‘Endangered Species’: Christianity at the Brink of Extinction in Turkey

“The historic Istanbul cathedral and museum, Hagia Sophia, witnessed its first Quran recitation under its roof after 85 years Saturday,” reported the 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.”

Istanbul was once known as Constantinople, founded by Roman Emperor Constantine in 324. He made it the capital of Rome before it fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. They made it their capital until the empire collapsed after World War I. Modern day Turkey officially renamed it Istanbul in 1923.

Turkey changed the name, but current officials have clearly indicated a desire to return to the Islamist state established under the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Council of Ministers, for example, formed the Istanbul Conquest Society to help organize a yearly event to celebrate the conquest of Constantinople. As columnist Constantine Tzanos asks, “Why would anyone want to celebrate the conquest “which not only by itself was a great human catastrophe, but it was also the precursor to many such catastrophes up to the very recent past?” The Ottomans terrorized the Balkans, killing anyone who did not convert to Islam. Historian H. Gandev believes “that 2608 Bulgarian villages disappeared,” while the “rural population decreased by a total of 112,144 households (or approximately 560,000 people).” The post-Ottoman Turkish government repeated their predecessor’s history with the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides in Asia Minor, which led to the deaths of over three million people.

In September 2014, Turkish Environment and Urbanism Minister Erdoğan Bayraktar claimed Christianity is not a religion, but a culture.

The Christian Broadcasting Network noted last year the dramatic changes within Turkey under then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). The country cracked down on the press and banned social media outlets.

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“You have to remember that the AKP–the Justice and Development Party in Turkey–is a spinoff of the Muslim Brotherhood,” described Jonathan Schanzer, from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). “This is an organization that is founded on Islamist principles. Mr. Erdogan sees himself as an Islamist and a Turk first and foremost. And so he’s synthesizing Turkish nationalism with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

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