No right to work, no health care, forced to live far from their communities. This is the condition of the Iraqi Christian refugees tha in Turkey, as reported yesterday by mgr. François Yakan, Chaldeian Bishop, and by mgr. Yusuf Sag, Syrian-Catholic bishop, to the Turkish agency Turkish Daily News. Now, "hopes for improvement are connected with Benedict XVI’s recent journey", say the two Bishops, who make appeal to Europe "that it may welcome the families of the Iraqi Christian refugees”. “No door opens for them", says mgr. Yakan, who is the leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church of Turkey, in Istanbul. “Every day 5 or 6 people, the relatives of someone from our community of Istanbul, are killed in Iraq. Their return to the country is out of the question. The Christians have no place of their own in Iraq, like the Sunnis, Shiites or Kurds. Many of them left their country many years ago, and, if they came back now, they would find other people living in their homes, tilling their land”. To solve the problem, "all it would take is that each one of the 25 member states of the European Union took up 10 families. Then, there would be no Iraqi Christian refugees here any more”. According to mgr. Yusuf Sag, who assists 174 families in Gumussuyu, "it is a humanitarian catastrophe. I tell them to keep praying, they might be tired of praying but God will take care of them”.
