Comparative Studies of
South Asia, Africa and
the Middle East
Vol. 29, No. 3, 2009
doi 10.1215/1089201
x-2009-027
© 2009 by Duke University Press
398
Christian and Turkish:
Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation
Esra Özyürek
The crisis of secularism [must] be examined from the point of view, and at the site,
of minority existence.
— Amir Mufti
am a Christian—and I am still a true Turk.”
1
Converted to Christianity several years
ago, Hakan is a handsome, charismatic, thirty-something Turkish man. Thanks to his
gift for spreading the good news, he is one of the few part-time “Turkish” missionaries.
He keeps looking right into my eyes as we talk about Christianity in Turkey at an outdoor tea
shop by the Beşiktaş ferry station in Istanbul. He insistently tells me that if the evangelical
Christian movement is to grow in Turkey, it has to demonstrate that it is in line with Turkish
culture and Turkish national interests. He explains that most of the Bible was written down in
what is now Turkey and it reects the culture that is lived not in Europe or the United States
but in contemporary Turkey. He says when you go to Anatolia you realize that Turkish people
still eat the kinds of food Jesus ate and engage in similar social customs that he did. That is
why Hakan thinks that true Christianity is more tting to the Turkish than to the European
or American lifestyle. He contends that it is most important for people like him, who speak
Turkish, have a Turkish name, and are committed Turkish nationalists, to spread Jesus’ mes-
sage and not foreign missionaries such as Americans and Koreans, who, according to him,
do not know anything about Turkish customs. He says, “I don’t want these foreigners in my
country.”
Hakan has his own innovative ideas about how the nationalist message of Turkish Chris-
tians can be made public. As a devoted Kemalist, he tells me, he tried to convince Turkish
evangelical leaders to send a bus full of Turkish Christian men and women to the mausoleum
of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the secular founder of modern Turkey, and there declare their
dedication to his founding principles. When some Turkish Christian leaders showed reluc-
tance to make such a public appearance, he suggested that they at least hang an oversize
Turkish ag at the entrance of the church where Turkish Christians hold a big Christmas Eve
service. This way, he hopes to show, one can be a Christian and a Turk. Hakan told me that
he also has a personal dream. He hopes that one day he will be the rst Turkish Christian
member of Parliament, from the Republican People’s Party (RPP), the secularist nationalist
etatist party originally founded by Atatürk in the s.
Research for this article was made possible by a Multi-country
Research Fellowship from the Institute of Turkish Studies and a
Junior Faculty Development Grant from the University of Cal-
ifornia, San Diego. Marc Baer, Lara Deeb, Aslı Gür, and Cihan
Tuğal read earlier versions of this manuscript and helped me
think through it. I am most grateful to the Turkish Christians
who shared their experiences with me.
1. Hakan’s testimony appears in the opening page of the Turkish-
speaking Cologne Church Web site, kolnkilisesi.com (accessed
30 August 2008).
399
Esra Özyürek
Christian and Turkish:
Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation
A year after I met Hakan in , I was
surprised to learn that a court case was opened
against him and that he was charged with “in-
sulting Turkishness” under the infamous article
of the Turkish Penal Code.
2
Hakan and
his friend Turan were arrested while holding
meetings in Silivri, a resort town outside Istan-
bul, where they explained the basic teachings
of evangelical Christianity to a group of people
who had earlier responded to advertisements
in the newspapers about learning more about
Christianity. In their statements both Hakan
and Turan denied all charges and said that they
are proud to be Turkish and to be Christian.
3
The court case against Hakan was part of
a much larger national campaign against Chris-
tian missionaries that began in the s, right
after Turkey became a candidate member to
the European Union (EU). Major secular state
and civil society institutions including the Turk-
ish Armed Forces, the National Intelligence
Agency, the Ankara Trade Organization, and
the National Parliament prepared reports warn-
ing the nation about the major threat evangeli-
cal missionaries pose against the Turkish nation
and the state. The most signicant of these is
the report prepared by the National Security
Council of Turkey in that listed evangelical
missionaries as the third largest threat to Tur-
key following the separatist Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK) and Islamic fundamentalism. The
report asked for preparation against the well-
planned divisive and destructive efforts of evan-
gelical missionaries against Turkey. In the
Turkish Armed Forces prepared another report
titled “Missionary Activities in Our Country and
in the World” to warn the religiously oriented
Justice and Development Party (AKP) govern-
ment about evangelical activities and encourage
it to implement new laws to curb missionizing.
4
The report declared that missionaries are es-
pecially dangerous because they are trying to
divide the nation by converting ethnic and re-
ligious minorities such as Kurds and Alevis to
Christianity and hence weakening citizens’ ties
to the Turkish state, implying that only Muslims
can be loyal citizens.
This post-EU candidacy antimissionary
campaign has spread at the popular level and in-
cited a series of attacks against Christian priests,
missionaries, and converts. These include the
killing of Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro
in Trabzon on February , the stabbing of
French Catholic priest Pierre Brunisen in Sam-
sun on July , the stabbing of Italian Cath-
olic Priest Adriano Franchini in Izmir on De-
cember , and the most dramatic example,
the killing of a German Protestant missionary
and two Turkish converts in Malatya on April
. There have also been countless attacks on
Turkish Christians and their churches.
The contemporary attack against evan-
gelical Christians is not the first in Turkey.
During his reign from to , Ottoman
sultan Abdülhamid II saw Christian missionar-
ies as one of the most signicant threats to the
Ottoman Empire. Like Turkish statesmen who
would follow him one and a half centuries later,
Abdülhamid II interpreted missionaries as com-
ing between the Ottoman state and its subjects
at a time when the empire was seriously chal-
lenged by the European powers. Both during
the Hamidian regime and today, the root of
reaction lies not in the accusation that converts
are leaving Islam but, rather, in that they are
being traitorous to their state by allying with the
religion of Europe and the United States. As the
ideological focus of state centralization shifted
from Islamism to secularism from Abdülhamid
II’s reign to the contemporary Turkish Repub-
lic, people’s assertions, like Hakan’s, that they
are both Christian and Turkish provoked the
greatest reaction from secularist nationalists. In
this framework embraced by right and left ends
2. The court case was opened by the notorious ultra-
nationalist lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, who under arti-
cle 301 of Turkey’s Penal Code led law suits against
more than forty Turkish authors and journalists, in-
cluding Orhan Pamuk and Elif Şafak, for insulting the
Turkish Republic, institutions of the Turkish state,
or Turkishness. In January 2008 he was arrested by
the Turkish authorities for participating in an under-
ground nationalist organization aiming to overthrow
the regime.
3. As this article was being written, the court case
was still continuing and was postponed to 24 Feb-
ruary 2009. For further information on the case, see
Esra Özyürek, “Convert Alert: Turkish Christians and
German Muslims as Threats to National Security in
the New Europe,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 51 (2009): 91–116.
4. Tolga Akıner, “Misyonerlik suç değil ama nedense
tehdit” (“Missionizing Is Not a Crime but Somehow a
Threat”) Radikal, 22 December 2007, www.radikal.com
.tr/haber.php?haberno=242289; “TSK: Misyonerler
Alevi ve Kürtleri hedef aldı,” Zaman, 31 December
2004.
400
Comparative
Studies of
South Asia,
Africa and the
Middle East
of the Turkish political spectrum, Muslim iden-
tity is seen as an index of commitment to the
Turkish state, nation, and culture rather than
as a matter of individual belief.
In this article I ask why Turkish converts
to Christianity is such a sensitive and offensive
issue to Turkish nationalists, when Turkish
Christians are self-described nationalists. Why
is it difcult for Turkish secular nationalists to
accept that one can be a Turk and a Christian
at the same time? What is so threatening about
conversion to Christianity? What do secularist
nationalists understand by Christianization?
And what does this anti-Christian sentiment
reveal? Based on eight months of ethnographic
research among Turkish Christians in Istanbul
and Ankara (during the summers of and
and fall of ) and discourse analysis
of popular antimissionary literature in Turkey, I
discuss the political stance of the Turkish Chris-
tian movement and the nature of the national-
ist resistance to it. Most scholarship on Turkish
secularism focuses on the question of Islam.
5
In
this article I focus on the tension between Turk-
ish Christians and nationalist Turks in order to
unearth the tacit links between religion and na-
tionalism as well as secularism and etatism in
contemporary Turkey.
Secularism as a Way to Centralize and
Control Religion
Defenders of secularism often argue that secu-
larism is a prerequisite for modernity, liberal
democracy, and the protection of religious mi-
norities. Charles Taylor, one of the strongest
defenders of this position, contends that only a
secular regime can maintain the equality of citi-
zens because it ensures that all citizens can re-
late to the state at an equal level without being
under the domination of subreligious commu-
nities.
6
He also argues that secularism is a pre-
requisite for the state to prevent inequality and
violence among religious groups.
Philosophical opponents of this view, such
as William E. Connolly, argue that a pluralistic
existence can be possible only by thinking be-
yond secularism so that people recognize their
difference from others as well as differences
within themselves.
7
Based on an analysis of the
on-the-ground manifestations of secularism in
places such as India, Turkey, and Europe, its op-
ponents show that this ideology can be a means
of excluding or assimilating religious minori-
ties.
8
By looking simultaneously at the Jewish
question in Europe and the Muslim question in
India, Amir Mufti suggests that the central cri-
sis of state secularism unfolds when it comes to
the issue of minorities.
9
Talal Asad strongly argues against the po-
sition that sees secularism as a recipe for social
peace and toleration. Rather than guarantee
toleration, he argues, the secular state “puts into
play different structures of ambition and fear.”
10
Hence Asad invites us to understand secularism
as a particular form of liberal governance that
implements “statecraft that uses ‘self-discipline’
and ‘participation,’ ‘law’ and ‘economy’ as ele-
ments of political strategy.”
11
Saba Mahmood
similarly points to the role states play in secular-
ism to “reshape the form [religion] takes, the
5. Andrew Davison, Secularism and Revivalism in Tur-
key: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1998); Alev Çınar, “Secularism
and Islamic Modernism in Turkey,” Ethnographica 10
(2006): 85–96; Çınar, Modernity, Islam, and Secular-
ism in Turkey: Bodies, Places, and Time (Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Fuat Key-
man, “Modernity, Secularism, and Islam: The Case
of Turkey,” Theory, Culture, and Society 24 (2007):
215–34; Ahmet Kuru, Secularism and State Policies to-
ward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Kim
Shively, “Taming Islam: Studying Religion in Secular
Turkey,” Anthropological Quarterly 81 (2008): 683– 711;
Shively, “Religious Bodies and the Secular State: The
Merve Kavakçı Affair,” Journal of Middle East Women
Studies 1, no. 3 (2005): 46– 72; Elisabeth Özdalga, The
Veiling Issue, Ofcial Secularism, and Popular Islam in
Modern Turkey (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1998).
6. Charles Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” in Secular-
ism and Its Critics, ed. Rajeev Bhargava (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 31–53.
7. William E. Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
8. Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion,
Modernity, and Belief (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1998). In Bhargava, Secularism and Its
Critics, see Ashis Nandy, “The Politics of Secularism
and the Recovery of Religious Toleration,” 321–44;
T. N. Madan, “Secularism in Its Place,” 297–320; and
Partha Chatterjee, “Secularism and Tolerance,” 345–
79. Marc Baer, “The Double Bind of Race and Religion:
The Conversion of the Dönme to Secular Turkish Na-
tionalism,” Comparative Studies in Society and His-
tory 46 (2004): 682–708; Talal Asad, Formations of
the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1993); Matti Bunzl,
“Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some
Thoughts on the New Europe,” American Ethnologist
32 (2005): 499–508.
9. Amir Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish
Question and the Crisis of Post-colonial Culture (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
10. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 8.
11. Ibid., 3.
401
Esra Özyürek
Christian and Turkish:
Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation
subjectivities it endorses, and the epistemologi-
cal claims it can make.”
12
In order to transform
the religious domain, “nation-states have had to
act as de facto theologians.”
13
The particular form of governance called
secularism, Asad urges us to study, takes such
radically different forms in different contexts
that it is difcult to come up with a single work-
ing denition for it. Scholars have written about
the difference between French laïcité and Anglo-
Saxon secularism. In Joan Wallach Scott’s for-
mulation, the difference between the two mod-
els is simple but has serious social and political
consequences: “In France, the state protects
individuals from religion; in America, religions
are protected from the state and state from reli-
gion.”
14
Turkish secularism is much closer to the
French laïcité model, yet it has its own particu-
lar history and conditions.
15
Just as in France,
in Turkey the state sees its role in protecting its
citizens from religious inuences. Yet, unlike in
France, it also takes an active role in educating
citizens according to a particular understand-
ing of Islam.
16
The Turkish model came out of a particu-
lar history of continuous attempts to centralize
the state authority of a crumbling multicultural,
multifaith empire where faith groups enjoyed
certain independence if not equality.
17
The laïcité
model embraced by the founders of the Turk-
ish Republic aims to centralize and regulate
the religious beliefs and practices of citizens.
One of the rst policies of the Turkish Repub-
lic was to establish the Directorate of Religious
Affairs and outlaw the caliphate (the nominal
spiritual leader of all Muslims), Su orders, and
any other form of independent religious author-
ity. The new directorate was made responsible
for overseeing all mosques, appointing imams,
and even authoring Friday sermons. By doing so
the new Turkish state placed Islamic authority,
knowledge, and practice under its control.
18
Another central, yet often overlooked, as-
pect of Turkish state secularism has been shift-
ing policies regarding religious minorities along
the axis of eradication and assimilation. These
policies, including the systematic massacres of
Armenians in , the subjection of Ortho-
dox Christians to a forced population exchange
with Greece in , and the imposition of a
wealth tax to non-Muslim citizens well beyond
their nancial means in , were all done in
the name of nationalism.
19
Yet, at a central level,
they all aimed to secure the Turkish state’s full
control over the religious beliefs and practices
of its population. Hence in its Turkish manifes-
tation secularism functions as a state craft aim-
ing to homogenize and ideologically control
the population and not at all as a tool to ensure
liberal democracy and tolerance. Because Turk-
ish nationalists regard centralization as a major
goal, they see internationally based religious
movements, whether evangelical Christian or
Islamic fundamentalist, as threatening to the
Turkish state.
Missionaries and Opposition in the Ottoman
and Early Republican Eras
Evangelical missionizing has a two hundred–
year history in Turkey. The rst wave of Prot-
estant missionaries came from Britain and the
United States to a weakening empire full of Or-
thodox Christians at the turn of the nineteenth
century. The most recent wave of missionaries
came to a globally integrated Turkey at the brink
of joining the EU at the turn of the twenty-rst
century. Even though common strategies of the
missionaries have changed dramatically from
Westernizing to adapting to local culture, the
main emphasis of the opposition against evan-
12. Saba Mahmood, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, and
Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation,” Public
Culture 18 (2006): 326.
13. Ibid., 327.
14. Joan Wallach Scott, Politics of the Veil (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 91–92.
15. Kuru, Secularism and State Policies.
16. Sam Kaplan, “Din-u Devlet All Over Again? The
Politics of Military Secularism and Religious Milita-
rism in Turkey following the 1980 Coup,” International
Journal of Middle East Studies 34 (2002): 113–27.
17. Marc Baer, “Islamic Conversion Narratives of
Women: Social Change and Gendered Religious Hier-
archy in Early Modern Ottoman Istanbul,” Gender and
History 16 (2004): 452–58.
18. Çınar, “Secularism and Islamic Modernism.”
19. Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide:
Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of
the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007); Renée Hirschon, Crossing the Aegean:
An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population
Exchange between Greece and Turkey (New York:
Berghahn, 2003);Christopher Houston, Kurdistan:
Crafting of National Selves (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2008); Ayhan Aktar, Varlık Vergisi ve
“Türkleştirme” politikaları (The Wealth Tax and “Turki-
cation” Policies) (Istanbul: İletişim, 2002).
402
Comparative
Studies of
South Asia,
Africa and the
Middle East
gelization as a threat to the Turkish state did
not change.
The American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) from Boston sent
its first missionaries to reclaim what it called
the Bible Lands and to evangelize its Muslim,
Christian, and Jewish inhabitants in .
20
The
Ottoman Empire was one of its rst targets be-
cause missionaries were eager to emulate Jesus’
experience in telling the Jews of Palestine about
the New Testament. They were not successful
in converting Jews, but they found that a great
number of Armenians of the Gregorian Church
were eager to join the Protestant movement and
in so doing rebel against the authority of their
old church.
21
American missionaries were satis-
ed with the result. They perceived the Grego-
rian and Orthodox churches as being too ritual-
istic and distant from the teachings of the Bible.
In their newsletters they reported that before
working on the Muslim populations of the Ot-
toman Empire, it was crucial to work with the
existing Christian populations and teach them
about the correct form of Christianity.
22
Because they reached out to formerly mar-
ginalized populations and offered them new
world visions, evangelical missionaries were
considered a serious political threat by the Otto-
mans. By the s Abdülhamid II regarded mis-
sionaries “as the most dangerous enemies to so-
cial order.”
23
The Tanzimat (Reordering) and the
Islahat (Reform) decrees of and rec-
ognized religious freedom and gave missionar-
ies freedom to proselytize. But the Hamidian re-
gime also took the religious freedom recognized
in the Berlin treaty of as the freedom to
defend one’s religion and promoted antimission-
ary campaigns. Local governors tried to dissuade
Muslim families from sending their children to
missionary schools and to prevent the circulation
of missionary literature.
24
The ofcials were most
antagonistic toward American missionaries, who
they believed “were establishing nests of sedition
and training revolutionaries.”
25
Hans-Lukas Kieser argues that Protestant
missionaries supported a liberal Ottoman state
idea where different groups of religions could
live together and be in a democratic relation-
ship to one another.
26
Since the reign of Abdül-
hamid II, however, the idea of a multicultural
Ottoman Empire had failed and the idea of a
homogenous Sunni-Muslim base for the state
began to be promoted. Especially following the
independence of the Balkan provinces such
as Bulgaria, the Hamidian regime completely
turned against the missionaries. The Ottomans
were especially afraid that they would turn the
Armenians against the Ottoman state as well
and lead to another major loss of territory.
Abdülhamid II attempted to keep the eastern
provinces under Ottoman rule by emphasizing
the Islamic roots of the empire and also inciting
Kurds to take an active part during the pogroms
and massacres of Armenians. In these years the
Hamidian regime also started missionizing
Hana Sunni Islam to heterodox Alevis, who
were establishing close relationships with Ar-
menians as well as Protestant missionaries and
at times converting to Christianity.
27
After a brief period of liberal thought fol-
lowing the Young Turk revolution, authori-
tarian tendencies returned more strongly with
the Ittihat and Terakki (Committee on Union
and Progress, or CUP) regime beginning in
. The CUP started a campaign against
evangelical missionaries and Armenians on the
basis that they were working against the empire.
The main emphasis of CUP policies was to en-
sure national sovereignty based on the Muslim
population.
28
Enver Paşa, war minister and Ot-
toman commander-in-chief during World War
I, made clear in a newspaper article he wrote
that he saw missionaries as agents of the United
States wanting to eliminate Turks and Muslims
20. Samir Khalaf, “Leavening the Levant: New Eng-
land Puritanism as a Cultural Transplant,” Journal
of Mediterranean Studies 7 (1997): 268–92; Ussama
Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries
and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).
21. Jeremy Salt, Imperialism, Evangelism, and the Ot-
toman Armenians, 1878–1896 (London: Frank Cass,
1993).
22. Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven.
23. Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideol-
ogy and Legitimation in the Ottoman Empire (London:
I. B. Tauris, 1998), 114.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., 125.
26. Hans-Lukas Kieser, Iskalanmış barış: Doğ u vilay-
etlerinde misyonerlik, etnik kimlik ve devlet (The Missed
Peace: Missionizing, Ethnic Identity, and the State in
the Eastern Provinces) (Istanbul: İletişim, 2005).
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.; Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Otto-
manism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Em-
pire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1997); Salt, Imperialism.
403
Esra Özyürek
Christian and Turkish:
Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation
from the world. He declared that the only pos-
sibility to exist depended on eradicating them
instead.
29
During the massacres of and
, shortly after Enver Paşa’s statement, up to
million Armenians were systematically killed
and sent to death marches.
30
The new Turkish Republic, established in
, completed what the CUP regime started:
the destruction of the Christian presence in the
country. A short year after its establishment, the
new republic organized a forced population
exchange between Greece and Turkey, where
all Orthodox Christians, including Turkish-
speaking Karamanlis, were sent to Greece.
31
The
new regime also banned any form of evangeli-
zation and gradually nationalized missionary
schools and hospitals. The ABCFM continued to
exist in Turkey through secular organizations in-
cluding schools, hospitals, and sports complexes
that aimed to promote bodies and minds that
would be receptive to Christianity. Yet they re-
frained from actively and openly evangelizing.
Contemporary Missionizing and the
Antimissionary Attack
Missionizing became possible again in Turkey
in the s through the economic and politi-
cal liberalization program implemented by Tur-
gut Özal. Later it became especially easier in
the s as Turkey reformed its legal and po-
litical system to t the EU criteria. Propagating
other religions and establishing new churches
were legalized. Turkey’s opening up to global
economic and religious ows coincided with a
new trend rising in the global evangelical com-
munity to further spread the movement. Since
the end of World War II, American evangelical
leaders increasingly became critical of earlier
missionaries that aimed to Westernize locals,
and instead they promoted the idea that Jesus’
message should be contextualized in the local
cultures.
32
Especially after the First Interna-
tional Congress on World Evangelization in
Lausanne, Switzerland, in , headed by the
American Billy Graham, the Evangelical move-
ment decided to direct resources to sending
missionaries to less Christianized parts of the
world under the slogan “Let the Earth hear His
voice.”
33
Congress participants declared that
rather than impose Western culture with the
Gospel, they would recognize what is good in
every culture and in this way establish churches
rooted in the local cultures.
34
Following the Lausanne Congress and
Turkey’s opening up, evangelical missionaries
began coming to Turkey in signicant numbers.
Currently, dozens of evangelical groups based
in the United States, Canada, and Korea are
represented in Turkey and actively missionizing.
Some of those missionaries have access to good
funding and organization, and others exist as
individually motivated missionaries who make
their way to Turkey, commonly teaching English.
The new evangelical movement is decentralized
and is supported by many independent Chris-
tian organizations. Despite three decades of
culturally sensitive evangelical work, the move-
ment’s success has not been impressive. Even
though currently there are Turkish-speaking
church groups functioning in every major Turk-
ish city, the number of converts to the movement
is about three thousand in a nation of mil-
lion.
35
If we consider that around fteen hun-
dred of these members were born into Christian
families, such as are Armenians and Assyrians,
the evangelical movement’s success can be seen
as especially limited. Regardless of their limited
success, however, Christian missionaries and
converts have been subject to erce and deadly
attacks by Turkish nationalists.
Following the ofcial candidacy of Turkey
to the EU in , attacks against missionaries
in Turkey increased dramatically. Nationalist
activists on the right and left ends of the politi-
29. Kieser, Iskalanmış barış, 490.
30. Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish
Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (London:
Zed, 2004); Bloxham, Great Game of Genocide.
31. Hirschon, Crossing the Aegean.
32. Leaders of the “church growth movement” in-
cluded Eugene Nida, Donald McGavran, and Charles
Kraft.
33. I thank Courtney Handman for providing me this
information.
34. The information is provided on the Web site
for the Lausanne Covenant, www.lausanne.org/
lausanne-1974/lausanne-covenant.html (accessed 30
August 2008).
35. I was given this information by Isa Karakaş, the
spokesperson of the Turkish evangelical movement.
In 2007 Interior Minister Abdülkadir Aksu declared
that in the previous seven years 344 Muslims changed
their religion. Of these, 338 converted to Christianity
and 6 to Judaism. See Tarık Işık and İsmail Saymaz,
“Sağcı da solcu da misyonerlik alarmı veriyor” “Both
Leftists and Rightists Warn against Missionaries,”
Radikal, 24 April 2007, www.radikal.com.tr/haber
.php?haberno=218964.
404
Comparative
Studies of
South Asia,
Africa and the
Middle East
cal spectrum accused Christian missionaries of
being mercenaries of the European and Ameri-
can powers and of attempting to divide and con-
quer Turkey. In this section I pursue the logic
nationalists follow in posing missionaries as a
threat to the Turkish nation, which nationalists
see as an otherwise ethnically, culturally, and
linguistically homogenous unit—tightly united
around its state. To do so I follow the contem-
porary antimissionary literature, consisting of
dozens of books published every year, as well as
statements made in other public media such as
television programs and newspapers. This lit-
erature is signicant because it is widely read
and has been especially inuential on Turkish
nationalist youth, who regularly attack Turkish
Christians and their churches. As indicated ear-
lier, a good number of these attacks had deadly
consequences.
Antimissionary activists who write and
propagate on this topic come from three dif-
ferent ideological positions, although they have
much in common. The most active embraces
an ultranationalist, antiglobalist, right-wing
discourse that is ideologically closest to the Na-
tionalist Action Party. IQ Publishing in Istanbul
is one of the leading publishers of authors be-
longing to this camp. It embraces a Turkish na-
tionalist outlook that celebrates the history and
presence of Turks through the ages. It publishes
books on different Turkish dialects and on the
history of Turkic republics. Another popular
theme is the Armenian question, and books
released by this publisher emphasize how Ar-
menians have been led by imperialist powers to
stab Ottomans in the back. International con-
spiracy theories that target Turkey and Turks
around the world constitute one of the largest
groupings of this publisher’s books. IQ Publish-
ing does not publish Islamic books, and the pic-
ture of Atatürk on its Web site’s opening page
expresses its dedication to secularism.
36
The second group that engages in antimis-
sionary activism belongs to the nationalist left
in Turkey, best presented by the Workers Party.
Like the rst group, it is highly nationalistic and
against global inuences on Turkey. The differ-
ences between the two groups on their antimis-
sionary standpoint are negligibly small. To the
second group I would also add Kemalist secular-
ists, such as Rahşan Ecevit, the surviving wife of
Turkish prime minister Bülent Ecevit (d. ),
who carried the topic of missionaries and the
threat they pose to Turkey to newspaper head-
lines throughout the s. The third group
comprises religious leaders afliated with Turk-
ish state Islam. One example is Zekeriya Beyaz,
the appointed dean of the religious studies de-
partment at Marmara University in Istanbul. As
in the rst group, members position their oppo-
sition to missionaries in relation to their weak-
ening of the Turkish nation’s ties. In that re-
spect, even the religious actors engaged in this
discourse emphasize nationalism over Islamism
as the basis of their antimissionary stance.
Many of the antimissionary books self-
reportedly declare their aim to be to warn the
nation against threats facing the Turkish state.
American Missionaries in Turkey, for example, ed-
ited by left-wing nationalist Atilla İlhan and pub-
lished in a series titled “A Nation Is Waking Up,”
is among the titles warning readers against the
imperialist and global inuences challenging
Turkey. This particular book title is introduced
with the following words: “Since the establish-
ment of NATO, ‘the system’ is after conquering
all our national castles including the economy,
culture, defense, and education. Recently it
began to openly impose its own religion and
language [on Turkey].”
37
By informing its read-
ers about how global imperialists are working
in Turkey, the book series invites readers not
to give in but to organize a common resistance
and wake up as a nation. That is why a Kemalist
intellectual such as İlhan is allying with the ul-
traright nationalist Ali Rıza Bayzan in warning
the nation against the Christian threat. The
book’s dramatic cover demonstrates the extent
36. “Kültür sanat yayincilik,” wwww.iqkultursanat
.com (accessed 23 July 2009). For the signicance of
displaying pictures of Atatürk as an expression of op-
position to the Islamic movement, see Esra Özyürek,
“Miniaturizing Atatürk: Privatization of State Imag-
ery and Ideology in Turkey,” American Ethnologist 31
(2004): 374–91.
37. Ali Rıza Bayzan, Türkiye’de amerikan misyonerleri:
Armageddon; Kehanet mi, teo-politik bir proje mi?
(American Missionaries in Turkey: Armageddon, a
Prophecy or a Theo-political Project?) (Istanbul: Bilgi,
2006), 5.
405
Esra Özyürek
Christian and Turkish:
Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation
of the threat: Turkey is crumbling beneath a
huge cross forcefully erected on top of it.
Turkish nationalists repeatedly state that
the missionary movement is a political rather
than a religious movement. They declare that
the main purpose of the missionaries is to di-
vide and conquer Turkey. In Baptists: Ameri-
can Evangelicals, nationalist researcher Rafet
Özkan says, “The primary aim of missionaries
is not religious conversion. On the contrary it is
spreading seeds of evil that will create tension
in Turkey. This is not a Christianization move-
ment but a political movement.”
38
According to
Özkan, the nal goal of Christian missionaries
is to create “a Turkish World without Turks, an
Islamic World without Turks, and a Turkey with-
out Islam.”
39
On Beyaz’s Web site he explains the dan-
ger missionaries pose to Turkey and likens them
to Crusaders: “Christian missionaries spread all
around the country are unarmed soldiers who
attack our spiritual castles. They belong to the
older Crusader armies. Despite what is believed,
they are not religious people. To the contrary,
a great proportion of them do not believe in
religion. Missionaries are well-educated secret
agents who know how to act as if they are reli-
gious. In reality they are destroyers of society.”
4 0
According to their opponents contempo-
rary missionaries realize their political goal by
stripping Turks of their national identity and
sense of belonging. Müjdat Öztürk, author of
Jesus’ Traitorous Children, explains how this pro-
cess works: “Missionaries . . . are part of an ef-
fort to siege Turkey through an unarmed attack
and take over Turkish land through erasing the
national consciousness and weakening national
resistance.”
4 1
This attack involves “stripping
[Turks] of their personality, identity, and home-
land, and transforming them [into non-Turks]”
(). Hence, Öztürk claims, “Each and every
missionary in this country is an agent of the
state he is working for. [Thus] he is an enemy of
the Turkish nation” ().
Even though they focus on Christians,
Turkish nationalists often do not distinguish
among different groups and accuse all of them
of serving the same imperialist goal. In Ameri-
can Missionary Activities in Turkey, for example,
Bayzan examines Mormons, Seventh-Day Ad-
ventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Reverend Moon,
the American Board Association, the Peace
Corps, SOS Children Villages, Yoga, and Scien-
tology. He argues that the representatives of all
these movements work in Turkey in order to re-
alize the politico-theological goals of the United
States. Other Turkish nationalists include femi-
nists and even rock music groups as part of the
crusade against Turkey. According to Öztürk:
“Missionaries who aim to disassociate Turkish
youth from their national culture apply different
methods. In our country they use Black Metal to
indirectly propagate Christianity. Metal music is
one of the easiest ways that lead to disassociation
from our national culture. Youth marginalized
by this music become alienated from the cul-
ture and sacred values of their own homeland
whether they become Christian or not.”
4 2
The antimissionary literature attributes
three general strategies to Christian missionar-
ies in their overall aim to divide and conquer
Turkey: they focus on alienating Turks from
their homeland, their national identity, and,
nally, their state. In all three strategies Chris-
tianity stands for the national culture and iden-
tity of Western powers and Islam stands for that
of the Turks. In this literature neither religion
is discussed in relation to its belief system or its
basic principles. Erol Güngör, one of the earliest
antimissionary nationalists, states that the real
goal of missionaries is not to persuade people
to believe in Jesus but, rather, to turn people to-
ward their own culture: “The aim behind the in-
troduction of Christian culture in Turkey is not
to try to convert this or that person to Christi-
anity. What is important here is not to embrace
Jesus or Muhammad, but to accept the culture
that developed around these beliefs and the so-
38. Rafet Özkan, Baptistler: Amerikan evanjelikleri
(Baptists: American Evangelicals) (Istanbul: IQ, 2005),
back cover.
39. Ibid.
40. Zekeriya Beyaz, “Misyonerler, Aleviler, Kürtler”
(“Missionaries, Alevis, Kurds”), Takvim, 23 March
2006, makale.turkcebilgi.com/kose-yazisi-24967
–zekeriya-beyaz-misyonerler-aleviler-kurtler.html.
41. Müjdat Öztürk, İsa’nın Hain çocukları: Türkiye’de
misyoner faaliyetler (Jesus’s Traitorous Children: Evan-
gelist Activities in Turkey) (Istanbul: İlgi, 2006), 18.
42. Bayzan, Türkiye’de amerikan misyonerleri, 90.
406
Comparative
Studies of
South Asia,
Africa and the
Middle East
cial role these cultures play in the nations’ lives.
And this is where contemporary Christian move-
ments are heading. There are political aims be-
hind these attempts of inculcating culture.”
4 3
Annexing the Turkish Homeland
Antimissionary nationalists argue that Western
imperialists try to take over Turkey by making
references to the Christian history that took
place in Anatolia. They are especially sensi-
tive that in Christian literature Turkey is often
called the “Bible Land,” referring to the fact
that most of the New Testament was actually
written in what is today Turkey. Antimission-
ary nationalists argue that highlighting the
Christian history in Turkey is a way to mark the
Turkish homeland as Christian and hence the
property of the Western powers. In Jesus’ Traitor-
ous Children, Öztürk explains in detail how this
imperialist plot works, that by calling Turkey
the Bible Land, the Christian/Western world is
saying, “The land you are living on is in real-
ity a Christian habitat. It is sacred and valuable
for us. You Turks came here afterwards and an-
nexed it [from us].”
4 4
According to Öztürk, the “Belief Tourism”
promoted by the Turkish Ministry of Tourism
serves the same purpose and is as dangerous.
He claims that, between and , mis-
sionaries discovered many churches without
congregations and convinced the Tourism Min-
istry to renovate and open them to Christian
tourism. Öztürk writes that “Belief Tourism
[was] organized in the s by the Vatican,
the World Church Association, and Orthodox
Churches” to show that Turkey really belongs
to Christians.
45
He also contends that the Belief
Tourism project is a mere scheme, since all these
efforts have not led to a signicant increase in
the number of tourists coming to Turkey.
Bayzan warns the public against the Bible
Land discourse by likening it to the Zionist
claim over Palestine. He notes that Jews were
not claiming Palestine until the Zionist move-
ment began to argue that the land is historically
theirs. He claims that if the Turkish state keeps
supporting this discourse and highlighting the
sacred nature of Anatolia to Christians, one day
they will say to Turks: “This is our sacred land,
you should return to where you came from.”
4 6
A
specic example Bayzan uses to support his the-
sis is Mary’s House in western Turkey, which he
points to as the invention of nineteenth-century
missionaries who had no historical evidence on
which to base this myth. He is especially criti-
cal of the Tourism Ministry’s recent attempts of
accepting the house as Mary’s and of declaring
visitors to the house as pilgrims. He argues that
this plot was organized by Christians to pur-
chase land in Turkey and make it theirs piece
by piece.
According to Öztürk, emphasizing ancient
Greek archeological sites in Anatolia serves the
same Christian conspiracy over Turkish land.
He says that “[foreign powers] aim to oppress
the cultural heritage that belongs to Turkish
Civilization by digging foreign archeological
sites. . . . They want to annihilate the roots of
the Turkish Nation and they aim to make Turks
feel as if they are merely renters of their home-
land.”
4 7
Alienating Turks from Their Nation and the State
The second and third alleged strategies mis-
sionaries use is seen as more dangerous and
is elaborately discussed by the spokespeople
of the antimissionary campaign. This tactic
involves alienating Turkish citizens from their
own culture and nation and, eventually, from
their state. Proselytizing Christianity is a means
to achieve these goals and is used by Western
imperialists as a military tactic. Beyaz predicts
that as a result of Christian propaganda, Turks
will not recognize the prophet Muhammad and
will recognize the prophet Jesus as God. . . . And
then they will recognize Atatürk and all the na-
tional heroes as enemies, because they fought
against Christians. On the other hand, they will
consider those who worked for Christians . . . as
saints. Greeks who invaded Turkey will be good
43. Erol Güngör, Türkiye’de misyoner faaliytleri (Evan-
gelist Activities in Turkey) (Istanbul: Ötüken, 1999),
XX–XX.
44. Öztürk, İsa’nın Hain çocukları, XX-XX.
45. Ibid., 63.
46. Ali Rıza Bayzan, Küresel vaftiz: Misyoner örgütlerin
Türkiye ve Türk cumhuriyetlerini hristiyanlaştırma op-
erasyonu (Global Baptism: The Christianization Oper-
ation of Missionary Organizations in Turkey and the
Turkish Republics) (Istanbul: IQ, 2004), XX-XX.
47. Öztürk, İsa’nın Hain çocukları, 66.
407
Esra Özyürek
Christian and Turkish:
Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation
people. And those who were martyred during
the National Liberation War will be considered
as low as dead animals. . . . Our national unity
will disappear, we will be emptied out from the
inside, and we will disappear entirely.
48
According to Beyaz, merely embracing Chris-
tianity inevitably leads to the disintegration of
the Turkish nation. He explains that
religion and national feelings, religion and
patriotism, and cultural values are always in-
tegrated with one another. Religion is the
keystone. When you pull it out everything will
crumble. Then you cannot have dedication to
Turkish culture, patriotism, appreciation of his-
torical heroes, or literary characters. When you
become a member of the Anglican Church, you
will be their man. You will read their literature.
When you become a member of the Greek Or-
thodox Church in Anatolia, this means you be-
come a Greek.
49
Other nationalists refer to more indi-
rect and unexpected strategies implemented
by missionaries in turning Turks against their
nation and their state. In explaining this strat-
egy, nationalists often make reference to the
nineteenth- century missionary Samuel Zwemer,
who introduced the concept of “invisible Chris-
tians” and “invisible church.”
50
In a Middle East
where very few Muslims converted to Christian-
ity, this concept is based on the idea that mis-
sionaries should focus their efforts in making
Muslims embrace Christian values. Although
this concept fell out of favor in evangelical circles
after World War II, Turkish nationalists make
frequent reference to it, arguing that Christian
missionaries are implementing this method to
alienate Turks from their own culture. For ex-
ample, Öztürk argues that missionaries try to
strip Turks of their own culture by degenerat-
ing them: “Degeneration of the Turkish family,
increase in divorces, out-of-wedlock cohabiting
and children, and celebrating those who cheat
on their spouses are conditions preferred by mis-
sionaries. Missionaries who know that they can-
not be successful in Turkey with strong family
values implement different methods to weaken
these values.”
51
In the antimissionary literature, any nega-
tive inuence on Turkish culture is assumed to
be inculcated by Westerners/Christians to serve
their own interests. According to Öztürk, di-
vergent practices, from celebrating Valentine’s
Day to celebrating the new millennium, from
discussing whether the sacrificial feast is too
bloody to listening to heavy metal music, are all
examples of this strategy of alienation.
52
Once
they are alienated from their own culture and
become invisible Christians, these ostensible
Turks do things that serve the interests of the
Christian world such as accepting that there was
an Armenian genocide, insulting Turkishness,
or celebrating adultery. According to Öztürk,
“Thousands of people who think they are Mus-
lims live according to Christian morals, know-
ingly or unknowingly.”
53
Another major strategy nationalists accuse
missionaries of using to turn Turkish citizens
against their state is focusing on the religious
and ethnic minorities in Turkey, such as Alevis
and Kurds. Turkish nationalism has been based
on the assimilation of these two signicant mi-
norities into a Sunni Turkish identity.
54
Yet both
groups occupy marginal positions in social, po-
litical, and economic life and do not have the
right to claim their religious or ethnic identity.
Nationalists suggest that missionaries especially
aim to convert members of these groups to create
further dividing lines among Turkish citizens.
According to Öztürk, missionaries led by
the directives of the EU, focus on existing mi-
norities and aim to create new minorities to
weaken the Turkish state. He writes: “In the pro-
cess of integrating with the European Union we
observe unearthing of oppressed identities, cre-
48. Quoted in Hulki Cevizoğlu, Misyonerlik ve Siyasi
Hristiyanlık (Istanbul: Ceviz Kabuğu, 2005), 17.
49. Ibid., 18.
50. Samuel Zwemer, A Challenge to Faith: On the Mu-
hammadan Religion and the Needs and Opportunities
of Islam (London: Darf, 1985).
51. Öztürk, İsa’nın Hain çocukları, 40.
52. Ibid., 55.
53. Ibid., 54.
54. Fuat Dündar, İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları
İskan Politikası (1913–1918) (The Resettlement Policies
of the Union and Progress Party, 1913–1918) (Istanbul:
İletişim, 2001); Houston, Kurdistan; Esra Özyürek,
“Beyond Integration and Recognition: Diasporic
Constructions of Alevi Muslim Identity between Ger-
many and Turkey,” in Transnational Transcendence,
ed. Tom Csordas (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2009).
408
Comparative
Studies of
South Asia,
Africa and the
Middle East
ating new religious and ethnic minorities, and
an effort to divide the unitary structure of Tur-
key. What is under threat is the Turkish state.”
55
In the antimissionary literature one can
nd detailed discussions of how Christian pow-
ers in general and missionary organizations
in particular pursue their goal in relation to
Kurds. In his most recent book, The Kurdish
and Alevi Operation of Missionary Organizations,
Bayzan argues that Christian organizations aim
to weaken Kurds’ afliation with the Turkish na-
tion and the state by claiming that Kurds are de-
scendants of the Meris discussed in the Bible.
56
He also asserts that they support the Kurdish
guerrilla organization, the PKK. According to
Bayzan, the Catholic humanitarian relief or-
ganization Caritas is one such organization.
He states that even though Caritas innocently
denes its target population as “marginalized
people,” in reality it supports “destructive, divi-
sive, and separatist organizations,” such as the
PKK.
57
He claims that Caritas is active in help-
ing people associated with the PKK to apply for
political refugee status in Germany and that it is
seeking to put international pressure on Turkey
regarding the issue of land mines ().
Moreover, Bayzan alleges that the Vatican
in general supports the Kurdish movement, the
PKK, and its captured leader, Abdullah Öcalan.
He argues that the Vatican funds the television
channel CTV, which has been broadcasting
Christian-themed programs in Kurdish, much
before broadcasting in Kurdish was legalized in
Turkey. According to Bayzan, connections be-
tween the Vatican and the PKK became most
obvious after Öcalan escaped Syria and ed to
Italy in . Bayzan cites as evidence Pope John
Paul II’s wishing “Happy New Year” in Kurdish,
in addition to many other languages, during
Christmas celebrations that same year (–
). Further proof of this relationship is a let-
ter Öcalan allegedly wrote to the Pope in which
he expressed a wish to visit him. In this letter,
Öcalan is reported to have said, “Christianity is
based on equality, peace, and humanity. . . . My
socialist ideas are not too far from these ideals.
They are actually quite close to Christianity. In
my struggle and ideology the respect I have for
you and your religion is a constant point of ref-
erence” ().
According to Bayzan, recent debates about
whether Alevism is a part of Islam are also sup-
ported by missionaries and EU ofcials and aim
to alienate Alevis from the Turkish nation and
the religion of the Turkish state.
58
Beyaz argues
that Christian missionaries target Alevis and
Kurds because “they think Alevis do not have suf-
cient religious knowledge and Kurds have weak
national feelings.”
59
Based on such observations,
nationalists including Beyaz suggest that the
Turkish state should work harder to fold Alevis
into Islam and Kurds into the Turkish nation. He
advises that Kurdish children be given a sense of
“homeland, nation, dedication to the state,” so
that they are not inuenced by the “poisonous
words” of missionaries. He also opposes the re-
cent demands of Alevis to exempt their children
from religious education in Turkey, the curricu-
lum of which is based on Sunni Islam. Rather, he
suggests, religious education should be manda-
tory for all students so that they are protected
against the missionary plots. He concludes, “If
we lose our religious and national feelings, we
may lose all our material and spiritual values,
and even our homeland and state.”
6 0
The divisive activities of missionaries are
not limited to Kurds and Alevis, according to
their opponents. Öztürk notes that the mission-
ary organization called the Joshua Project lists
fty-nine ethnic groups in Turkey. This group
denes its goal on its Web site as documenting
ethnic groups that are least reached by Jesus’
message. Özturk claims that the real aim of mis-
sionary groups such as this one is to create “an
ethnic hell” in Turkey to serve their imperial
goals. Öztürk asserts that in reality there are no
ethnic groups in Turkey and that the Turkish
nation is homogenous.
61
Another way missionaries alienate Turks
from their nation and state is by turning Turks
55. Öztürk, İsa’nın Hain çocukları, 39.
56. Ali Rıza Bayzan, Misyoner örgütlerin Kürt ve Alevi
operasyonu (The Kurdish and Alevi Operation of Mis-
sionary Organizations) (Istanbul: IQ, 2008).
57. Bayzan, Küresel vaftiz, 177.
58. Bayzan, Misyoner örgütlerin. On Alevism and Islam,
see Özyürek, “Beyond Integration and Recognition.”
59. Beyaz, “Misyonerler, Aleviler, Kürtler.”
60. Ibid.
61. Öztürk, İsa’nın Hain çocukları.
409
Esra Özyürek
Christian and Turkish:
Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation
against the Turkish army. Military service is
obligatory for all male citizens and is considered
an honor in Turkey. Alienating people from the
military and military service is a major crime
punishable by imprisonment. Hence national-
ists are especially critical of Jehovah’s Witnesses,
who refuse to serve in the army. Even though
there are only three thousand Jehovah’s Wit-
nesses in Turkey and of them only a few have re-
fused to serve in the army, antimissionaries take
this denial as proof that Western powers aim to
pacify Turkey and therefore weaken its military
strength by converting Turks to Jehovah’s Wit-
nesses.
62
Günay Tümer writes,
Among other missionary activities, Jehovah’s
Witnesses stand as the most successful in harm-
ing national unity and severing people’s relations
with their country’s religion and nation. If Jeho-
vah’s Witnesses are increasing in a country, then
people who do not recognize their own ag or
national anthem, who do not want to participate
in a war, who do not want to serve in the army,
and who do not work for their state are increas-
ing. These people say “I am a soldier of Jehovah’s
Army. I am a citizen of the state to be established
by Jehovah, I am his messenger.” Therefore, when
you want to pacify certain countries, weaken
their power, and destabilize forces that make a
country stand on its own feet, you should create
a movement such as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
63
Memory of the Armenians
An underlying but well-constructed message in
all of the nationalist literature against mission-
aries is the memory of the events that led to the
Armenian massacres. Contributors to this litera-
ture often emphasize that Armenians were loyal
subjects of the Ottoman Empire until American
missionaries arrived in the nineteenth century
and inspired in them an anti-Turkish-nationalist
consciousness as they converted them to Protes-
tantism. Antimissionaries embrace the ideology
of Abdülhamid II as well as the CUP in viewing
missionaries as purposefully turning citizens
against the Turkish state and causing them to
rebel against it. They remind their readers that
missionaries’ efforts in turning Christian mi-
norities against the Ottoman state led to the end
of the empire. A good number of them openly
suggest that the newest missionary movement
in Turkey has a similar aim: creating new mi-
norities and using them for their own purposes
against the Turkish state.
64
In Global Baptism: The Christianization
Operation of Missionary Organizations in Turkey
and the Turkish Republics, Bayzan imagines the
unity of Turks as going beyond Turkey. He ar-
gues that missionary activities in Turkey and in
Central Asia will work against a greater Turkish
presence just as they did in contributing to the
end of the Ottoman Empire. As a pan-Turkist,
Bayzan states that people like him are “burning
with excitement” imagining the power of the
“Turkish World from the Adriatic to the Great
Wall of China” and waiting for the twenty-rst
century to be the “Age of the Turks.”
6 5
Yet he
argues that global imperialists aim to sabotage
such a possibility by converting people in Turkey
and the Turkic republics to Christianity. The
conversion of Turkic people to Christianity, he
states, will result in a “fault line” between Chris-
tian Turks and Muslim Turks, and they will not
be able to unite their powers (). He urges
people who accuse him of being pessimistic or
paranoid to remember the “Armenian incident”
at the beginning of the last century (). He
claims that just as organizations such as ABCFM
turned Bulgarians, Armenians, and Assyrians
against the Ottoman state, now the Vatican is
turning Kurds against Turkey and the Protes-
tants are trying to divide Turks by converting
some of them to Christianity ().
Nationalists also make silenced references
to the past Armenian and Greek presence in
Turkey when they criticize the Bible Land dis-
course. They are critical of remembering the
Christian presence in Turkey and warn the
Turkish nation against a possibility of Chris-
tians saying that “you took this land from us.”
62. See the authorized site of the Ofce of Public In-
formation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, www.jw-media
.org/newsroom/index.htm?content=http://www
.jw-media.org/region/europe/turkey/turkish/
releases/religious
_
freedom/tur
_
tk070315.htm (ac-
cessed 30 August 2008).
63. Günay Tümer, “XIX: Yüzyılda Sömürgecile-
rin Destek Kuvveti Misyonerlik ve Yehova Şahitleri
Gerçeği” (“Missionaries as the Support Force of the
Colonialists in the Nineteenth Century and the Real-
ity of Jehova’s Witnesses”), in Türkiye’de misyonerlik
faaliyetleri (Colonialism Activities in Turkey) (Ankara:
Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2005), 55.
64. See Öztürk, İsa’nın Hain çocukları and Bayzan,
Küresel vaftiz.
65. Bayzan, Küresel vaftiz, 374.
410
Comparative
Studies of
South Asia,
Africa and the
Middle East
By doing so, they try to silence, but doing so ac-
tively revives the memory of the fact that much
of contemporary Turkish land and property was
taken from Christians after they were massacred
or forced to migrate.
The Response of Turkish Christians:
Emphasizing Nationalism and Turkishness
Despite the claims of antimissionary national-
ists—and in reaction to them—Turkish Chris-
tians repeatedly emphasize that being Chris-
tian is not in conict with being Turkish. They
try to counter the criticisms that dene them
as oppositional to the Turkish state by showing
their commitment to the Turkish state and the
nation. Like Hakan, who says that he is a Chris-
tian and still a Turk, all Turkish Christians I met
during my research emphasized the nationalist
character of their movement.
A message written on a Turkish Christian
Web site is representative of the reaction of Turk-
ish Christians to people who claim that it is im-
possible to be both a Turk and a Christian. When
someone using the tagline “A Turk can never be a
Christian” wanted to be a member of the online
Turkish Christian discussion group, a woman
nicknamed Angelica responded forcefully:
Turks can also be Christians and there are Turk-
ish Christians. There is nothing to be afraid of
in this! We, Turkish Christians, love our country
very much, we love our state very much, and we
are dedicated to Atatürk’s principles and revolu-
tion. We pray for our country’s leaders. We have
no political aim other than living in Turkey and
living as Christians. Come on, see us like your-
self. Because we see ourselves like you! Anyone
who is a citizen of Turkey is a TURK! We are as
Turkish as you are!”
6 6
To emphasize the Turkish character of
their movement, Turkish Christians use exclu-
sively Turkish language and Turkish music dur-
ing their services. To make themselves politi-
cally safe, they use Turkish even in the churches
in the Kurdish region. The kind of music used
varies according to the class and taste of the
community. For example, while the congrega-
tion of the Presbyterian church in Moda, an
upper-class neighborhood of Istanbul, uses
Turkish classical music, the one in Diyarbakir
in southeastern Turkey uses Turkish folk music
and the Turkish instrument known as the saz.
The churches attended by younger and edu-
cated Turks in Istanbul prefer to use the guitar
and lyrics that resemble pop music melodies.
Yet in all cases, they make a point of using Turk-
ish music and language.
Turkish Protestant churches also make
special efforts to have Turkish church leaders
and Turkish missionaries. When possible, for-
eign missionaries are kept at bay. A Canadian
missionary I met in Istanbul had to wait thirteen
years to become a member of a church in Istan-
bul. He explained that he could attend services
at any church but that he waited to be invited
to a church to become part of it. After learning
Turkish and establishing good relations with a
Turkish-speaking church, he was nally invited,
a year before our interview, to become a church
member. He and his wife were very happy when
they nally received the invitation.
Many Turkish Christians also make ex-
plicit efforts to distance themselves from al-
ready-existing Christian groups in Turkey, as
do some Greek and Armenian Christians. By
positioning themselves as different from these
established groups, they make a point about
their commitment to the Turkish nation and
the state. During my conversations with Turkish
church attendees, I noted that, although most
were aware that the Turkish state and society in
general discriminated against Christians, many
did not accept that the Ottoman state commit-
ted genocide against Armenians. Like other na-
tionalists in Turkey, many thought Europeans
and American made this accusation to publicly
humiliate Turkey and then challenge its sover-
eignty by asking for reparations and then pos-
sibly land. Turkish Christian leaders also do not
necessarily ally with other historical Christian
groups that have survived in Turkey. They criti-
cize the Armenian Orthodox Church for not
spreading the good news of Jesus among non-
Christians. Even though Armenians were one
of the earliest Christian nations in the world,
66. www.hossohbet.com/forum/diger-dinler/
93468–neden-hristiyan-turk.html (accessed 30 Au-
gust 2008).
411
Esra Özyürek
Christian and Turkish:
Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation
evangelicals promote the view that their ways
of worship diverged from Jesus’ original teach-
ings and need to be reformed. Many evangelical
leaders also do not support the Greek Orthodox
Church’s effort to reopen a seminary on Hey-
beli Island in Istanbul, which has been closed
for more than three decades.
Conclusion
The nature of the campaign against Christian
missionaries and Turkish Christians is rst and
foremost nationalist and etatist and not princi-
pally religious. A close reading of the antimis-
sionary literature shows that the antimissionary
campaign says next to nothing about their turn-
ing away from the Islamic community. Spokes-
people and the gunmen of the antimissionary
and anti-Christian campaign fear and loathe
Turkish converts to Christianity primarily be-
cause they believe that by changing their reli-
gion they are being disloyal to their nation and
their state. This discourse assumes that only
Muslims who align themselves with the centrally
defined and organized Turkish Islam can be
truly loyal citizens of the Turkish state.
The antimissionary campaign can best be
understood as a factor of the history of the state-
citizen relationship and state sovereignty in Tur-
key. It is a particular demonstration of Turkish
secularism, which functions as a craft of the cen-
tralist state. The desire to control religious inu-
ences and expressions in Turkey is as old as the
earliest expressions of the transition from em-
pire to nation-states. Abdülhamid II, who aimed
to create a body of citizens loyal to the Ottoman
state, was the rst to object to Protestant mis-
sionaries. To exert control over his subjects he
used an Islamist discourse and sent missionaries
to include heterodox Muslim groups within the
fold of Hana Islam, which was controlled by
the central state. Abdülhamid’s predecessors,
the CUP and the RPP, aspired to gain a simi-
lar control over religion. Even though they both
implemented massively anti-Christian policies,
such as systematic massacres and a population
exchange, their discourses remained primarily
etatist and nationalist, not Islamist.
Even though the missionaries of the early
twenty-rst century are signicantly different
from the missionaries of the nineteenth cen-
tury, both in terms of lacking central organi-
zation and having left aims of cultural change
behind, the discourses against them show re-
markable similarity. In a post–Cold War politi-
cal discourse that assumes a drift between the
Western/Christian and the Islamic worlds, sec-
ularist nationalists defend the basis of Turkish
citizenship as Islamic. Even militantly secular
organizations such as the Turkish Armed Forces
see conversion to Christianity as a threat to na-
tional security.
Despite what proponents of secularism
argue, Turkish secularism is not tolerant of mi-
nority religions, nor does it create a more demo-
cratic political eld for different identities. To
the contrary, what is called Turkish secularism
is a manifestation of ideological and religious
state centralization that began during the late
nineteenth century and has intensied through
the period of the Turkish Republic. Turkish
secularism has been a crucial aspect of nation-
alism and has been used as a strategy to create
a homogenous and united body of citizens. De-
spite its emphasis on secularism, this discourse
assumes that only the state-controlled Hana
denition of Islam can produce and maintain
citizens loyal to the regime.
Turkish statesmen and nationalists feel
similarly uncomfortable with Su religious or-
ders; heterodox Islamic groups, such as Alevis;
and converts to Christianity. It is not a coinci-
dence that these groups often seek legitimacy
by emphasizing their allegiance to and unques-
tionable membership in the Turkish nation.
Many Alevi groups in Turkey often emphasize
that they are a Turkish interpretation of Islam.
That is why they showed great opposition when
the EU report regarding Turkey’s acces-
sion to the EU dened Alevis as a religious mi-
nority.
67
Many Alevis objected that this deni-
tion equated them with Christians and Jews.
68
Like Alevis, Turkish Christians also resist being
defined as a minority and often do not seek
identication with historical religious minori-
67. Commission of the European Communities, Reg-
ular Report on Turkey’s Progress towards Accession
(Brussels, 2004).
68. Özyürek, “Beyond Integration and Recognition.”
412
Comparative
Studies of
South Asia,
Africa and the
Middle East
ties, such as the Greeks and Armenians. On the
contrary, they make a great effort in displaying
the Turkish character of their church movement
through language and music and by emphasiz-
ing the central place of Anatolia in the history
of Christianity. Yet, at least so far, these argu-
ments are not accepted by Turkish nationalists,
who see them as betrayers of the Turkish nation
and agents of Western imperialism. Unless oth-
erwise noted, all translations are my own.
