{"id":977,"date":"2014-11-10T20:45:30","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T20:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=977"},"modified":"2014-11-10T20:45:30","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T20:45:30","slug":"turkey-accused-of-turning-blind-eye-to-destruction-of-christian-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=977","title":{"rendered":"Turkey accused of turning blind eye to destruction of Christian sites"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY STEPHEN STARR
\nThe Irish Times<\/em><\/p>\n

Ancient relics of Christian past are slowly being lost to history<\/strong><\/p>\n

The light of day was quickly fading as a farmer gestured to follow him through a doorway into the stone outhouse. Inside, in the darkness, there are sacks of animal food and dust-covered machinery.<\/p>\n

In the light from a camera\u2019s flash hints of eastern Turkey\u2019s Christian past tentatively show themselves: a cross chiselled into an arch on an ancient wall; an apse painted with the faint, pale, blue colour associated with the Virgin Mary during Byzantine times.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Sumela Monastery, which has seen many of its symbols of Christianity \u2013 crosses carved into mountain stone and frescoes \u2013 destroyed. Photograph: Mustafa Ozer\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here in the Pontic mountains, named after the community of Greeks stationed on the Black Sea coast from 700BC until their massacre and expulsion in the early 20th century, ancient relics of a Christian past are slowly and in some cases deliberately being lost to history.<\/p>\n

In some cases, Turkey\u2019s ruling AK Party, a moderate Islamist movement popular with millions of conservative Turks, has been charged with turning a blind eye to the destruction of Christian sites.<\/p>\n

The church-turned-cattle shed is close to what remains of Varzahan monastery, 9km north of the provincial capital Bayburt, and reportedly the scene of massacres of Armenians by Turks in the 1700s. Scenes and stories such as these are not uncommon in an area once home to countless Christian communities.<\/p>\n

About two million Armenian and Greek Christians were killed or deported from eastern Turkey during and after the first World War. A 1923 convention ratifying the exchange of about 1.5 million Greek Christians living in Turkey and a half million Muslims in Greece precipitated the loss of Christian culture.<\/p>\n

A 160km drive north in the Black Sea city of Trabzon, Hagia Sofia, a church for much of the last 800 years and a museum from 1964 until last year, today has its splendid, centuries-old Christian frescos concealed. It is now a mosque.<\/p>\n

The local tourist board is catering to an audience with little interest in its history. Two coach-loads of Arab athletes arrive to pray.<\/p>\n

Outside, construction is under way to build trinket shops, according to a security guard. At the entrance, adverts for hajj to Mecca and donations for Gaza are pinned against the door among other Arabic-language literature.<\/p>\n

In Hagia Sofia\u2019s prayers section all iconography has been covered by roll-up blinds and screens with a small section of Christian frescos visible only in the tourist bay. Fresco faces have been destroyed wholesale and four plaques with the names of the prophet Mohammad\u2019s closest confidants have been freshly attached to the church\u2019s ancient pillars.<\/p>\n

In 2012 Turkey\u2019s General Directorate of Pious Foundations \u2013 an institution headed by Turkey\u2019s deputy prime minister \u2013 filed a lawsuit against the ministry of culture to return the museum to its 15th-century mosque status, which it was for several decades during the 20th century, even though a local judge has since found the conversion to be illegal.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just buildings that are under threat. In some cases, Christians have been too. In 2006 an Italian Catholic priest was murdered by a 16-year-old as he knelt in prayer inside the Santa Maria church in Trabzon. The boy reportedly shouted \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d (God is greatest) before pulling the trigger. Today the church is said to have a congregation of one.<\/p>\n

A year later workers at a bible publishing company had their throats slit in the eastern Turkish city of Malatya.<\/p>\n

In Istanbul\u2019s Karakoy district, a \u20ac525 million port development is under construction next to a group of six churches of varying denominations. Some fear the churches may be levelled.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t say there\u2019s a problem about targeting Christians in eastern Turkey,\u201d said Rober Koptas, the editor-in-chief of Armenian newspaper Agos, \u201cbecause they don\u2019t exist [in eastern Turkey] any more. The main reason was the genocide [of 1915].\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics say Turkey\u2019s Christian leaders are silent on the government\u2019s laissez-faire attitude towards the country\u2019s historic cultural sites.<\/p>\n

Some Christians were upset the Armenian Patriarchate was unable to send a representative to say Mass at the Easter Sunday reopening of one of the Middle East\u2019s largest churches in south Turkey last year.<\/p>\n

The Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul and the Santa Maria church in Trabzon could not be reached for comment while the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in Istanbul wouldn\u2019t immediately provide comment.<\/p>\n

Back in northeast Turkey, the Sumela monastery built into a mountain high above Trabzon is today a museum. Every inch of the Rock Chapel\u2019s walls are covered in frescos depicting a variety of stories and scenes from the Bible. But many symbols of Christianity \u2013 crosses carved into mountain stone and frescos \u2013 have been destroyed. This stunning enclave is a monastery in name only. No one lives here now.<\/p>\n

Historian Ismail Kose, a professor at Erciyes University in Kayseri, says most of the damage to the frescos took place in the late 17th century and again when the Ottoman empire disintegrated in the 1910s.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to remember this was a time of war, during and after World War I. Acts targeting religious symbols took place all over the region,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kose says it is \u201cimpossible\u201d that Sumela monastery, one of the region\u2019s most stunning feats of construction engineering, could go the way of Trabzon\u2019s Hagia Sofia and be converted into a mosque because it holds no historical ties to Islam.<\/p>\n

The same cannot be said for Istanbul\u2019s iconic Hagia Sofia, once a church and now a museum. There is growing movement to turn it back into a mosque.<\/p>\n

More than buildings, other cultural riches rooted in Christianity are being consigned to history. \u201cAs few as 5,000 people speak the dialect [spoken by Turkey\u2019s Pontic Greeks] but linguists believe that it is the closest, living language to ancient Greek and could provide an unprecedented insight into the language of Socrates and Plato and how it evolved,\u201d wrote a 2012 entry on the Black Sea Pontic Greek Community blog.<\/p>\n

The reuse of ancient religious buildings for contemporary life is neither new nor unique to Turkey. But the government\u2019s refusal to protect important links to the past is something that troubles many Turks.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course the government is responsible,\u201d said Koptas. \u201cThough it is renovating some churches in Turkey, this is the mentality of the government. It has Islamism in its mind-set.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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