The witness of Christians ” “” “

“Christians in Turkey – Like fish out of water” is the title of an article published in the Germany daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 14 December, in which the author, Gerhard Duncker, Protestant pastor in Istanbul, analyzes the condition of Christians in Turkey, the only country with an Islamic majority in which a secular Constitution is in force. All the Christian minorities in Turkey have registered a sharp numerical decline in recent years – he writes – . The total number of Christians, foreigners included, present in the country today does not exceed 1% of the population. Moreover, they feel themselves to be second-class citizens. In spite of the recent appeal by the Turkish prime minister Bulent Ecevit to Christians to return to the country, their number continues to decline”. We put some questions on the matter to Father Davide Vezoli , assistant secretary of the Turkish Episcopal Conference. Father Vezoli, how is the Turkish Catholic community preparing to celebrate Christmas? “Without any particular initiatives. But it’s clear that Christmas represents for all Christians, and not only Catholics, a moment of putting their own faith to the test. And this acquires even greater significance in a country in which we form only a tiny minority”. What does it mean for a religious minority “to put its faith to the test”? “It means above all rediscovering the sense of belonging to the Church. In November all the Catholic communities in Turkey gathered in Istanbul for what might be called the first convention of the Turkish Catholic Church. Some seventy representatives of all the various rites were present. Guidelines for the next decade were formulated. But two years of preparation were needed before this meeting could be held. It was in some sense a fruit of the Jubilee because it was a process prepared during the jubilee year. The Turkish Church must give guidelines: for too many years no one felt the pulse of the situation within the Christian community. The Latin-rite Catholics, the Armenian Catholics, the Syrian Catholics and the Chaldaeans have hitherto worked alone. The hope now is that we may be able to pool our resources to achieve our objectives”. And what are these objectives? “Those that emerged from the convention, first and foremost: reviving the witness of Christian life and relaunching evangelization”. Is it possible to evangelize in a country with an overwhelming Islamic majority? “Here it’s not a case of converting others, but of being converted ourselves, of renewing our life as Christians, because we have realized that it has become a bit diluted, a little dulled; we are losing our Christian identity. Apart from the fact that we live in a non-Christian society, it is we Christians ourselves who have lost what it is that is special about us. We must ask ourselves why we are Christians and why we want to remain such. A consequence of this renewed consciousness will be to bear witness in the midst of our Moslem brothers. And if someone should then ask us to know the Gospel, of course we will try to help him”. What are the main difficulties that a Christian in Turkey may face? “On the basis of my own experience, the same difficulties a Christian may face in Italy or in the West in general. Here, too, secularism has made tremendous inroads, especially in our communities. They have declined in number and this has produced a kind of personal disorientation, even with regard to religion. Many of those who have remained without family or relations in Turkey have given up religious practice altogether. They have shut themselves off in private life and excluded the religious dimension from their life”. D.R.