Turkey: Christian Refugees Live in Fear
Uzay Bulut/January 24, 2016
In the eyes of many devout Muslims, tolerance seems to be a one-way street.
“The relation between Islam and the rest of the world is marked by asymmetry. Muslims may and do enjoy all kinds of freedoms and privileges in the lands of the Kuffar [infidels]; however non-Muslims are not granted the same rights and privileges when they live in countries governed by Muslim governments… In our globalized world, this state of affairs should not continue.” — Jacob Thomas.
The West, coming as it does from the Judeo-Christian culture of love and compassion, would seem to have a moral responsibility to help first the Christians, the most beleaguered and most benign of immigrants.
Around 45,000 Armenian and Assyrian Christians (also known as Syriac and Chaldean) who fled Syria and Iraq and have settled in small Anatolian cities in Turkey, are forced to hide their religious identity, according to the Hurriyet daily newspaper.
Since the Islamic State (ISIS) invaded Iraqi and Syrian cities, Christians and Yazidis have become the group’s main target, facing another possible genocide at the hands of Muslims.
Anonis Alis Salciyan, an Armenian who fled Iraq for Turkey, told Hurriyet that in public, they pretend to be Muslim.
“My husband and I fled [Iraq] with our two children one year ago with around 20 other families. There was pressure on us in Iraq,” Salciyan said, recalling that her husband, who ran a jewelry shop in Iraq, is now unemployed. “We have relatives in Europe. Only thanks to their support are we getting by. Our children cannot go to school here; they cannot speak Turkish.”
What makes the plight of Christian refugees in Turkey even more tragic is that the ancestors of some of those refugees were driven out of Anatolia by the Ottoman authorities and local Muslims a century ago, during what are known as the Armenian Genocide and Assyrian Genocide of 1915.
Another family, Linda and Vahan Markaryan, also fled to Turkey with their two children. Their home in Baghdad had been raided by ISIS jihadists.
“My daughter, Nuşik, seven, stopped talking that day. She has not spoken since. We are working hard to provide her treatment, but she still will not speak,” Linda Markaryan said, adding that it was hard for them to practice their religion. “We have to conduct our prayers at home.”
Islamic jihadist armies invaded Middle Eastern and North African lands starting in the 7th century. The indigenous, non-Muslim, peoples of those lands have doubtless forgotten what safety, security and religious freedom mean.
In every country that is now majority-Muslim, there are horror stories of violent subjugation, rapes, slavery and murder of the non-Muslim people at the hands of jihadists.
Christians have existed in Syria since the earliest days of Christianity; today, after the raids of ISIS, they are fleeing for their lives.
Left: A memorial in France commemorating the 1915 Assyrian Genocide in Turkey. Right: An Islamic State member destroys a Christian tombstone in Mosul, Iraq, in April 2015.
Muslim invasions of Byzantine Syria occurred under Muhammad’s successors, the Caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar ibn Khattab in the 7th century. In 634, Damascus, then mostly Christian, became the first major city of the Byzantine Empire to fall to the Rashidun Caliphate.
Damascus subsequently became the capital of the Ummayad Caliphate, the second of the four major Islamic caliphates, and Arabic became the official state language.
In Iraq, where many Christian refugees in Turkey also come from, there has also been a campaign of Islamization.
Muslim Arabs captured what is today termed “Iraq” from the Persian Sassanid Empire in 636. They burned Zoroastrian scriptures, executed priests, pillaged cities and seized slaves — just as ISIS does today.
When Muslim armies captured non-Muslim lands, the Christians and Jews were given the choice of either converting, being killed, or living as “dhimmis”: third-class, barely “tolerated” people in their dispossessed land, and having to pay a tax (the jizya) in exchange for so-called “protection.”[1]
Now, in the 21st century, Christians in Turkey say they still live in fear.
On December 28, 2012, for instance, 85-year-old Maritsa Kucuk, an Armenian woman, was beaten and stabbed to death in her home in the neighborhood of Samatya (one of the largest Armenian communities in Istanbul), where she lived alone. Her son, Zadig Kucuk, who found her dead body at home, said that a cross had been carved on her chest.
In December 2012, also in Samatya, another woman, T.A., 87, was attacked, beaten, and choked in her home. She lost an eye.
“The press, the police, politicians, and authorities have not focused on this issue,” wrote Rober Koptas, the then chief editor of the Armenian bilingual weekly newspaper, Agos. “They prefer to stay silent as if these attacks never took place. It increases the uneasiness of all Armenians living in Turkey.”
In January, 2013, Ilker Sahin, 40, a teacher working at an Armenian school in Istanbul, was beheaded in his home.
In 2011, a Turkish taxi driver in Istanbul punched an Armenian customer. “Your accent is bad,” he told her. “You are a kafir [infidel].”
In the eyes of many devout Muslims, tolerance seems to be a one-way street. Many Muslims have apparently still not learned to treat other people with respect. Non-Muslims all around the “Muslim world” are either murdered or forced to live in fear. Many Muslims evidently still think that non-Muslims are their dhimmis, and that they can treat them as terribly as they would like.
In Western countries, Muslims are equal citizens with equal rights. But some of them often demand more “rights” — privileges from their governments — such as Islamic sharia courts with a parallel legal system. If their demands are not met, they accuse people of “Islamophobia” or “racism.”
In majority-Muslim countries, including Turkey, non-Muslims are continually insulted, threatened or even murdered — and most Muslims, including state authorities, do not seem to care.
“The relation between Islam and the rest of the world is marked by asymmetry,” wrote the author Jacob Thomas,
“Muslims may and do enjoy all kinds of freedoms and privileges in the lands of the Kuffar [infidels]; however non-Muslims are not granted the same rights and privileges when they live in Daru’l Islam [“the home of Islam”, countries governed by Muslim governments]. Western politicians don’t seem to notice this anomaly; while most Western academicians don’t appear concerned about this lack of quid pro quo in the Islamic world. In our globalized world, this state of affairs should not continue.”
An undecided Tehran is bad for Iran
Mohamed Chebarro/Al Arabiya/January 23/16
With Iran taking a major step toward normalizing its relations with the world, Tehran’s leadership has to decide, in the interest of its people, culture and economy, whether it is a state or a revolutionary entity. The milestone review by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on January 16 found that Iran has complied with the nuclear deal reached with the international community in June last year and dismantled its secretive nuclear program paving the way for lifting sanctions. This accomplishment constitutes only a slither of what await the Iranian government and its people.
Undoing its nuclear facilities, shipping tons of low-enriched uranium to Russia and stopping its ballistic missile program will allow Iran access to ship its oil and for its banks to operate internationally. This will allow the removal of some travel and import bans shackling its economy and its people.
Yet the real hurdles remain. Tehran’s leadership must decide whether Iran is a state or a revolutionary entity and whether it is ready to uphold international transparent practices in pursuit of its interests.
Tehran’s leadership has to decide whether it is a state or a revolutionary entity
The nuclear deal ends one of several sanction packages imposed on Iran by various international bodies resulting from its human rights record and support for terrorism and terror groups. Among those are sanctions imposed by the U.S. three and a half decades ago at the onset of the revolution when Tehran’s new leaders decided to hold employees of the American embassy in Iran as hostages. Other similar sanctions have been imposed on Iran by the European Union and the U.N. due to Tehran’s involvement in terror activities or its poor record in upholding human rights.
The nuclear deal and its aftermath might be a good beginning for Iran but its leadership has a long list of grueling tasks to achieve if they want to re-harmonize Iran as a player on the international stage. Iran’s revolutionary tone bent on the belligerent must be turned down.
Incidents such as the capture of U.S. navy boat, after it drifted into Gulf waters, is not likely to win Iran friends especially considering the way they were paraded on national and international Iranian channels. The same is applicable to encouraging people to storm and burn down embassies such as the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad recently.
Curbing proxies
Iran’s many proxy wars in the Arab region and beyond is another problem which Tehran leaders must work with the international community to resolve. The statements made by leaders of the elite Revolutionary Guards, claiming that Iran controls four Arab capitals, is not conducive to eliminating the lack of trust over Iranian intentions for 30 years.
Those same leaders have on other occasions boasted that the Islamic Revolution of Iran has trained and equipped 200,000 young men from various countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Indeed such acts will not help restore the calm and prosperity a nation needs to rebuild its economy and international trust after 37 years as a pariah state.
Iran in a post nuclear era must review relations with its neighbors, mainly Gulf states, and cooperate to ensure stability in the region instead of continuing with this game of destabilizing states through sectarian divisions in countries such as Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. Iran should take a strategic review on whether it is still beneficial to fan the fires of sectarianism in the 21st century, whether it is useful today to re-awaken the Shia-Sunni tussle or to settle centuries old Arab-Persian rivalry.
Iran must reconsider whether its efforts to derail the Palestinian-Israeli peace process in the 90s benefited the Palestinian cause or buried for good any hope of a two-state solution, which the Palestinian people desperately needed.
The missile test related sanctions announced by President Obama immediately after the prisoner exchange with Iran, and the removal of nuclear deal related sanctions imposed 10 years ago, should serve as reminder to Tehran and its smart playing politicians. They must chose, as the Saudi foreign minister said last week, whether they are a state or a revolutionary entity.
