ECLJ to Compile Religious Freedoms Report for Members of The EU Foreign Relations Committee

May 3, 2005

(Strasbourg, France)-ECLJ representatives, after several months of correspondence with Christians and foreign missionaries living in Turkey, visited several cities in the country to evaluate the religious freedoms situation. The visit was precipitated by the desire to put diplomatic pressure on the Turkish government regarding their intolerant stance in the registration of Christian churches, in their treatment of foreign missionaries, and in the media approach to minority religions and the Jewish minority in Turkey. The product of the visit will be a comprehensive report which will be distributed to the Turkish candidacy committee of the European Parliament.

In Istanbul, ECLJ met with Chief Rabbi Rav Isak Haleva and other members and legal representatives of the Chief Rabbinate of Turkey. All members of the Rabbinate, Orthodox in denomination, agreed that in Turkey the Jewish minority enjoyed greater freedom of religion than most other religions because of the status afforded it in the Treaty of Lausanne. Further, the members admitted that systematic anti-Semitism in the form of physical violence was yet to occur in Turkey with the exception of car bombs detonated at the building site the year prior by Islamacist terrorists.

However, the members of the Chief Rabbinate were unanimous in their current concern regarding the state of the Turkish media, particularly right wing papers which enjoyed a sizable minority readership. The members shared with ECLJ several newspaper clippings, of which they said they receive daily examples, of virulently Anti-Semitic editorials and stories. This combined with the fact that Hitler's Mien Kampf was enjoying its 4th consecutive month in the top 5 of Turkish best seller's list was the cause of much distress among the Turkish Jewish community.

ECLJ also met with representatives of the Armenian Church in Istanbul, the Armenians are the largest Christian community in all of Turkey. ECLJ was provided an invaluable "insider's" history of the religious climate in Turkey. It was stated that the current number of Armenians in Istanbul was 68, 000 and that the Armenian genocide of 1915 had taken the lives of at least 1.5 million Armenians.

The Turkish government and specifically the Ministry of the Interior show legal and actual preference to the Sunni Muslims, despite their secular approach to government. The Sunni clergy receive their salaries from the Turkish government and the Sunni are the only religion to have a faculty in the University system of Turkey. In return, the Turkish government writes the parameters of the Sunni sermons preached in the Mosques.

ECLJ met Evangelical leaders, pastors and legal representatives in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir, Turkey. In the meetings the situation of the churches and their members were discussed. The problem as discussed in the cities is four fold: (1) there is a lack of a legal structure supporting the recognition of new Christian churches and that such a problem lends itself to aggressive oppression of new churches by local authorities; (2) the media have painted a terrible picture of the evangelical churches and have linked them to the American stance on the Iraq war; (3) harassment by police and other local administrators such as random beatings or being taken into custody for no reason; (4) a suppression of foreign missionaries by two methods: (i) lack of legal recognition by refusing to give living or working permits and (ii) use of media and the Interior Ministry's right to provide sermons to paint foreign Christian missionaries as the new type of Crusader which must be stopped. This mentality has already begun to filter down to the general population as is evidenced by the beating of a Christian convert in Bursa, Turkey into a coma for handing out New Testaments.

Under the Treaty of Lausanne, the minority religions of the Armenians, Ecumenical Greeks and Jews are recognized as Churches. Since the signing of the treaty, no legal mechanism was created to recognize new churches in Turkey. As such, all new denominations coming into Turkey or already existing in Turkey but seeking recognition have faced tremendous administrative and physical difficulties in establishing churches. As such, Evangelicals have taken the only route available to them for recognition, which is as associations. In trying to worship regularly, pastors and their congregants have been harassed by local police and administrators who have refused to recognize their churches as associations or places of worship and who have come in and closed the buildings down on several occasions. Furthermore, the pastors have been refused the right to purchase the lands on which they hold services and their churches have been refused legal identity or capacity to sue on their own behalf. ECLJ is also working with local pastors and their lawyer with the application they have pending at the European Court of Human Rights.