Free Republic

A special commission established under the Mardin Governor’s Office has cancelled a decision to transfer Syriac churches and monasteries to Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, the Birgün daily reported on Wednesday. Some of the assets, including churches in Mardin province that were owned by the Syriac community, were seized by the Treasury and were planned to be transferred to the Religious Affairs Directorate. Renate Sommer, a member of the European Parliament from the Christian Democratic Union, part of the European People’s Party, also harshly criticized the decision and said the Syriacs were at risk of being wiped out in Turkey. The...

Close to 50 churches and monasteries were taken over by the Turkish government in Mardin, a city located in the southeastern part of the country, reported the news outlet Agos. The move was made during the time that the villages that comprise the city were turned into an official municipality. As per legislation that established the city, a “liquidation committee” was established to distribute institutions of the city whose legal permits had expired. “For years, minority foundations could not acquire property in Turkey,” explained Kuryakos Ergun, the chairman of Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation. “Then legislative amendments were introduced in 2002...

Despite the Turkish Parliament's waffling on allowing American combat troops to be based inside it's country, a 15-page Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) allows a logistics base to be set up outside the town of Kiziltepe under a separate deal that authorized the U.S. military to begin preparing ports and air bases for the arrival of combat troops. A small U.S. army convoy of ambulances, trucks and fuel-haulers left the town of Iskenderun in southeast Turkey on March 9, for the forward-operating base only 100 miles from the Iraqi border. The compound may serve as a logistics base for 62,000 U.S....