Jews & Christians assigned "racial codes" by Muslim Turkey

Former Germany President Christian Wulff, left, is welcomed by
Bishop Grigorios Melki Urek of Adiyaman in Tarsus, Turkey.
 (Umit Bektas / Reuters)

Non-Muslim Minorities in Turkey

tagged by ‘race codes’

There is no God but Allah and Hate is his legacy

An official document penned by the Istanbul Provincial Education Directorate has surfaced, revealing that Turkey’s population administration system has been recording citizens who have Armenian, Jewish or Anatolian Greek (Rum) origins with secret “race codes.”

The Armenian-Turkish weekly newspaper Agos published as its headline story on Aug. 1 a report on an official document that openly states “citizens with Armenian origin are coded with ‘2.’” The implementation is reported to have been in place since 1923, the foundation year of the Turkish Republic.

A Turkish citizen’s mother whose origin is Armenian requested to register her child at an Armenian kindergarden, but the school responded by asking her to prove she had the “2 code” in order to check that she had not changed religion, according to the document. In Turkey, only minority communities’ members can register their children at minority schools, according to the education law reports the Hurriyet Daily News.


"Marked" by the majority for easy identification.
Does anything ever change?

The document, sent from the Istanbul Provincial Education Directorate to the Şişli District National Education office, stated that “since 1923, the secret code of Armenians is ‘2’ on identity registration certificates,” according to the Agos report.

“Since 1923, identity registration certificates have a secret ‘race code,’” the document added.

The family’s lawyer, İsmail Cem Halavurt, said the struggle to register children at the Armenian kindergarden was still continuing.

“We are now waiting for an official document saying, ‘Yes, your race code is 2, you can register at an Armenian school,’” Halavurt told the Agos.

Interior Ministry officials were not available for comment when approached by the Hürriyet Daily News, and referred reporters to the Directorate General for Population and Citizenship Affairs, which is a body working under their own ministry.

An official from the population administration told daily Radikal that the practice was being conducted “to allow minority groups use their rights stemming the Lausanne Treaty,” signed between Turkey and Western countries, which led to the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic.

As part of the practice, Greeks were coded 1, Armenians were coded 2, and Jews were coded 3. Other minorities or groups are not coded, the official told daily Radikal.

While there was no immediate official response to the report, opposition parties’ lawmakers harshly criticized the alleged document.

“If this is true, it is fatal. It must be examined. I will bring this onto Parliament’s agenda,” Sezgin Tanrıkulu, deputy head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Syriac Orthodox Christians under Pressure

It's one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world: the Syriac Orthodox Mor Gabriel Monastery in south-eastern Turkey. But the order lives in conflict with the surrounding Kurdish villages.Several lawsuits have been brought accusing the monastery of having illegally appropriated the land surrounding it. And the national forest authority is one of the plaintiffs.

The monastery's abbot considers this to be a sign of religious discrimination. In the past few years, members of the Syriac Orthodox church have been returning in increasing numbers to make a fresh start in their homes around the holy mountain Tur Abdin. More than 300,000 Christians left the country in previous decades to escape persecution and oppression.

For 900 years Eastern Christians fought against Jihad.

The Eastern Roman Empire (395 AD - 1453)
.
Back when Christians lived in Turkey.
Today we call it Muslim Turkey.  But for countless centuries the area spoke either Greek or Armenian.  For 900 years the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) stood alone against militant Islam and fought an endless series of wars defending themselves from Jihad and invasion.
.
As the Byzantine Empire was slowly defeated the areas conquered by the Muslims were "ethnically cleansed" with murder, slavery, forced conversions and forced deportations.  The Christians that were left became second class citizens in their own nation.
.
Today in a Turkish nation of 76,000,000 people there are only 120,000 Christians and 20,000 Jews left.
.
For those interested see our Blog - The Byzantine Military.

The Fall of Constantinople to Jihad in 1453.
What had been a Christian city and capital of the Roman Empire for 1,100 years became Muslim through violent Jihad.  Over 34,000 Christians were killed, enslaved or deported.



A Church Violently made into a Mosque.
Shortly after Constantinople's defenses collapsed, pillagers made their way to the great Christian church of Hagia Sophia and battered down its doors. Throughout the siege worshipers participated in the Holy Liturgy and Prayer of the Hours at the Hagia Sophia, and the church formed a refuge for many of those who were unable to contribute to the city's defense, such as women, children and elderly.
.
Trapped in the church, congregants and refugees became spoils to be divided amongst the Muslim Ottoman invaders. The building was desecrated and looted, and occupants enslaved, violated or slaughtered; while elderly and infirm were killed, women and girls were raped (by the Religion of Peace) and the remainder chained and sold into slavery. Priests continued to perform Christian rites until stopped by the invaders.
.
When the Sultan and his cohort entered the church he insisted it should be at once transformed into a mosque. One of the Ulama then climbed the pulpit and recited the Shahada.  
(Hagia Sophia)