Christian sect backs Ankara’s EU bid
MARDIN – Gabriel Oktay Cilli belongs to one of Turkey’s most ancient communities, the Syriac Christians, who still speak a form of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. In Turkey they number barely 20,000, down from 250,000 when Ataturk founded the republic in 1923. The 20th century was hard on the Syriacs, bringing religious persecution and economic hardship, but Cilli is confident about his future in a democratic Turkey that aims to join the European Union. He has no plans to follow relatives into exile. «I plan to stay here, this is my home. If we all left, who would look after our churches and monasteries?» he said in his shop in Mardin, a town in southeastern Turkey near Syria. «Twenty years ago life was quite difficult, but now I have no problems. Things are changing, thanks partly to the EU,» he said, serving homemade red wine rather than the customary tea offered to visitors. A fresh wave of Syriacs emigrated as recently as the 1980s and 1990s as fighting raged in their historic homeland between Turkish security forces and Kurdish separatists. Kurds are the biggest ethnic group in the region. The violence fell sharply after the 1999 capture of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and the government eased language and cultural restrictions on its minorities as part of EU-linked reforms. «Some Syriacs are even coming back here now. Up to 50 families have returned in the last few years,» said Cilli. At his residence in the ancient, ochre-colored monastery of Deyrulzafaran – which means «the saffron monastery» in Arabic – Saliba Ozmen, metropolitan (bishop) of Mardin, was also cautiously optimistic. «We have peace now, we can draw breath,» the bearded, Oxford-educated clergyman told Reuters. He is worried that his fifth-century monastery will receive fewer visitors this year because of the conflict in Iraq and tension between the Muslim world and the West triggered by Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The monastery receives more than 100,000 visitors a year, most of them Turks. Any increase in tensions between Muslims and the West puts non-Muslim minorities in countries such as Turkey in a delicate position, although Ozmen said the cartoon crisis passed quietly for the 3,000 Syriacs in the southeast region. Turkish authorities acted sensitively, for example ensuring that protests against the cartoons in Mardin were held in the Muslim, not the Christian, part of town, church members said. «We need to overcome prejudice between religions… Muslims and Christians alike, we are all citizens of Turkey. We too pay our taxes and do our military service,» Ozmen said. Ozmen said the worldwide community of Syriacs, also known as Jacobite Christians, now numbers 15 million. In Turkey, they are not an officially designated minority in Turkey like the Greeks or Armenians and so have no special protection for rights such as private education under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne’s provisions for non-Muslim minorities. Turkey’s Syriacs attend state schools where teaching is in Turkish and where they can learn about Islam. They can be taught about their own language and religion only informally outside school hours by priests, monks and nuns. There are other problems, too. Isa Gulten, a teacher of Aramaic, says local Kurds are taking land that still legally belongs to Syriacs residing abroad. «The state turns a blind eye to this. It should be protecting the rights of minorities more vigorously,» he said.
