AT least 35,000 Turkish Muslims are supposed to have converted to the Christian faith last year. Most of them joined Protestant churches, according to the Turkish newspaper Milliet. For the most part they had been alienated from their religion.
Evangelicals in Istanbul explain that the converts are presumably descendants from Armenian or Greek Orthodox Christians. They had only been able to escape the genocide during the early years of the 20 th century by claiming to be Muslims.
Many Protestants, however, would rather lose their homeland than denounce their faith. Most of them were deported to Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon and Iraq. As a consequence, the Christian percentage of the Turkish population dropped from 20 percent to 0.3 percent.
According to some observers, Turkish citizens of Armenian or Greek descent are daring to become more visible as the Turkish government strives for admission to the European Union (EU). Most of them are however alienated from the churches of their forebears. They tend to join evangelical churches.
According to Milliet, there are approximately 50,000 evangelicals in the country. According to the International Society of Human Rights in Frankfurt there are signs of relaxation in the discrimination against Christians, as Turkey is trying to improve its human rights record in order to join the EU.
Other sources claim however that news of large numbers of Christian converts are disseminated by Islamic extremists in order to warn of the dangers of the EU.
Of the 66 million Turkish citizens, 99 percent are Muslims. - idea |
