They can start with Hagia Sophia.
Posted on 07/28/2011 11:10:59 AM PDT by americanophile
The House Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a strongly-worded measure on July 20, pressing Turkey to return all Christian church properties "to their rightful owners."
By an overwhelming 43-1 vote, the congressional panel adopted a sweeping amendment to the State Department’s Foreign Relations Authorization Act, urging "the Secretary of State in all official contacts with Turkish leaders and other Turkish officials to emphasize that Turkey should": 1) end all religious discrimination; 2) allow the rightful church and lay owners of Christian church properties to perform religious and social services; 3) return to their rightful owners all Christian churches and other places of worship, monasteries, schools, hospitals, monuments, relics, holy sites, and other religious properties, including artwork, manuscripts, vestments, vessels, and other artifacts; and 4) allow the rightful church and lay owners of Christian church properties to repair all churches and other places of worship, monasteries, schools, hospitals, monuments, relics, holy sites, and other religious properties within Turkey.
Despite intensive efforts by Turkey’s Ambassador in Washington, Turkish and Azerbaijani organizations, and lobbying firms hired by Ankara, almost all members of the Committee, including Turkey’s staunchest supporters, voted in favor of the amendment, dealing Turkey a devastating defeat. The single negative vote was cast by Cong. Ron Paul (R-TX) because of his isolationist ideology and not his support for Turkey!
(Excerpt) Read more at panorama.am ...
They can start with Hagia Sophia.
I’ve been there!
YES!
There are on-going talks between Armenia and Turkey, I thought. Can't they settle this themselves?
This is one of the reasons I couldn’t support Ron Paul. I could vote for him for President if he were to get the Republican nomination, but he would have to get it without my help.
It’s a dispute largely within a single country: Turkey, and it’s a very ancient dispute. Turkey, under an increasingly Islamic regime, is repressing its Christian (largely Armenian and Greek) minorities. Since the Ottoman invasion, almost all Christian churches have been converted to mosques or destroyed. The Armenians, who predate the Turks in the region, were rounded up and slaughterd in 1915; as many as 3 million Armenians were killed in one of the century’s largest single-nation genocides. Since the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey, the state has been secular, but in reality - and increasingly so - Christian minorities are deprived of many human rights, harrassed, and are unable to repair their churches or worship freely. It is a policy designed to rid Turkey of the very Christians that once populated it. The U.S. has a long history of standing by persecuted minorities be they the capitalists in the USSR, the Jews in the Middle East, the Christians in Indonesia, the Muslims in Yugoslavia, the liberals in Iran, the students in China, etc.
Infidels: freepmail me if you want on or off this list.
I have been attacked for expressing my opinion vis-a-vis Armenia and Turkey. No am not going to search FR history to prove it.
Yes, the current government is moving into some form of an Islamic "republic" with a whole lot of help from U.S. residents like Fethullah Gülen.
Getting Gülen under control would get my support but using political influence in Washington to blame modern Turkey and Turks and hold them accountable for the Ottoman Empire just does not make any sense right now -- we really, really do have a lot of problems already.
Believe me, I understand your point of view.
Turkey is a country that exists because Seljuk bandits took over a Christian country, vandalized it and replaced it with a bunch of rug merchants. I don’t think it’s a lot to ask to point out to them that if they want to be a part of the civilized world they should treat their Christian citizens civilly.
You are aware that they are talking about restrictions on Christians NOW? Our church is in the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople (real name, not “Istanbul”), and there are loudspeakers that disrupt services, anti-Christian riots at unpredictable times, etc. No one is saying that the authorities of 1915 are committing the discriminatory events of 2011 as though through a time machine.
As I stated above lets stop Americans from using our facilities to help the AKP impose Islamism on Turkey -- I also oppose the Armenian efforts to involve us in their dispute with Turkey. Call me a bigot.. please!
The Obama administration aged 1960s Marxist spoiled brats and their ideological offspring are our own version of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP.
The photos are from demonstrations of three or four years ago protesting the ruling AK Party's Islamist leanings and reminding the AKP that they promised the voters that they would respect Turkey's heritage of secularism.
here and especially here.
Last weekend I heard on San Francisco KSFO Barbara Simpson interview Ms Claire Berlinski about her book There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.
Turns out Ms Berlinski is a long-time resident of Istanbul and writes about things Turkish here
Meanwhile American citizen Fethullah Gülen and his "movement" are helping the Islamist AKP suppress freedom, lie, jail, persecute and destroy lives and impose Islamism on the tens of millions who do not want it. That don't make a lick of sense.
The problem is rights of Christians in Turkey of every ethnicity. What government exists in Turkey is none of my business.
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