The Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Erdogan offered Bono to hold his interfaith event in Istanbul while refusing crosses on churches and operating number of sacred Christian places in the country as museums, including the Hagia Sofia temple in Istanbul.
Well-known and famous Irish rock-band U2 frontrunner Bono was hosted in Istanbul yesterday, as part of their worldwide tour. Turkish Prime-Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the chance to offer the rock idоl holding an interfaith event in Istanbul as an effort, once again, to show-off the tolerance and European face of Turkey. The initial aim is to bring the three religions together – Islam, Christianity and Judaism. If in the official rhetoric the ruling elite of Turkey is always ready to mislead the public opinion, the real deeds are somewhat showing the true reality. And the reality these days is the whole story around the Armenian issue.
It may seem for an average European that religious freedom issues are high in the agenda of Turkey, amid even the upcoming constitutional referendum on September 12. Recently a Greek church in a Turkish province has been opened up for a one-day-a-year liturgy. The same is on the agenda with Armenians – as the Akhtamar Church of the Holy Cross (Surp Hach – in Arm.) is scheduled to host a liturgy on September 19.
Turkey repoens 10th century Armenian church as a museum, allows worship only once a year.
The Holy Cross church – a 1,100-year-old standing monument of Armenian heritage in those lands sacred with Armenian blood during the Genocide years, was re-opened as a museum in 2007 – as a message to the Armenians and the international community that Turkey had heartfelt sentiments towards its Armenian minority, and is ready to continue behind-the-scene talks on normalization with Yerevan. However, the church was then opened as a museum since the incumbent government refused to install a cross on the dome, and the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul has not been able to consecrate it as a church up to now. One more controversy comes into mind as the church still remains under the authorities of Van province and not the Patriarchate – as other religious monuments.
Nowadays a new show-like developments happening in Turkey with regards to the upcoming liturgy in the church. Last week the government announced that they were not able to install the cross, despite earlier assurances of the opposite. Immediately, the Holy See of Echmiadzin suspended its earlier decision to send two high-level churchmen to the event. Before the distressing news came from Turkey, the attending/ignoring debate in Armenia and elsewhere in Armenian Diaspora hit the ceiling with both pro and cons sentiments and statements. One of the prominent Diaspora public figures said that the event is scheduled “to exploit this event for propaganda purposes”.
Despite all the criticism towards Erdogan, he continues to feed the show. Even considering the obvious failure of the much-spoken and widely advertised democratic initiative and the Kurdish opening, AKP government doesn’t want to acknowledge that half-steps are good only for short-time show-offs, but evidently not sufficient for securing long-term and sustainable achievements. For instance, the Kurdish opening, that was largely supported by the international community now turned out to another wave of repressions and mass arrests of Kurds in Eastern provinces of Turkey.
Whatever it is – but the Turkish “show must go on”. The government uses all the available chances to speak up and voice their readiness of phony tolerance. No chance is to be missed. The only issue is that international community, and Armenians worldwide, were very timely to acknowledge these false and misleading half-steps. Now Armenians returning their earlier purchased tickets to Turkey, as the RFE/RL reported last week. The much-anticipated 5000-ish tourist-boom and a much more follow-up in eastern provinces of modern Turkey is now questioned. The trade union of Van voiced their readiness to help improving the situation, but Armenians are rightfully firm on their initial will of having the cross on top the church.
After all, the next morning of September 19, we will have an unchanged Turkey that is accused by the international community – Russian, Europeans and Americans – for destroying the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement and other openings that were the key-arguments of Gul/Erdogan/Davudoglu triplet. Unfortunately, another chance is now being missed.
Written by Hovhannes Nikoghosyan
Mr. Nikoghosyan is a research fellow at Yerevan-based Public Policy Institute.
Leave a Reply