Turkish PM: Istanbul will get its first new church since 1923

The Turkish government has promised to allow Christians to build a new church in Istanbul, the first in almost 100 years. But skeptics say laying the first brick could be a long way off. The government made the same promise six years ago, and church leaders are still waiting.

In a meeting with members of Christian minority groups, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the government will allow the construction of the Syriac Orthodox church, the first since the Turkish republic formed in 1923 at the end of the Ottoman Empire.

“I know what you want,” Davutoglu reportedly told the Syriac representative, Yusuf Çetin. “Let me tell you before you say it. We will take the necessary steps to resolve the church problem.”

He reiterated that promise at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “As a Muslim I feel pain about the loss of a church in Mosul,” he told attendees. “We have to protect all the belongings of our Christians in Turkey. We are taking steps in the construction of a church in Istanbul. Istanbul is a multicultural center, it is our richness. The attacks to some shrines in Aleppo, Syria, or Iraq are crimes against our culture and we have to condemn them by walking against them all together shoulder by shoulder.”

A government official told AFP the church construction would be an historic event: “Churches have been restored and reopened to the public, but no new church has been built until now.”

Although secular Turkey allows for some religious freedom, it makes it difficult for Christians to open new churches. Todd Daniels of International Christian Concern (ICC) said there isn’t even a legal means for Protestants to open churches with formal recognition.

Roughly a century ago, Turkey’s Christian minority made up about 25 to 30 percent of the population, Daniels said. Now, the country is overwhelmingly Muslim, with only about 100,000 to 200,000 Christians, mostly from the Syrian, Greek, Russian, and Armenian Orthodox traditions.

But Davutoglu’s recent announcement was greeted with some skepticism, since the government first promised six years ago to allow this church to be built, World Watch Monitor reported. Anonymous sources told Turkish news outlets it was merely political posturing.

Daniels confirmed there could be a political rationale behind the Turkish government’s announcement since it is an election year as well as the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. That brutal deportation and mass killing of Armenians, a Christian ethnic minority, happened under the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915, according to the Armenian National Institute.

“It’s a political year for them so there will be lots of negative political press towards Turkey regarding its Christian minority, so this is an opportunity for good press,” Daniels said. He also urged the government to take steps to return church properties it seized in prior years, in addition to approving the new construction.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its 2014 report the Turkish government claims it has returned or compensated religious groups for 340 properties since 2011. USCIRF noted the government denied 1,000 applications.