEY? By Dr. Otmar Oehring, head of the human rights office of Mission Forum 18, Norway Oct 12 2005 The European Union (EU) must make full religious freedom for all a core demand in the EU membership negotiations with Turkey which have just begun, argues Otmar Oehring of the German Catholic charity Mission http://www.missio-aachen.de/menschen-kulturen/themen/menschenrechte in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. Dr Oehring also calls for people inside and outside Turkey who believe in religious freedom for all to honestly and openly raise the continuing obstructions to the religious life of Turkey's Muslim, Christian and other religious communities. Societal opposition to minorities of all sorts does impact on religious freedom. Such social pressure is felt most keenly among the poor. Members of the urban middle class who convert from Islam to other faiths can freely practice their new faith. In Izmir a Christian church exists where many young converts of university background attend unchallenged. But openly converting to and practicing a non-Islamic faith is often impossible in poor neighborhoods. In former Armenian-populated areas of Anatolia - where there are also people of Syriac descent - many families changed their formal identification to Muslims, but did not convert in reality. Their attempts to practice Christianity face enormous obstacles unless they move to Istanbul or even to Ankara. Back in these towns and villages are no Christian churches, so anyone wanting to meet for Christian worship could be dragged off to the police or suffer beatings. One former Interior Minister stated that Christians should only conduct missionary activity among such people of Christian descent. He estimated the numbers of such people at between 800,000 and three million people. You have to be very courageous to set up a Protestant church in remote areas, as pastor Ahmet Guvener found in Diyarbakir. Problems can come from neighbours and from the authorities. Even if not working hand in hand, neighbours and officials share the same hostility. They cannot understand why anyone would convert to Christianity. People are not upset seeing old Christian churches - Syriac Orthodox and other Christian churches have always existed in Anatolia - but seeing a new Protestant church, even when housed in a shop or private flat, arouses hostility. Dr Otmar Oehring, head of the human rights office at Mission http://www.missio-aachen.de/menschen-kulturen/themen/menschenrechte, a Catholic mission based in the German city of Aachen, contributed this comment to Forum 18 News Service. Commentaries are personal views and do not necessarily represent the views of F18News or Forum 18.