Pressure Applied from All Sides

Although very few people in Turkey convert to another religion, both left and right are heralding a crisis caused by Christian missionary activity. Tarık Işık and İsmail Saymaz report

With the bloody attack on the Zirve publishing house in Malatya, the subject of missionary activity has come under discussion again in Turkey. The number of people converted by missionaries to Christianity – a topic discussed even by the National Security Council, the MGK (in 2001) – has never, even according to strict methodical assessments, exceeded the ten-thousand mark.

According to figures from the Turkish home office 338 Muslims converted to Christianity in 2006. Despite this fact left-wingers, Islamists and nationalists all believe that missionary activity in Turkey has reached a scale which threatens to divide the country.

"The missionaries are targeting the poor"

Over the last ten years social organizations have continually concerned themselves with missionary activity, and state institutions have also addressed the subject from regularly.

The sharpest reaction came from the former home secretary Sadettin Tantan speaking at the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM): "Our people are caught in a poverty trap, and are therefore forced into the missionaries’ arms," he claimed in March 2000.

The MGK did not seek to deny that it had discussed the report on missionary activity in 2001. In the Ministry for Religious Affairs’ publications, and in books mentioned on the Culture Ministry’s official website, statements critical of the missionaries are given free reign.

Erdoğan: "No fear of religious freedom"

Shortly before his death former Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit had taken up the fight against missionaries, together with his wife Rahşan Ecevit.

Rahşan Ecevit stated at the time: "In the process of entering the European Union we are losing our religion. But I cannot accept the gradual dismantling of Islam. At the same time as buying land the foreigners have also expanded their missionary activity. One sure way to divide Turkey is to encourage its citizens to change their religion."

In his response to Ecevit in January 2005 Prime Minister Erdoğan said: "One person says religion is ebbing away from us, another claims that churches are being built in the country, the next that churches are being set up in the basements of blocks of flats. If the German government allows thousands of mosques and prayer houses to be opened in Germany alone, then we have to reciprocate their accommodating attitude. There is no need to fear for religious freedom."

Mayor Muzaffer Eryılmaz of the People’s Republican Party (CHP) noted that when he took power in Çankaya there was at least one church and added: "The number of churches and synagogues, in other words, religious buildings which are not mosques, has risen to eight. There is a place like this in Çebeci. Anyone who goes there and becomes converted is paid two hundred dollars a month. That really is a catastrophe."

At the same time the deputy head of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), Mehmet Şandır, emphasized that the MHP did not see the missionary issue as a problem of religious freedom or freedom of opinion. He added that Turkish nationalists, the MHP and all idealists would campaign with all their strength against missionary activity on sacred ground, which they saw as a political activity.

Illegal basement churches

In February 2005 the highest police authority in Turkey stated in a report for the MGK that the missionaries had made Istanbul into their base. They had then spread out into Anatolia where they had opened 230 secret, illicit churches.

The report specifically referred to the fact meetings took place in the tower-block basement churches, which are all unofficial, and that unemployed youth had been singled out as their target group.

At a party conference of the Virtue Party (Saadet Partisi), in the province of Trabzon in December 2006, the leader, Recai Kutan said: "A family cannot send their child to a Koran school, should they wish to, till they have finished primary school. The missionaries on the other hand can run rampage through our country. Churches are being opened in every single residential district but no-one is saying anything about it."

BBP: They will be thrown out

Following the murder of the monk Santoro in Trabzon, Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu, leader of the nationalist Great Union Party (BPP) said: "You only have to take a look at who is behind the missionaries to see that these people are being supported by the CIA." At the BBP party conference last Sunday he announced that the missionaries would be thrown out of the country should the BBP come to power.

According to Minster of State, Mehmet Aydın, responsible for the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the missionaries are a threat to social values: "We are not talking about an innocent religious publication or the exercise of religious freedom, quite the opposite; this is a planned action in which history does not play a great role, politics however do."

Consequently the Ministry for Religious Affairs organized the reading of a sermon in mosques to mark the 90th anniversary of the victory of Çanakkale, which caused unease within the EU and the US.

In addition the Ministry installed an "observation commission" to keep a check on missionary activity, set up an information pool and suggested the formation of teams for spiritual and ethical leadership, made up of imams.

As well as this, in 2006, Home Secretary Abdülkadir Aksu announced that missionaries would be observed. According to Aksu missionaries benefit from the poverty of many families and from the misfortunes of individuals. The figures Aksu named, demonstrated the extent of the threat, he said: "In the last seven years 344 Muslims have changed religion, 338 of them became Christians, eight became Jews."

"Missionaries more dangerous than terrorist organizations"

Before the reading of the full draft for the proposed new Turkish business law began last week in the TBMM, Niyazi Güney, General Director of Law for the Ministry of Justice, representing the government, stated that missionary activities have now become more dangerous than terrorism. They had spread as rapidly as in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.

Güney, who even claimed that the crime against Necip Hablemitoğlu was linked to missionary activity, stated that the military were in possession of reports containing evidence on the subject.

Tarık Işık and İsmail Saymaz

Translated from the German by Steph Morris

Qantara.de

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