Will the Christians be driven out?

An ancient Christian community fears for its existence in Turkey, reports Stephen Griffith

The Archbishop overseeing building works at Mor Gabriel monastery

Tur Abdin is an area in south-east Turkey which has had a large Christian presence since the fourth century. Its centre is the town of Midyat and its heart the monastery of Mor Gabriel. Since the time of St Ephrem (died 373), Syriac-speaking Christians have flourished there, supplying the wider Church with important theologians, and the world with a link between Greek and Arabic thought. Tur Abdin has close links with the Church of England: the diocese in Europe has helped it grow over the past three decades.

A hundred years ago, Midyat was a majority-Christian city, and the area of Tur Abdin had a substantial Christian population. There were many hundreds of Christians among a mixed population of Sunni Kurds, Yezidis, Arabs, and Armenians. Today, almost all of the Yezidis have left, and fewer than 3000 Syriac Christians remain.

From the 1970s to 2000, there was a huge flight of minorities, mainly to Europe (especially Germany and Sweden), and also to Istanbul. Under the current Turkish government, the security situation has improved, and some emigrants have returned, building new houses and investing in capital projects.

The present problem began in 2008, when Turkey began to regular­ise the land-ownership register, using a land-registration survey. This was caused by Turkey’s application to join the EU, and its need to have its legal system in tune with European models. No decision has yet been made about a process for Turkey to join the Community.

I have been reporting on the area for 12 years, and my observations have generally supported the present government’s approach. But a year ago the situation changed. Using the land-registration process, villages made legal challenges to the existence of Mor Gabriel monastery, in an attempt to close it and take over the land.

The significant question is why the monastery should be the defendant in the question of the land it has owned for hundreds of years, while the sur­round­ing villages, populated mainly by Muslims, have generally not had any such problems.

At the local court, the monastery won most of the cases against it, but the Christian population is profoundly unsettled. In recent years, European pressure has led the Turk­ish government to make life easier for this minority — hence the re­turn of some emigrants. Yet now, once again, their very presence is at risk.

THE CAUSE of these legal attacks is not certain. My enquiries suggest that local Kurdish aghas have been using strong-arm tactics to bully villagers and officials in order to increase their own power and wealth. These mafia-like lords have close connections with the ruling party, the AKP; one is a member of the Ankara parliament. What is uncertain is whether the pressure on the Syriac Christians has official government support, at a time when — despite its desire to join the EU — Turkey is making serious moves away from Europe towards be­coming an official Islamic state.

At present, the Turkish constitu­tion is deeply secularist, but the AKP has encouraged liberalisation, so that Islam is becoming more like an official religion — this in a country where there are more sheikhs of mosques than schoolteachers.

Recently I visited a Yezidi family. There used to be tens of thousands of followers of this ancient monotheist religion in south-east Turkey. Their beliefs are a syncretistic mix of various religions, including Mazda­ism, which means the Magi could be among their forebears.

Almost all have now left, and the people I met were among the last of their kind in Tur Abdin. After cen­turies of persecution, in which Mus­lims derided the Yezidis as “devil-worshippers”, and abused them publicly, government and popular action drove almost the whole population to flee.

The Christians have fared a little better: at least there is still a viable population; but I can see the writing on the wall for the Syriac community, as local warlords and central govern­ment look for “cleansing”.

YET TURKEY is no more mono­chrome than Britain. Istanbul is as close to Vienna as it is to Tur Abdin. Most Turks have no idea what life is like in the wild south-east. Indeed, many Muslim Turks have worked to support the Christians of Tur Abdin, and both traditionalists and modern­isers see this Islamic aggression as a betrayal of Turkey’s secular constitu­tion.

What needs to happen is for the Turkish government to look at the power of the Kurdish aghas, who have state funding to run private armies (the “village guards”), and are often central figures in organised crime.

Turkey is a state committed to Euro­pean standards of inclusion, and it will be not only the Christians who benefit from work in this area. Celeb­rities from Turkish popular culture need to be encouraged to speak out, in the way that footballers in Britain have led anti-racism campaigns.

All the current legal cases are now awaiting a final judgment in Ankara at the Supreme Court, after a hearing on 10 November. There is no date for the announcement, and further appeal could be made to the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights.

So the Christians are waiting for a Damoclean sword to drop, and they have no idea when it might happen. Mor Gabriel monastery, and its Bishop, monks and nuns, teachers and students to wait in fear that the lands that have fed them since the fourth century might be taken away. If that were to happen, most Christians in the area would see emigration as their only hope.

The Revd Stephen Griffith is Team Vicar in the Mortlake with East Sheen Team. He represented the Archbishop of Canterbury in Turkey and the surrounding region from 1997 to 2003.