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Expatriate Christian sues Turkish newspaper for slander
Right-wing Tercuman demands Americans Ouster
by Barbara G. Baker
Compass (24.11.2003)/ HRWF Int. (17.11.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net -- An American English teacher at an Istanbul university has filed a 40.5 billion Turkish lira ($27,500) slander case against a Turkish newspaper for publishing a series of false charges against him.
Hans Chabra, 40, was accused by the right-wing Halka ve Olaylara Tercuman newspaper of doing missionary work this past summer while employed by the state as a teacher of preparatory English at Istanbuls Marmara University.
The tabloid demanded that Chabra be fired from his job and deported from Turkey because of his involvement in Christian evangelism activities. From Seattle, Washington, the teacher has worked in Turkey for the past 11 years.
Together with a Turkish Christian, Chabra was detained briefly by Eskisehir police on July 9 when a local shopkeeper complained that they were offering passersby Christian books. The police behaved impeccably, Chabra said, questioning them politely and then completing a written statement before releasing them four hours later.
But on July 15, the Tercuman newspaper carried banner headlines and a photograph of Chabra, exposing the alleged scandal of a Bible teacher whom it labeled both a [political] separatist and a missionary.
Carrying the byline of Celik Celikyaman, the article claimed Chabra represented both a so-called World Missionaries United group and an organization called Human Rights Action. It went on to declare Chabra had written articles accusing Turkey of practicing occupation in Northern Cyprus and genocide against its Kurdish population.
According to Tercuman, Chabra was passing out New Testaments and crucifixes, neither of which was true, the teacher told Compass. We were offering people a catalog from a local Christian publishing company, explaining they could get a free copy of one of three books by simply writing and requesting it, Chabra said.
Tercuman also claimed that the families of thousands of students Chabra had been teaching at the university for all these years were upset to learn he had been brainwashing their children.
The following day, a second front-page story announced that the rector of Marmara University had promised to remove Chabra from his teaching position and have him ousted from Turkey. Dr. Tunc Erem reportedly informed Tercuman that he was requesting an investigation from the security police and planned to terminate Chabras teaching contract.
Subsequently, Tercuman complained in articles on July 25 and again on August 27 that the rectors promised complaint against Chabra had never been filed with the Istanbul security police. In a rude pun on the word misyoner (missionary), the front-page headline on July 25 called Chabra a pisyoner or filthy worker.
Finally on August 29, Tercuman said that Dr. Erem had confirmed that an internal university inquiry regarding Chabras conduct was underway. But he clarified that any deportation action would have to be taken by the police. I have no such authority, the rector noted.
But when his contract expires in December, it will not be renewed, Dr. Erem reportedly declared.
Nevertheless, when Chabra was questioned by the universitys law professor, who read over the Eskisehir police report as well as Chabras statement, he was told he had not broken any laws. The law professor even said that missionary activity was not a crime! Chabra said.
Under Turkish secular law, religious proselytizing cannot be prohibited unless the material involved is reproduced illegally, or it contains a proven political motive. However, local security authorities routinely arrest both Turkish and expatriate Christians involved in evangelistic activities in public places, sometimes detaining them for an extended investigation.
In a lawsuit filed September 25 before the Kadikoy Criminal Law Court, Chabras lawyer Ebru Bilsel demanded 40.5 billion Turkish lira ($27,500) in compensation for moral and physical damages from the untruths disseminated against her client. Although a preliminary hearing is set for December 23, the attorney expects the case to take a year to resolve.
If Chabra wins the case, Tercuman is required by law to print a retraction of its false statements in a similar front-page, banner headline article.
In a 1994 case involving an American doctor working for a university hospital in Izmir, Dr. John Fowler won a slander case against two newspapers for publishing blatant fabrications about his activities as a practicing Christian. Fowler was cleared in his universitys investigation and also won the civil court case and a subsequent appeal. But instead of printing the required retraction, the newspapers simply paid a minimal contempt-of-court fine.
On November 5, Marmara University officials informed Chabra in writing that as a result of their investigation, they had decided to fine him one days pay for failing to obtain formal permission from university authorities in July to leave Istanbul and visit Eskisehir. Turkeys schools rarely enforce this rule on foreign teachers during the official summer holidays, but Chabra said he did not plan to object to their decision.
Although Chabras contract expires at the end of the calendar year, he told Compass that foreign teachers usually do not sign their renewed contract until the following spring. So Im just waiting to learn whether in fact this whole investigation scam created by Tercuman will actually make any difference in renewing my contract, Chabra said.
I am doing all I can to hold onto my teaching position, and to defend my rights under the Turkish Constitution, he continued. This is a secular state, and everyone has the right to share their faith under Article 26. So I expect the courts to support this right.
Turkish court releases alleged attacker
Hospitalized Christian remains in coma
by Barbara G. Baker
Compass (21.11.2003)/ HRWF Int. (17.11.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net -- Nearly a month after three suspects were jailed for severely injuring a Turkish Christian distributing so-called missionary propaganda, a court in northwest Turkey has ordered one of the alleged attackers released.
Metin Yildiran, president of the local chapter of the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), was released by a panel of judges at the Orhangazi Criminal Court of First Instance on November 18.
According to a report appearing in the local Bursa Hakimiyet newspaper the following day, a thousand ultranationalist youths crowded around the Orhangazi courthouse during the hearing, breaking out into applause after Yildirans release was announced.
In its November 19 coverage of the hearing, Olay newspaper described the decision to release Yildiran as a result of social pressure brought to bear on the court.
But Yildirans co-suspects, Ibrahim Sekman and Huseyin Bektas, were remanded to Gemlik Prison until the next hearing on the case, set for December 17. According to several press reports, the court refused to release the other two suspects until it received an official report on the injured Christians medical condition.
Yakup Cindilli, 32, was hospitalized after the October 23 attack, in which he sustained heavy blows on his head and face. He went into a coma during his second day at the Bursa State Hospital, where attending doctors describe his current condition in the intensive care unit as stabilized but still unconscious.
Together with his companion identified as Tufan Orhan, Cindilli had reported the beatings to the police, naming Sekman and Bektas as their attackers.
According to an October 25 article in Kent newspaper, Yildiran turned himself into the state prosecutor the day after Sekman and Bektas were arrested. In his official statement, Yildiran reportedly claimed that because he was also present during the incident, it was impossible to ignore his conscience when he learned his two friends had been arrested.
After the hearing, Necati Ozensoy, identified by the newspaper as MHPs provincial chairman, declared that the other two suspects were innocent. Ozensoy said it was beyond understanding why the medical report confirming that Cindillis life was not in danger had been delayed, preventing the court from releasing the other two innocent youths.
The Turkish press has not reported that Cindilli was hospitalized from his injuries, nor that he has remained in a coma for the past month.
From a Muslim family, Cindilli had reportedly become a Christian during the past two years through his interactions with Alo Dua, a prayer hotline ministry staffed by local Turkish Christians.
Just five days before the Orhangazi hearing, Alo Duas Ankara office received an anonymous telephone call from a man who said he was calling from Orhangazi. I want to warn you, the caller said, because the ones who are guilty in this case are free, and its the innocent ones who are in jail.
Be careful on the day of Yakups hearing, the man continued, threatening a very big protest at the court.
Today a doctor attending Cindilli said that there was tiny, daily improvement in his medical condition, mentioning that despite his unconscious state, he had uttered a word or two for the first time last week.
According to a November 19 report in the Kent Haber newspaper, the suspects told the court that they began arguing with Cindilli and Orhan when they tried to give them copies of the New Testament. At this point, they claimed, Cindillis foot slipped and he fell, hitting his head on the pavement.
Today the pastor of the Bursa Protestant Church where Cindilli sometimes attended worship called for a special day of prayer and fasting on December 17, urging fellow Turkish Christians to pray for Cindillis complete recovery and for a just court ruling on his case.
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Turkish PM holds bomb meeting
ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) C
www.cnn.com (17.11.03)/ HRWF Int. (17.11.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is holding talks with his senior ministers in the wake of the Istanbul synagogue bombings in which at least 23 people died.
Monday morning's Cabinet meeting comes hours after two claims by groups linked to the al Qaeda terrorist network for Saturday's bombings, as well as an attack on Italian peacekeepers in southern Iraq last week.
Erdogan said authorities were investigating the claims, made Sunday in the London-based Arabic newspaper al Quds al Arabiya and the Saudi-owned magazine Al Majalah.
But intelligence analysts have discounted the claims, pointing to a history of similar dubious ones in the past.
Turkish authorities have speculated that the attacks at Neve Shalom, Istanbul's largest synagogue, and another two minutes later at the Beth Israel synagogue five kilometers (three miles) away were possibly carried out by terrorists from outside the country.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul described the blasts as "a terror attack which has international links." But the country's Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said it was too soon to tell. Investigators are "considering every possibility," he said. "Any organization could be behind this."
Members of the Turkish news media had earlier reported a claim of responsibility from a radical Turkish Islamist group, the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders Front. Four men detained and questioned by Turkish authorities were released, a senior security officer said, although officials had called them suspects.
Officials investigating the blasts say security tapes from cameras mounted outside the synagogues showed men driving slowly past the synagogues shortly before their vehicles exploded. The bombers were among the dead. More than 300 were also wounded in Saturday's attacks.
Officials credited tight security around the buildings for keeping the bombers from inflicting more damage inside the synagogues. Many of the casualties were Muslim passers-by.
Turkey's Jewish community numbers about 25,000, in the predominantly Muslim country of 68 million. Avi Alkas, Istanbul's Jewish community leader, called the blasts "a severe blow to our community".
There is no tradition of anti-Semitism in Turkey, which has long been home to a vibrant Jewish community. Journalist Andrew Finkel said the Jewish population was "feeling vulnerable," but the blast was also an attempt to shake Turkish confidence.
Turkish authorities viewed the blast not so much as an attack on the Jewish community as one on Muslims and the many other people who were killed in the attacks, he added..
The national Helsinki Committees from Europe, North America and Central Asia and Human Rights Without Frontiers convey to all the people of Istanbul and Turkey, and in particular to the Jewish community, their profound sympathy for the victims of these atrocious acts and their families.
They express their solidarity with all affected by these tragedies, and they hope for the swift arrest and punishment under Turkish and international law of those responsible.
Closure of Two Kingdom Halls
HRWF Int. (11.11.2003) Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - Two kingdom halls (houses of worship) of Jehovah's Witnesses have been closed in Mersin.
In August 2001 the Ministry of Interior sent a circular to all State-appointed provincial governors. The circular encouraged them to use existing laws to "regulate" gatherings of Jehovah's Witnesses and other religions. The governor of the province of Mersin has used a recent amendment in the national Housing and Construction Law as an additional tool to continue his three-year harassment and "regulating" of Jehovah's Witnesses. One of the closed kingdom halls in Mersin has been in legal use for over 15 years. Amended Law No. 3194[1] requires meeting in places of worship allocated on city zoning plans. However, instead of promoting religious freedom, the amended law is being used by Mersin's State-appointed governor to restrict or "regulate" Jehovah's Witnesses' freedom to peacefully gather to worship. The mayors of Mersin and five other cities have explained that there is 'no provision in their citiy zoning plans allocating land or buildings for places of worship.'
Jehovah's Witnesses have been worshipping in Turkey since 1931. There are currently more than 3,000 Turkish Jehovah's Witnesses and associates who meet together for worship in 32 congregations throughout Turkey. They enjoy de facto recognition as an unregistered religion in Turkey, reinforced by various court decisions that they have won over the years.[2] The constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion should therefore apply equally to them.
Jehovah's Witnesses fear for the future of the 17 other kingdom halls in Turkey and for freedom of worship in their country in general. Nothing currently prevents any of the other governors appointed by the Ministry of Interior from similarly applying the amended Housing and Construction Law to "regulate" Jehovah's Witnesses by closing their kingdom halls throughout Turkey.
Human Rights Without Frontiers Int.
- appeals to the authorities of Turkey to correct this current attack on religious freedom in Mersin by the State-appointed governor; and
- invites the authorities of Turkey to open a frank and constructive dialogue with the representatives of Jehovah's Witnesses in order to protect the right of Jehovah's Witnesses to assemble for worship throughout Turkey.
Turkish President sparks anger with headscarf snub
Reuters (22.10.2003)/ HRWF Int. (24.10.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - President Ahmet Necdet Sezer came under fire Wednesday in Turkish newspapers after refusing to invite headscarf-wearing wives of parliamentarians to a reception next week to mark Turkey's national day. His move highlights tensions in mainly Muslim Turkey between the secular establishment, which includes the powerful military, and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has Islamist roots.
The secularists oppose the wearing of Islamic-style headscarves in public buildings, seeing it as an Islamist challenge to the strict separation of religion and state enshrined since the modern Turkish Republic was founded in 1923.
Sezer sent out invitations to the October 29 reception to all members of the Turkish parliament, but only to those wives known not to wear headscarves, Turkish media said.
The president's office declined to comment on the decision.
"This discrimination is very bad. Even those who took power after military coups never went this far," wrote Taha Akyol, a columnist for the Milliyet newspaper. "It is humiliating discrimination that hurts people's feelings."
The pro-AKP daily Yeni Safak quoted Nimet Cubukcu, a female AKP lawmaker who does not wear a headscarf, as saying: "Celebrations of our national day are everybody's celebrations. Such discrimination shows disrespect toward the nation which elected the MPs."
Many commentators said the incident showed secularists like Sezer were not progressive but reactionary and undemocratic in a country where a majority of women do wear headscarves.
"Sezer sees women as second class citizens," wrote Mehmet Ocaktan in Yeni Safak.
Others suggested that conservative-minded bureaucrats working in Sezer's office were to blame and that the invitations were sent out without the president's prior knowledge.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who once spent time in jail for Islamist sedition, said he would not take his headscarf-wearing wife to the reception.
Christianity hits a crossroad
Once-thriving Christian churches are falling by the wayside in Turkey, but one new, less rigid evangelical church is defying the odds in that Muslim world
By Michael Petrou
Ottawa Citizen (21.09.2003)/HRWF Int. (1.10.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - Deep in the heart of Muslim Turkey stand two Christian churches, their front doors facing across a narrow, garbage-strewn street where gangs of children chase plastic soccer balls and play with scraps of paper.
On the north side of the Diyarbakir street is the Meryem Ana Kilisesi, the Church of the Virgin Mary, an ancient Syrian Orthodox church whose courtyard is surrounded by high and crumbling basalt walls.
Once home to hundreds of worshippers, the Church of the Virgin Mary is now an empty place. A few families still attend, but most of the Christians who lived here have left for Western Europe and North America.
Father Yusuf Akbulut is 35, but already his beard is flecked with grey and he carries with him a premature air of almost whimsical nostalgia. His flock is dwindling, and he is far too young to preside over a decline.
Some of his parishioners left for economic reasons. Others were pushed out by subtle social pressure and, in the 1980s and 1990s, by murders and terrorist attacks by Hezbollah, the militant Islamic organization that targets both Christians and Muslims.
"We do feel lonely," he says. Decades ago, "we had 150 families and now we have 15."
Four families live within the walls of the church courtyard. In a small garden with olive and pine trees, a water fountain stands surrounded by climbing grapevines and empty olive oil cans that now serve as water jugs. Children, some of them belonging to Father Yusuf, play beneath the trees.
"They won't come back," Father Yusuf says of his missing parishioners.
"But they can live away for years and still be foreigners. I want to stay. We have history here. This is home."
Father Yusuf's voice is tinged with sadness. Diyarbakir, it seems, is not an obvious place for Christianity to grow.
And yet, across the street is a brand-new building, with strong straight walls, gleaming floors and plush chairs inside. Workers cart out debris and arrive with new building material.
This new, as yet unnamed evangelical church was paid for with American money and is supervised by Jerry Mattiks, a 24-year-old from Washington state.
Jerry has a fuzzy moustache, a serious, if friendly, adult demeanour, and a wife. He arrived after graduating from bible college, where he read that Christian congregations in eastern Turkey needed help.
He's been here for 19 months and speaks fluent Turkish; his voice is highlighted with the tones of a true believer.
"I'm just serving the Lord Jesus Christ," he says.
At Jerry's church, all congregants are converts from Islam. The church has only been open for a couple of weeks and about 30 people, if not really members, at least stop by regularly. But there is room for 150 to 200 people. The congregation is expected to grow.
And although the two churches exist perhaps three metres from each other, the congregations do not pray together at all.
"They are based on race," Jerry says. "It is the Assyrian Orthodox Church. And sometimes they don't even open the gate when people bang on it. We're open to everyone."
Christianity's past in Turkey is encapsulated in the decaying walls of Father Yusuf's empty church. Jerry is convinced its future is in his building across the street.
Lands that are now Turkey were once home to millions of Christians, mostly Armenians in the eastern part of the country and ethnic Greeks on the Black Sea coast.
The Pontic Greeks left in the early 1920s after a failed Greek invasion. Ethnic Turks in Greece, and ethnic Greeks in Turkey, were forced to leave their homes and move to respective nation-states.
The disappearance of the Armenians was more deadly.
In 1915, with the Russian army advancing on the crumbling Ottoman Empire, Armenians in the city of Van revolted, murdered many of the local Muslims, and held the town until the Russians arrived. It was the latest in a series of Armenian rebellions. The Ottomans responded with massacres and ethnic cleansing.
Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed, and many more were deported to Syria. Kurdish tribesman savaged the long columns of starving survivors and carried off young women on horseback. When it ended, between 800,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were dead, and the Anatolian heartland was virtually empty of Christians.
It was the 20th century's first genocide, although it is rarely acknowledged.
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At Jerry's evangelical church, Muharrem, my Turkish translator, is quietly grumbling. "I hear about churches like this, usually in Istanbul. They offer money and jobs to people who convert," he says.
"I think that is why they had problems with their building permits."
Jerry says he has heard these accusations before, and that the city had frustrated attempts to build the church. Some in town believe the church spies for the Americans. Why else would you need such a large building where are no Christians?
"A lot of people don't like that we convert Muslims," says Jerry. "They think we're dangerous. But we try to do it in a manner of peace and love. That's what we're trying to do -- to bring peace to people here."
Jerry says that his church doesn't aggressively convert, but that locals arrive at the church after reading the New Testament or having a dream.
"Our approach is to put the Gospel out to people so they can make the choice," he says.
He also downplays connections to Christian organizations in the United States. "There's no network at all. The bind between us all is the Holy Spirit that guides us."
I am uncomfortable with evangelism, and am skeptical.
But later, over glasses of tea with some members of the congregation, a few tell me they have been Christians for more than a decade and met in each other's houses before the church was built.
Ahmed Guvener, a leader of the Diyarbakir church, was an Alevi Muslim before converting to Christianity. He says arguments over religion with local Sunni Muslims caused his brother and him to question their faith. They turned first to atheism but felt "empty." After reading an ad in a newspaper offering free Bibles, they researched Christianity, converted and started the church here.
"A new family has grown up around us, and we haven't been rebuked by our own families," he says.
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German religious ministers unwanted in Turkey
HRWF Int. advocates a reciprocity strategy
HRWF Int. (30.09.2003) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - German Christian religious ministers are not allowed to carry out their pastoral duties in Turkey, said Bishop Rolf Poppe of the Evangelical Church (EKD) in Germany and the bishops conference of the Catholic Church, convened on Sept. 22. The EKD published a report on the issue of discrimination against religious minorities in Turkey, entitled Bedrohung der Religionsfreiheit (Threat to religious freedom).
Gerhard Duncker, the adviser to the EKD and a pastor for the German-speaking community in Turkey from 1993 to 2002, portrays the reality as follows: There is no religious freedom for 150,000 Christians in Turkey. For 70 years, there has existed a law which prohibits any activity of foreign clerics in Turkey.
However, two German clerics, a Catholic and an Evangelical, work on the verge of legality. As they cannot get a work permit, they have been engaged as so-called auxiliaries to the German embassy. As such, they are part of the official staff of the embassy. When they need extra help, a vicar or a dean is sent to Turkey with a tourist visa, but every three months he must leave the country and then return.
Religious teaching is obstructed or made impossible, says the EKD report. Religious ministers cannot work as teachers of religious classes in schools. Property of the church must be administered by ecclesiastical foundations. Christian foundations cannot purchase or sell any land.
On August 28, 2003, the issue of religious freedom was on the agenda of the German-Turkish consultations on human rights. It was again raised in early September when Turkish minister president Erdogan met Chancellor Schroeder in Germany.
In December 2004, the EU will check if Turkey fulfils the conditions to open negotiations on the EU membership of Turkey.
In Germany, there are mosques and minarets in many cities, while in Turkey, Christians have to worship underground. Officially, the small chapel of the Catholic parish of Saint Paul may not exist in Istanbul. In the city plan, it is identified as a water basin, but everybody knows that religious services are celebrated there, said pastoral adviser Hillebrenner in a radio interview with Deutschlandfunk.
More than 2.1 million Turks live in Germany. Almost all of them are Muslims. Along with the other 5.5 million foreigners, they enjoy religious freedom guaranteed by the German Constitution. Muslims have opened about 2200 mosques in Germany, and 580 imams work in this country.
Human Rights Without Frontiers Int. recommends
Human Rights Without Frontiers Int. recommends
- that the German State urge the Turkish government to amend its legislation so that German and EU religious ministers enjoy the same rights that have been granted to Turkish imams in Germany and in the EU
- that the Evangelical Church and the Catholic Church in Germany
- a) organise conferences on the issue of reciprocity in religious matters between Turkey and Germany with the collaboration of
- - German and Turkish academics experts in international law
- - representatives of Muslim communities in Germany and from Turkey
- - representatives of the Turkish state;
- b) publicize developments of issues regarding the dialogue on reciprocity on a regular basis;
- that the churches of the European Union that are active in Turkey hold similar conferences in their own countries.
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