Turkey allows building of first new church in a century

On Jan. 2, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met with the leaders of religious minorities in Turkey, including heads of various Christian denominations and the Jewish community. One bit of breaking news from the meeting was the government having granted permission to build a new church in Istanbul. This was, as the media noted, “a first in republican history.” No new Christian place of worship has been allowed to be built in Turkey since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, during World War I.

The new church in question will be built in Istanbul's Yesilkoy district, not too far from the Ataturk Airport, and will serve the community of Syriac Christians. This ancient community, which is not much known in the West, is the source of the oldest Christian traditions. Its liturgy is in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. There are some 17,000 Syriac Christians in Turkey, the majority of whom live in Istanbul. They need a spacious church.

In fact, the promise to allow Syriac Christians to build a church in Istanbul dates back to 2009. Yet in the past five years, bureaucratic obstacles have kept the project in limbo, said Laki Vingas, who until recently had served as the elected representative of the non-Muslim foundations in Turkey. In remarks to Al-Monitor, Vingas noted that while Davutoglu’s emphasis on the project was welcome, the ball still remains in the court of the Ministry of Culture, which must still authorize the actual building of the long-awaited church.

Such technicalities aside, the meaning of Turkey allowing a new church to be build (albeit rather sluggishly) after almost a century deserves some thought. What is particularity notable is that it is happening under an “Islamist” government, that of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is often accused of moving Turkey away from its secular roots. Is there a contradiction here? Not if one looks a bit deeper into Turkey’s pre-AKP “secular” past.