By Burak Bekdil
The Islamophobia that Erdogan never ceases to claim
exists in the Western world may or may not be a real social malady, but
non-Muslimphobia in Turkey is increasingly a contagious malady. "Traitors!
We'll bomb your church!" — The words of Mehmet Ali Eren, suspected
al-Qaeda member, as he attacked Protestant Pastor Andrew Craig Brunson in
Izmir, Turkey.
Erdogan should explain why he persistently demands more
and more tolerance for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands, including the
building of mosques in every capital, while his government can deport Pastor
Brunson and his wife on the spurious grounds that they pose a security threat
to his country. The police explained that they were being expelled on grounds
of posing a security threat because they had carried out "missionary
activity and received money from sources abroad."
Over the past several years Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has pressured Greece to construct a mosque in Athens. He has
criticized the country which boasts the only European capital without a mosque.
He does not hide his passion for mosques worldwide.
In 2015 Erdogan proposed the construction of a mosque in
secular, Communist-ruled Cuba. Also in 2015, he went to Moscow for the
inauguration of the biggest mosque in the Russian capital.
Earlier this year Erdogan pleasantly announced his
presence at the opening of the biggest mosque in Amsterdam. The mosque is
called "Hagia Sophia," named after a Greek Orthodox Christian
basilica built in 537 AD in Constantinople, reflecting the typical Muslim
extremist obsession with "conquest." Recently Erdogan has also been
eyeing Iraq.
As recently as April, Erdogan attended the opening
ceremony of a culture center and mosque in Maryland, United States. The
complex, the only one in the United States to feature two minarets, was
constructed in the style of 16th century Ottoman architecture, with a central
dome, half domes and cupolas, echoing Istanbul's Suleymaniye Mosque. At the
ceremony, Erdogan said: "Unfortunately, we are going through a rough time
all around the world. Intolerance towards Muslims is on the rise not only here
in the United States but also around the globe." Intolerance toward
Muslims?
Back in Turkey, an article published in the monthly
magazine of the country's powerful (and wealthy) Islamic Directorate for
Religious Affairs (Diyanet in Turkish) warned of the spreading new "religion"
of Jediism -- the religion of the Jedi knights from the Star Wars film series.
But not all "religious tolerance" stories in Turkey are equally off
the wall.
Synagogues in Turkey have quietly tightened security.
Scholar Rifat Bali, who has written several books on Turkey's Jews, says that
Christians and Jews are being targeted.
Indeed, threats against Christians and churches on social
media by Islamists in Turkey have intensified. "Some people have sent
death threats to the mobile phones of 15 pastors," says Umut Sahin, the
secretary-general of the Union of Protestant Churches, an umbrella organization
for Protestant denominations in Turkey.
Andrew Craig Brunson, pastor at a protestant church in
Izmir, on Turkey's Aegean coast, survived an armed attack on April 11, 2011.
The attacker, Mehmet Ali Eren, shouted: "Traitors! We'll bomb your
church!" Eren had just been acquitted in a trial on charges of being a
member of al-Qaeda.
Brunson and his wife, Norine Lyn, have been living in
Turkey for 20 years. On October 7, the couple was summoned to a police station.
The police told them that they would be deported from Turkey because they
"posed a national security threat" to the country. A two-member
terror organization? Bombings and killings? Not exactly that, the police
explained. The pastor and his wife were being expelled on grounds of posing a
security threat because they had carried out "missionary activity and
received money from sources abroad."
Turkey's President Erdogan (left) should explain why he
demands more and more tolerance for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands,
including the building of mosques in every capital, while his government can
deport Pastor Andrew Craig Brunson and his wife (right) on the spurious grounds
that they pose a security threat to his country. The police explained their
"crime" as their having carried out "missionary activity and
received money from sources abroad."
There must be merely a few thousand Protestants in
Turkey, a country of nearly 80 million people, where politicians often boast
that 99% of the population is Muslim. Why do nearly 80 million people view a
few thousand people as threats to their national security just because the few
thousand belong to a different faith? This question probably falls not into the
scope of theological discipline, nor political science, but social psychiatry.
But there is a more serious aspect of this limitless
Islamic hypocrisy. Erdogan should explain why he persistently demands more and
more tolerance for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands, including the building
of mosques in every capital, while his government can deport two Protestants on
the spurious grounds that they pose a security threat to his country. The
Islamophobia that Erdogan never ceases to claim exists in the Western world may
or may not be a real social malady, but non-Muslimphobia in Turkey is
increasingly a contagious malady. Erdogan's determined denials do not make him
right; instead he further proves his religious-ideological incompatibility with
Western democracies.
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for
the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of
Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents
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Gatestone Institute.
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