Brutality, poverty and religion stand between Turkey and EU
September 30, 2005
The Times
By Ben Macintyre
ON A tiny island in the middle of Lake Van, on the far eastern edge of Turkey, a team of architects is working feverishly to restore one of the most beautiful religious buildings in the world.
Holy Cross Church, on Akdamar island, was built by the Armenian King Gagik in AD921 and was once the spiritual focus for more than a million Armenian Christians.
Today there is no one left to worship in it. The entire Armenian population here was killed or driven away by Turks and Kurdish militias during the First World War, in what Armenians claim was the first genocide of the 20th century — a charge vigorously denied by the Turkish State.
For 90 years the church was left to rot. Its frescoes disintegrated as the rainwater seeped in, and its delightful carvings were used for target practice by local gun-toting shepherds.
In the run-up to planned EU accession talks next week, however, Turkey has come under intense pressure to acknowledge its bloody past and improve its treatment of minorities.
Four months ago the restoration work finally began, and today Muslim stonemasons are busily rebuilding this church without a congregation. The scaffolding-clad church is proof that attitudes are changing, but it is also a poignant symbol of how much work — economic, political, cultural and historical — still needs to be completed.
[...]
Indeed, the very concept of Europe was to some extent born out of Christendom’s common cause against the great Muslim empire to the east.
Gladstone, as Prime Minister, expressed the common prejudice against a corrupt and violent Turkey threatening Europe’s very existence: “From the black day they entered Europe, the one great anti- human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them.”
As archaic and racist as those ideas seem today, they still have some currency, most notably in those parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire that remember, with an inherited shudder, the Ottoman Janissaries at the gates of Vienna.
Turkey’s critics need not look far to find evidence of cultural and political incompatibility with European norms. Turkey’s military continues to play an important (though reduced) role in the country’s politics, while freedom of speech and other human rights lag far behind the European standard.
[...]
Turkey has made significant reforms in recent years, but critics, including many inside the country, worry that such reforms are skin-deep, a pragmatic shift to gain admittance to Europe rather than a genuine change of heart.
[...]
The Turkish State remains staunchly secular, yet some argue that bringing millions of Muslims into Europe could provide a springboard for Islamist fundamentalism.
Turkey, after all, was until 1924 the seat of the Islamic caliphate which Osama bin Laden has repeatedly spoken of restoring to its former power. Even Turkey’s most avid supporters agree that Ankara has much more to do before this vast, teeming land straddling Europe and Asia can be ushered into the EU.
[...]
The sense of former imperial glory is as pronounced in Turkey as it is Britain; neither country relishes being told what to do by its former European rivals.
That view is poignantly expressed by Ümit Özdag, a Turkish nationalist politician, who insists that EU membership is an unachievable fantasy because Europe will keep shifting the goalposts.
[...]
We are heading for the village known, in Turkish, as Koy. Another former centre of Christian Armenian culture, the Kurds still refer to it as Six Churches.
Turkey’s continued refusal to acknowledge the fate of the Armenians has crystallised much of the opposition to Turkey’s EU membership. This week the European Parliament declared that Turkey must acknowledge the “genocide” before it can be admitted.
Slowly Turkey may be inching towards that point. Yet the State stands by its own version of events, insisting that just as many Turks and Kurds perished in a civil war sparked by Armenian rebels. That view is enshrined in Turkish law, though rejected by most historians.
[...]
The whiff of wilful historical amnesia also hangs over Six Churches, a once magnificent monastic complex in the mountains that is now a ruin. When I ask the village headman, Mehmet Goban, about the fate of the local Armenians, a chill descends on the warm afternoon. “Kurds and Armenians always lived happily together here. We do not know why they left. We don’t know what happened to them,” he declares, after a long, painful pause.
[...]
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
The Times
By Ben Macintyre
ON A tiny island in the middle of Lake Van, on the far eastern edge of Turkey, a team of architects is working feverishly to restore one of the most beautiful religious buildings in the world.
Holy Cross Church, on Akdamar island, was built by the Armenian King Gagik in AD921 and was once the spiritual focus for more than a million Armenian Christians.
Today there is no one left to worship in it. The entire Armenian population here was killed or driven away by Turks and Kurdish militias during the First World War, in what Armenians claim was the first genocide of the 20th century — a charge vigorously denied by the Turkish State.
For 90 years the church was left to rot. Its frescoes disintegrated as the rainwater seeped in, and its delightful carvings were used for target practice by local gun-toting shepherds.
In the run-up to planned EU accession talks next week, however, Turkey has come under intense pressure to acknowledge its bloody past and improve its treatment of minorities.
Four months ago the restoration work finally began, and today Muslim stonemasons are busily rebuilding this church without a congregation. The scaffolding-clad church is proof that attitudes are changing, but it is also a poignant symbol of how much work — economic, political, cultural and historical — still needs to be completed.
[...]
Indeed, the very concept of Europe was to some extent born out of Christendom’s common cause against the great Muslim empire to the east.
Gladstone, as Prime Minister, expressed the common prejudice against a corrupt and violent Turkey threatening Europe’s very existence: “From the black day they entered Europe, the one great anti- human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them.”
As archaic and racist as those ideas seem today, they still have some currency, most notably in those parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire that remember, with an inherited shudder, the Ottoman Janissaries at the gates of Vienna.
Turkey’s critics need not look far to find evidence of cultural and political incompatibility with European norms. Turkey’s military continues to play an important (though reduced) role in the country’s politics, while freedom of speech and other human rights lag far behind the European standard.
[...]
Turkey has made significant reforms in recent years, but critics, including many inside the country, worry that such reforms are skin-deep, a pragmatic shift to gain admittance to Europe rather than a genuine change of heart.
[...]
The Turkish State remains staunchly secular, yet some argue that bringing millions of Muslims into Europe could provide a springboard for Islamist fundamentalism.
Turkey, after all, was until 1924 the seat of the Islamic caliphate which Osama bin Laden has repeatedly spoken of restoring to its former power. Even Turkey’s most avid supporters agree that Ankara has much more to do before this vast, teeming land straddling Europe and Asia can be ushered into the EU.
[...]
The sense of former imperial glory is as pronounced in Turkey as it is Britain; neither country relishes being told what to do by its former European rivals.
That view is poignantly expressed by Ümit Özdag, a Turkish nationalist politician, who insists that EU membership is an unachievable fantasy because Europe will keep shifting the goalposts.
[...]
We are heading for the village known, in Turkish, as Koy. Another former centre of Christian Armenian culture, the Kurds still refer to it as Six Churches.
Turkey’s continued refusal to acknowledge the fate of the Armenians has crystallised much of the opposition to Turkey’s EU membership. This week the European Parliament declared that Turkey must acknowledge the “genocide” before it can be admitted.
Slowly Turkey may be inching towards that point. Yet the State stands by its own version of events, insisting that just as many Turks and Kurds perished in a civil war sparked by Armenian rebels. That view is enshrined in Turkish law, though rejected by most historians.
[...]
The whiff of wilful historical amnesia also hangs over Six Churches, a once magnificent monastic complex in the mountains that is now a ruin. When I ask the village headman, Mehmet Goban, about the fate of the local Armenians, a chill descends on the warm afternoon. “Kurds and Armenians always lived happily together here. We do not know why they left. We don’t know what happened to them,” he declares, after a long, painful pause.
[...]
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 11:25 AM
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