Death Watch: One of the earliest Christian cultures totters on the edge of extinction in Turkey

Christianity Today, January 21, 2002, Vol. 47, No. 1, Page 44 ^ | 01/10/2003 | Thomas C. Oden

[hardhead]

All Christian culture is dying! Remember, Jesus said 'I will be with you until the end of the world.' Could this be the canary in the coal mine? In the United States homos have free speech in everything they say and everything they do, including public drilling for intestinal gas. Mention the name Jesus and the leftist scum start their reesus screaming! Look around you in the United States. When I was a kid, there were Jews, Christians, and even some Buddhists in my home town. Nobody ever thought of them as different, just Americans. Now we're so damned multiculturally different that we have African-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and whatever else strikes your sense of ethnic identity. This bites the big one! Remember what God said in the Garden? 'Who TOLD you that you were naked?' Only by dividing Americans into groups can the SOBs conquer us and they're doing a damned good job of it.

[Turk2]

This is hardly an unbiased source of news. The reason for the decline in Syriac culture is mostly economic and social and has nothing to do with Turkish government policy. People do not prefer to live in southeast anatolia as it is the most deprived region in the country. They either move to larger cities or abroad for better opportunities. The ones left in the region are mostly elders that have gotten used to living in depravation. I just watched a 2 hour documentary on the lives of those people a few weeks ago on Turkish television. By the way, the church in Mardin has recently been appointed a new patriarch by the Syriac congregation and plans on greatly improving the status of the church. The man came back home from Britian where he had studied theology in Oxford solely for this task.

[Turk2]

ping

[weikel]

Southeast Anatolia is all high mountains( correct me if Im wrong) suitable for a few mining outpost perhaps( and one of the worlds few sources of vitally important Chromium Ore) but not good for large scale settlement.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"In any case, as in the rest of Turkey, Christians cannot buy property."

I stopped reading at this point.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, someone may be interested in these:

This Magnificent View For Sale

Istanbulrealestate.com

[a_Turk]

So what... You make it sound like religion should be a basis for cohesion. What a moron.

[Mortimer Snavely]

A melodramatic timpani solo fades to a funereal pipe organ. The curtain opens to a dark and stormy night on the movie screen. A bolt of lightning accompanied by a crash of thunder illuminates a Turkish flag waving wildly in the rain and thunder.. is it... could it... (a violin trio adds an eerie, sinister musical phrase) could this possibly be....?... we wait with bated breath, in stark, bug-eyed horror of: More outrages by the heathen, inscrutable, implacable Turkish hordes!

Give it a rest, Destro. You're boring.

[Cinnamon Girl]

Fascinating. I would love to hear what spoken Aramaic sounds like.

[Aric2000]

Hello A_Turk, how goes it arkadas?

I hve not read such a piece of tripe article in quite a while.

Christians can't buy property? Come on, they need to do better then that. What a joke!!

[Mortimer Snavely]

The quality of this forum has declined tremendously. This anti-Turkish stuff is straight out of a comic book.

[a_Turk]

I'm doing great FRiend, How are you? How are your wife and children?

This forum is proof that asylum-seekers of all religions can be a menace, as exemplified by this idiot who keeps posting this sort of inflamatory garbage..

Turkish police just busted a bailiff for selling documents with which a person can claim to have been arrested for being PKK, to be able to seek asylum in Europe.. How about that?

[TomSmedley]

bump

[Mortimer Snavely]

"Turkish police just busted a bailiff for selling documents with which a person can claim to have been arrested for being PKK, to be able to seek asylum in Europe.."

What was his FR screen name?

[a_Turk]

LOL! Howdy Mort!

[a_Turk]

>>This is so very, very sad.

And it's also a bunch of dung. Here's our boys, yours and mine, having a little playtime together:



U.S. and Turkish security forces members team up January 3, 2003 for paintball training to practice combat tactics, fire-control measures, and cover and concealment procedures at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. Paintball was incorporated into their training and curriculum once a quarter to help emphasize the importance of fire-control measures and cover and concealment procedures. PICTURE TAKEN JANUARY 3, 2003. REUTERS/U.S. Air Force photo/Dennis J. Henry Jr. Released

[Mortimer Snavely]

Howdy backatcha.

A lot of these posters must be from Delistan.

[vooch]

How "Western" tourists don't break out in tears when they merrily pose for pictures in empty gutted churches I will never know.

precisely

I'll visit Turkey only after the liturgy is heard once more in Hagia Sophia.

[Turk2]

Then you'll miss this next year too:

Yiorgos Aristotelis Sakellariou, a 21-year old Greek Orthodox Christian, kisses the wooden cross he retrieved from the waters of the Golden Horn during the Orthodox Epiphany ceremony in Istanbul, Turkey, Monday, Jan. 6, 2003. Sakellariou, a student from the Greek island of Zakynthos, braved freezing winter weather to dive into Istanbul's Bosporus and retrieve a wooden cross in a ceremony commemorating the baptism of Jesus Christ. (AP Photo/ Osman Orsal)

Yiorgos Aristotelis Sakellariou, left, partially obscured, a 21-year old Greek Orthodox Christian, holds up the wooden cross with his friends after retrieving it from the waters of the Golden Horn during the Orthodox Epiphany ceremony in Istanbul, Turkey, Monday, Jan. 6, 2003. Yiorgos Aristotelis, a student from the Greek island of Zakynthos, braved freezing winter weather to dive into Istanbul's Bosporus and retrieve a wooden cross in a ceremony commemorating the baptism of Jesus Christ. (AP Photo/ Osman Orsal)

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of all Orthodox Christians, blesses a worshipper during the Epiphany service at the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George in Istanbul, Turkey, Monday, Jan. 6, 2003. The Greek Orthodox celebrate Epiphany with the ceremony of the blessing of the waters, symbolizing the baptism of the Jesus. (AP Photo/Osman Orsal)

Isa Inci, a 19-year-old orthodox christian retrieves the wooden crucifix thrown into the cold waters of Bosphorus strait in Istanbul on January 6, 2003, during a ceremony celebrating the baptism of Jesus Christ in Jordan river. Two swimmers swam to retrieve the wooded crucifix thrown by Greek Orthodox metropolitan Bishop Yenedios into the Bosphorus waterway traditionally following a mass in Aya Iorgi church in Istanbul. REUTERS/Fatih Saribas

[vooch]

the fact that there are still a few token Christians let out occasionally for show and tell....stil does not explain why the Turkish government refuses to return Hagia Sophia its rightful owners.

Why doe the Turkish government refuse to allow Christian worship at the Hagia Sophia ?

[a_Turk]

>>Why does the Turkish government refuse to allow Christian worship at the Hagia Sophia ?

Go there and pray, nobody will stop you.

I am the rightful owner now, rightful by the right of conquest.