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An editorial by Christos and Mary Papoutsy
Still, ethnic and religious cleansing by Turkish authorities does not end with the Cyprus occupation. The Orthodox Christian minority in Constantinople (Istanbul) continues to decline in numbers because of discrimination and persecution. At one time there were almost a quarter of a million Greek people in this city founded by Greeks in ancient times and continuously inhabited by Greeks for millennia. But now only a few thousand remain, their numbers decimated from repeated persecution and pogroms. These few are mostly religious figures, priests and monks who dedicate their lives to serving and protecting the Patriarch of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of more than three hundred million Orthodox Christians worldwide. The place where Christianity was first officially recognized as a religion in the fourth century A.D., Constantinople has served continuously as a central locus ever since-more than 1500 years-for Orthodox Christians. Surrounded by a fortress-like compound on the holy grounds of a millennia-old Christian site, Patriarch Bartholomew 1st lives in constant fear of violence. Priests have been murdered and churches sacked. Local officials always promised to find and punish perpetrators, but justice for persecuted minorities has moved only slowly there, if at all. No culprits have been found for a bombing attack in 1998-only one of many such incidents-whose aftereffects we witnessed firsthand when we happened to visit the next day. The Orthodox theological school has been closed for some years by Turkish authorities. Despite repeated calls by American and other officials for reopening this venerable institution, the doors remain closed. And with them any hopes for the continuation of an Orthodox tradition practiced for thousands of years, for authorities have declared that only a Turkish citizen may serve as the Patriarch. Turkish pogroms have indeed worked. Few signs of Orthodoxy or Hellenism remain outwardly visible in this city founded and held for many, many centuries by Greeks.
This pattern of aggression, repression, and revisionism continues today even against other minority groups. In a country of more than sixty million people, the Kurds of Turkey and bordering areas number more than one quarter, nearly twenty-five million people. They are ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Turkic peoples and continue to inhabit their ancestral homeland in the southeastern part of the country. Denied the right to speak their own language and maintain their ethnic identity, they have decided to fight back for the freedom to live in lands occupied by them for thousands of years. Stated in more simple terms, they were there first, long before Turkish invaders arrived. Yet the Turkish government has waged an unrelenting bloody persecution of the Kurds, having slaughtered tens of thousands of them and having hazed complete villages under the pretext of eliminating terrorists. Little information about this tragic injustice reaches the west because of the government's control of the press. But the refugees who have managed to escape to other countries, their numbers now totaling more than one million across Europe, have brought with them credible stories of genocide and ethnic cleansing. "Where are the Americans?" they ask. "Why have you not helped us?" they cry. "Don't you stand for freedom and justice?" they protest. As their numbers increase on the streets of Europe where some have been reduced to begging, it will become increasingly difficult for honest and compassionate westerners to ignore their pleas as American and NATO bombs drop upon Kosovar and Serbian targets alike.
The Kurds are now experiencing some of the tragic difficulties borne by Greeks, Armenians and Cypriots. They join the ranks of many ethnic groups who have suffered from these inhuman practices at the hands of hostile Turks. And they similarly cry for even-handed social justice as the view the strong western reaction to reported atrocities in Yugoslavia. Together with Romanians, Bulgarians, and Serbs, these groups share a historical enmity toward the Turks. The Balkan countries bitterly remember that they were slaves for hundreds of years during the Ottoman Empire, a regime which collapsed only decades ago in some area. And all remember that their Christian members were treated brutally by barbaric Muslim overlords, victims of ethnic and religious cleansing and genocide. A bond of common suffering because of their religion and/or ethnicity binds these countries and peoples together.
Hellenic Communication Service
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