Churches in Turkey on the Verge of Extinction

One of the common features of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey seems to be their intolerance of churches.

"Turkey is not converting churches into mosques because there is a need for more mosques... The message conveyed ... is that Turkey is an Islamic state and no other religion is tolerated." — Constantine Tzanos, author.

The physical devastation of the Christian Armenians was followed by a cultural devastation. Countless Christian churches and schools have been destroyed or turned into mosques, storehouses or stables, among other things.

"Christians are certainly seen as second-class citizens. A real citizen is a Muslim, and those who aren't Muslim are seen as suspicious." — Walter Flick, Scholar, International Society for Human Rights.

Sadly, Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and supposedly a candidate for membership in the European Union, has largely succeeded in destroying the entire Christian cultural heritage of Asia Minor.

While Eastern Orthodox Christians recently celebrated their Easter holy week, a historic church in Istanbul -- the once magnificent Christian city of Constantinople -- is witnessing yet another abuse at the hands of its current authorities.

"The historic Istanbul cathedral and museum, Hagia Sophia, witnessed its first Quran recitation under its roof after 85 years Saturday," reported the state-run Anatolian News Agency of Turkey. "The Religious Affairs Directorate launched the exhibition "Love of Prophet," as part of commemorations of the birth of Islamic Prophet Muhammad."

The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, once the grandest cathedral in the Christian world. (Image source: Antoine Taveneaux/Wikimedia Commons)

Even though Christians are a tiny minority in Turkey today, Christianity has a long history in Asia Minor, the birthplace of many Christian Apostles and Saints, including Paul of Tarsus, Timothy, Nicholas of Myra, and Polycarp of Smyrna.

All of the first seven Ecumenical Councils were held in what is today Turkey. Two out of the five centers (Patriarchates) of the ancient Pentarchy -- Constantinople (Istanbul) and Antioch (Antakya) -- are also situated there. Antioch was the place where, for the first time, the followers of Jesus were called "Christians."

Turkey is also home to the Seven Churches of Asia, where were sent the Revelations to John. During the centuries that followed, countless churches were established throughout the region.

One of them, Hagia Sophia, was once the grandest cathedral in the Christian world -- until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans on May 29, 1453, followed by a three days of unbridled pillage.[1]

Hagia Sophia was not exempt. Pillagers made their way to the Hagia Sophia and battered down its doors. Trapped in the church, congregants and refugees became spoils to be divided among the Ottoman invaders.

The historian Steven Runciman writes in The Fall of Constantinople, 1453:

"They slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra towards the Golden Horn. But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit."[2]

After the fall of the city, the Hagia Sophia Church was converted into a mosque.

A mosque with the name Hagia Sophia (in Greek Ἁγία Σοφία, "Holy Wisdom") is possible if the church is brought under the control of an Islamic theocracy. It is like having a mosque called "the Armenian Mosque of the Holy Cross".

In the 1930s, the Turkish government made it into a museum. But turning a church into a museum is also not a trait of a truly democratic state. One of the common features of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey seems to be their intolerance of churches.

In 2013, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister, Bulent Arinc, expressed his hope to see the Hagia Sophia Museum be used as a mosque, and even referred to it as the "Hagia Sophia Mosque."

"Turkey is not converting churches into mosques because there is a need for more mosques, and Turkey does not have the resources to build them," wrote Constantine Tzanos. "The message conveyed by those in Turkey who have achieved the conversion of Christian churches into mosques and demand the conversion of Hagia Sofia is that Turkey is an Islamic state and no other religion is tolerated."

In November 2014, Pope Francis paid the fourth ever visit of a Pope to Turkey. Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Tanju Bilgic told reporters that during the trip, the issue of an "alliance of civilizations, dialogue between cultures, xenophobia, the fight against racism and political developments in the region" would be on the agenda.

The agenda of Pope Francis should actually have included the churches of Turkey that have been destroyed, damaged or converted into many things, including stables -- like the historical Armenian Gregoryan Church in the province of Izmir (Smyrna). "Some citizens put their cows and horses inside the church, while the inhabitants of the neighborhood complain that the church has been turned into a site of drug addicts and alcoholics," reported the newspaper Milliyet.

Another victim of Turkey's intolerance of churches, the Agios Theodoros Byzantine Church in Istanbul, was first converted into a mosque during the rule of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II; it was named after Mollah Gurani, the fourth Sheikh-ul-Islam (the authority that governed religious affairs of the Muslims in the Ottoman Empire).

It was reported in March 2014 that the entrance area of the former church-mosque has become a "house," and its upper story turned into a "flat." A shanty has been built inside its garden. The priest's room is now a toilet.

Centuries later, the habits of Ottoman Turks seem not to have changed.

Today, Turkey has less Christians as a percentage of its population than any of its neighbors -- less than Syria, Iraq and Iran. The greatest cause of this was the Assyrian, Armenian and Greek slaughters or genocides between 1915 and 1923.

At least 2.5 million indigenous Christians of Asia Minor were killed -- either massacred outright, or victims of deportations, slave labor or death marches. Many of them died in concentration camps of diseases or starvation.

Many Greeks who survived the slaughter were driven from their homes in Asia Minor in the 1923 forcible population exchange between Turkey and Greece.

The physical devastation was followed by a cultural devastation. Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, countless Christian churches and schools have been destroyed or turned into mosques, storehouses and stables, among other things.

The columnist Raffi Bedrosyan reported in the Armenian Weekly that

"There are only 34 churches and 18 schools left in Turkey today, mostly in Istanbul, with about less than 3,000 students in these schools."

...

"Recent research pegs the number of Armenian churches in Turkey before 1915 at around 2,300. The number of schools before 1915 is estimated at nearly 700, with 82,000 students. These numbers are only for churches and schools under the jurisdiction of the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate and the Apostolic Church, and therefore do not include the numerous churches and schools belonging to the Protestant and Catholic Armenian parishes."

Walter Flick, a scholar with the International Society for Human Rights in Germany, says that the Christian minority in Turkey does not enjoy the same rights as the Muslim majority.

"Turkey has almost 80 million inhabitants," he said. "There are only around 120,000 Christians, which is less than 1 percent of the population. Christians are certainly seen as second-class citizens. A real citizen is Muslim, and those who aren't Muslim are seen as suspicious."

According to a 2014 survey, 89% of the Turkish population said that what defines a nation is belonging to a certain religion. Among the 38 countries that participated in the question of if belonging to a specific religion [Islam] is important in defining the concept of a nation, Turkey, with 89% of its population agreeing, ranked number one in the world. [3]

"In some ways, Ankara's policies against Turkey's Christian citizens have added a modern veneer and sophisticated brutality to Ottoman norms and practices," wrote political scientist Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou and historian Dr. Alexandros K. Kyrou. "In the words of an anonymous Church hierarch in Turkey fearful for the life of his flock, Christians in Turkey are an endangered species."

On April 4, 1949, the signers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Washington D.C. announced: "The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments. They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area. They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security."

Being part of the European Union and NATO requires respecting the Jewish, Christian, Hellenic and secular humanist values that have characterized Western Civilization, and contributed to civil rights, democracy, philosophy and science, from which everyone can benefit.

Sadly, Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and reportedly a candidate for membership in the European Union, has largely succeeded in destroying the entire Christian cultural heritage of Asia Minor.

All this is reminiscent of what ISIS and other jihadist armies have been doing in the Middle East. In Turkey, the remaining Christian population, the grandchildren of genocide survivors, are still exposed to discrimination. The old habits of Ottoman Turks do not seem to die.

Uzay Bulut, born a Muslim, is a Turkish journalist based in Ankara.

Think about this picture Conservatives when you think about not voting because the Republican party candidate for president is conservative enough. Hillary Clinton will place judges in position that will say this is right, look at Obama and the judges he has placed in and remember that.

Why are so many catastrophes hitting U.S. food production? This week, we have learned that more than 7 million turkeys and chickens have already been killed as the result of a devastating bird flu outbreak here in the United States. This particular strain of the bird flu has already spread to the states of Minnesota, Iowa, California, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin, and scientists are mystified as to why it is... moving so rapidly. But what we do know is that this flu has the potential to kill an entire flock of chickens or turkeys in just 48 hours. This pandemic is quickly becoming a major national crisis all by itself, but when you combine this with all of the other disasters hitting our food supply, a very troubling picture emerges. Could it be possible that the U.S. food supply is cursed?
Before we talk about the bird flu some more, let’s first review some of the other ways that our food supply is under assault.
-Due to the worst drought in the recorded history of the state, much of California is turning back into a desert. And considering the fact that California produces nearly half of all the fresh produce grown in the entire nation, that is a very frightening thing. Prices for many fruits and vegetables have already gone up substantially in our grocery stores.
-The multi-year drought in the southwest United States has also had a crippling impact on many ranchers. At this point, the size of the U.S. cattle herd is the smallest that it has been since the 1950s, and the price of beef has doubled since the last recession.
-Over the past couple of years, porcine epidemic diarrhea wiped out approximately 10 percent of the entire pig population in the United States. This particular plague seems to have subsided at least for now, but scientists tell us that it could come back strong at any moment.
-As my friend Mac Slavo wrote about the other day, the sardine population off the west coast has declined by 91 percent since 2007. This is having a devastating affect on the food chain in the Pacific Ocean.
-Speaking of the Pacific, a whole host of other sea creatures appear to be dying off in large numbers as well. For much more on this, please see this article..............

American woman Sharon Derrington stands her ground

 

Wednesday April 22, 2015 at 5:00pm PST, the call-in and express our First Amendment (347) 826-7353

I love my America and would do what I can to save her from decay.  I am just an average woman who helps patrol the Texas Mexico border to help keep illegals from crossing the Rio Grande.  There are many nationalities who try to come here illegally. I attend as many protests as I am able to show my disconcern with what is happening in my country. Closing the border is number one on my list

 

Our children’s schools teach them about the victims in our nation to the exclusion of the heroes who sacrificed their families, homes, and lives to secure our freedom. College professors disparage the very idea of American exceptionalism, and our nation’s elite scoff at the idea of our reliance on God for maintaining this nation’s greatness. How can we, as parents and role models, instill in children a true and vibrant sense of patriotism?

Women who fought in the war were met with ambivalence that fluctuated between admiration and contempt, depending on the particular woman's motivation and activity. Devotion to following a man was admired, while those who seemed enticed by the enlistment bounty warranted the scorn of enlisted men. Anna Maria Lane and Margaret Corbin fit under the first category, while Anne Bailey (under the name Samuel Gay) belonged to second. Anne Bailey was discharged, fined, and put in jail for two weeks. Anne Smith was condemned for her attempt to join the army in order to secure the enlistment fee.

 

Deborah Samson, Hannah Snell, and Sally St. Claire successfully hid their gender for a time. St. Claire kept gender a secret until her death, while Samson was discovered and honorably discharged. Deborah Samson was later awarded a veteran’s pension.

 

Molly McCauley also took her husband's post behind cannon once her husband was injured in an attack in New Jersey. She gained notoriety for her excellent aim and soldiers began to respect her as a fighter.

 

Nancy Hart was forced to house British soldiers during the war as were most colonial households. When providing dinner for the soldiers, she chose to fight back. She killed both men in her home with their own muskets. She was later a part of a spy ring that passed messages between revolutionary forces.

 

Other Patriot women concealed army dispatches and letters containing sensitive military information underneath their petticoats as they rode through enemy territory to deliver it. Deborah Champion, Sara Decker (Haligowski) [married to Polish shoe maker in later years], Harriet Prudence Patterson Hall,[9] and Lydia Darraugh all managed to sneak important information past the British to their American compatriot.

A crisis of political loyalties disrupted the fabric of colonial America women’s social worlds: whether a man did or did not renounce his allegiance to the king could dissolve ties of class, family, and friendship, isolating women from former connections. A woman’s loyalty to her husband, once a private commitment, could become a political act, especially for women in America committed to men who remained loyal to Great Britain. These loyalist women faced hardship during the Revolution. Women, guilty by association, fell victim to vigilante groups or mobs on account of their husband’s treason. Wives of wealthy loyalists were particularly vulnerable targets of Revolutionary governments eager to confiscate the property of men they considered traitors, although women with their own property may have been less vulnerable to patriot pressure, as confiscation acts normally excluded dower portions from seizure. No matter the social status, however, loyalist women were a part of a political minority, therefore lacking the support of neighbors and friends through hardship.

 

Many loyalist women chose to leave their communities rather than live among their enemies. A woman could uproot suddenly, but this option often meant leaving home without any family possessions. Loyalists would usually move to Canada, where they found themselves among thousands of fellow loyalists: veterans, families, widows, and children who poured into Nova Scotia. A loyalist could, alternatively, petition to local patriot authorities for safe passage and permission to bring personal belongings into British territory. Even then, American officials limited what a woman could take and demanded that she pay for the journey. Worst of all, she had to leave any son over the age of 12 behind to serve in the patriot army.

 

Resistance was another option for loyalist women. In 1779, three women—Margaret Inglis, Susannah Robinson, and Mary Morris—plotted to kidnap the mayor of Albany. Others encouraged friends to refuse to take the loyalty oath to new governments. Most of the women who actively supported the Crown participated by aiding loyalist soldiers or by collecting information for the British. Some loyalist women hid their husbands from arrest, while others hid important papers or money from authorities. These acts raised questions about the autonomy of the political commitment of these women: were their actions from wifely loyalty, or evidence of independent political choice?

 

 

To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; to maintain law and order; to foster and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism; to preserve the memories and incidents of our associations in the great wars; to inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, state and nation; to combat the autocracy of both the classes and the masses; to make right the master of might; to promote peace and goodwill on earth; to safeguard and transmit to posterity the principles of justice, freedom and democracy; to consecrate and sanctify our comradeship by our devotion to mutual helpfulness.”

 

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sisterthundershow/2015/04/23/american-woman-sharon-derrington-stands-her-ground

Turkey: Genocide à la Carte

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the Holy See of ignoring the pain suffered by Muslims and Turks. Cavusoglu did not say why Muslims and Turks tend to ignore the pain suffered by other faiths and other nations.
Such political controversies as the Pope's speech always offer golden opportunities to Turkish officials who would not miss exploiting them in order to look pretty to an Islamist government and hope for a brighter career.

It seems as if Turkey's ruling politicians are in a race to look less and less convincing to an already suspicious international audience. How they defended their ancestors' sins a century ago earned them new points in the race, and made them look even more odd than before.
The tragic events of 1915-1920 that killed 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians have been recognized as genocide by a total of 22 countries in the world, 44 states in the United States, two states in Australia, three in Brazil, four regions and three cities in Spain, two in Syria, five provinces in Bulgaria, one in Colombia, one regional parliament in the Netherlands, one regional parliament in Italy and one in Iran.
The Catholic city-state, the Vatican, is among the countries that have recognized the genocide. But a papal speech on April 12 at a commemorative Mass, calling the mass killing of Armenians the "first genocide of the 20^th century," deeply annoyed some very important men in Ankara. Their defense line was beyond the traditional official Turkish language based on outright denial: it featured generous doses of banality and hypocrisy.

Pope Francis speaks at a Mass commemorating the centenary of the Armenian genocide, on April 12, 2015. (Image source: Vatican video screenshot)

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the Holy See of ignoring the pain suffered by Muslims and Turks. But Cavusoglu did not say why Muslims and Turks tend to ignore the pain suffered by other faiths and nations. In 2009, then Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused China of committing genocide against the ethnic Turkic Uighurs in China, after fewer than 100 of them lost their lives during clashes with Chinese security forces. The same year, Erdogan said that he went to Darfur in Sudan and did not see genocide there. Only a few months earlier, Erdogan's Islamist friend, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, had become the first sitting president to be indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity that caused the death of 400,000 people in Darfur in 2005. "A Muslim would never commit genocide," Erdogan said, explaining why the man with an arrest warrant for his crimes, al-Bashir, was innocent.
A more creative, jaw-dropping explanation for why Pope Francis may have uttered the word that deeply irritates many Turks came from Volkan Bozkir, a former ambassador and Turkish minister for the European Union. Bozkir said he must remind that the Pope is "in fact a citizen of Argentina." Most journalists listening to his speech silently wondered: So what.
Bozkir further explained: "As you know, Argentina is a country that embraced the Nazi leaders and torturers ... The Pope must have had a sensitivity for his own Argentinian citizenship."
According to this theory, Pope Francis, like every other citizen of Argentina, is responsible for the acts of Nazi fugitives who fled to his country. And the Nazi collaborator in the Pope (like every other Argentinian!) forced him to label the mass killings of Armenians "genocide." That is not even meant to be funny. It reveals the mindset of the people who rule Turkey.
According to Professor Mehmet Gormez, Turkey's top Muslim cleric, Pope Francis's statement was totally "unfounded." That could be Gormez's own opinion, and everyone has the liberty to take him seriously or not. But Professor Gormez also claimed that there have never been missionary ambitions or colonialism in the history of Turkey [the successor state to the Ottoman Empire]. That is only laughable to anyone with an elementary knowledge of history. For one, Gormez should explain why millions of Turks every day celebrate the "conquest of [Christian] Istanbul" by Muslim Ottomans.
Such political controversies as the Pope's speech always offer golden opportunities to Turkish officials who would not miss exploiting them in order to look pretty to an Islamist government and hope for a brighter career. They usually would make a weird statement, make sure it gets published, and lots of public attention, so that the very important men in Ankara could privately or publicly hail them. Turkey is never short of (centrally-appointed, not elected) governors with eccentric opinions. The Pope's speech lavishly enabled someone serving in one of Turkey's most remote and poorest corners to prove his loyalty to the Islamists in Ankara.
In a public speech, the governor of Turkey's easternmost province, Kars, invited Pope Francis to -- convert! The governor kindly invited the leader of the Catholic world to a Muslim mass in his city and said: "May God grant him the right path [to Islam]."
This author has no idea if the Pope would take that opportunity and convert to Islam. But it is certain that Turkey's Islamists have brought a playful new dimension to their country's culture of denial.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

What is pushing Christian’s youth into arms of Islam? 

 

Sunday April 19,2015 at 12:00 noontime PST, if you would like sing or tell your story here is the call-in (347) 826-7353

This show is not meant to shame or embarrass Christian leaders or their ministries, it is meant to move them from their lukewarm waters which are destroying God's people and the rest of the world. The originator of this list went through his time in which he ignorantly terrorized many people with the hideous and evil teaching. For years, ministries have terrorized family, friends and anyone who would listen. We do not teach love and forgiveness just you will burn in hell forever…

What is your concept of God? What is your concept of Jesus?

“Vomit alone in my apartment, certain I was elected for damnation by a cruel God who would laugh at me hysterically while I was ripped apart, eaten, fried, raped, and in every other imaginable way, tortured in hell”? He writes further, “I had long seriously considered killing myself in order to get out from under the emotional oppression and desperation of thoughts of my own damnation. The fear drove me to the point of complete insanity. I blew a solid three years of my youth (21-23) continuously contemplating my damnation and meanwhile lost friends, burdened family members, and drove my girlfriend away. I have yet to regain even a slight measure of what I lost. I was downing antidepressants and curling up in fetal position most nights bawling and praying that God would have mercy on me and unhardened my heart so that I might actually be granted faith in Him, instead of Him willing me into reprobation and, therefore, everlasting, merciless torment and pure insanity in hell. Even now my walk with God is weak."

Is this why Youth is leaving?

According to the young man who wrote the above, it was ministers preaching a God of love who brought him to the state of wanting to die. This God he was taught supposed loved everybody and yet was going to endlessly punish most of those He created who had not said the right words or didn't mean them or didn't do the right deeds like tithe or go to church or who did the wrong deeds like have sex out of marriage or who joined the wrong church, or believed in the wrong kind of Jesus – this kind of preaching which one hears from hundreds of thousands of churches around the world is what drove this young man to wanting to die. But he was too afraid to die because of the horrible fate he was certain awaited him. This poor young man was terrorized!

It is not only Islam fault they are doing what they came to do “take”...  We as the church must take some responsibility pushing people away with our messages and coldness...

The majority of the early believers and church leaders did not teach Hell, they taught, "apokatastasis," that is, the "restoration of all things." (Acts 3:21)

What are we teaching?

 

The conversion of Christians in Europe and the United States to Islam has become a matter of debate in some Western countries. Muslim scholars have called on immigrant Muslims to become involved in summoning non-Muslims to their faith. Indeed, the call on Muslim migrants to proselytize has become central in contemporary Islamic writings, not only in books, but also in sermons—many online on YouTube—and others on DVDs, and Islamic websites. The strategies that the global Islamic media uses to promote conversion of Christians to Islam illustrate both the perceptions of Islamists and can expose themes to defend and promote in cultural and public diplomacy.

 

Exact data on the number of converts to Islam in the West is incomplete because conversions are not always recorded. While the data do not suggest a massive wave of new believers, there are enough to matter. In Germany, statisticians estimated that several thousand Christians convert to Islam every year.[2] In Spain, the number of converts reached around 20,000 in 2006,[3] and in the United Kingdom, perhaps 14,000 had converted by 2006.[4] In the United States, perhaps 20,000 to 25,000 people a year convert to Islam. The number of converts significantly increased in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack, although it is not yet certain that the conversion surge in the United States has continued.

 

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sisterthundershow/2015/04/19/what-is-pushing-christians-youth-into-arms-of-islam

 

Remember Hillary had it bad growing up a poor black child..Haha.. Hillary is going to compare herself to everything except Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.