Tulsa physician with roots in Turkey sells Christian movies

Tulsa physician Enis Sakirgil opened a store last month in south Tulsa that sells Christian and family movies on Blu-ray and DVD. 

"Jesus was always talking in parables that would bring images into people's minds. Movies are the parables of today," he said. 

His store and the online video sales business that supports it are the most recent expressions of a family faith that extends back for centuries. 

Sakirgil was born and raised in Antioch, Turkey, one of the centers of the early church, and a city where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. 

He comes from an Eastern Orthodox family in a land where Christianity once flourished but which now is 99 percent Muslim. 

Sakirgil said he became a born-again Christian when he was a medical student attending a church founded by American missionaries in Istanbul. 

He was attracted to the church because the services were in Turkish, his native tongue, and not in Arabic, like the church in which he was raised. 

He became a worship leader in the church and founded the first-ever Christian rock band in Turkey, he said. 

During his medical residency in Turkey, he heard about In His Image, a Christian family-practice residency program in Tulsa. He could not get the idea of attending the residency program out of his mind, he said.
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Turkey drops a screen over Christianity

TRABZON, TURKEY

Many of Turkey’s historic monuments have followed the same path through the centuries: Byzantine church to Ottoman mosque to secular museum. This July, the 13th-century Hagia Sophia church in the eastern city of Trabzon added a new phase: return to mosque.

While the conversion of this Hagia Sophia – not the more famous structure by the same name in Istanbul – to a house of Muslim worship reflects the increasingly religious approach of Turkey's government, the impact on the tourism industry has been buffered by an uptick in foreign visitors from the Middle East, who are largely disinterested in the traditional tourist landmarks.  

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Hüseyin Buyuk, a local working for the Historic Hagia Sophia Association, ushered visitors through the divided entrance. Local Muslim worshipers went to the right, removing their shoes before stepping onto the red carpet inside, where large white screens shield Christian icons from their eyes, while non-Muslim tourists went to the left, following an uncarpeted passageway behind the screens to gaze upon bright frescoes depicting Christ. 

From 1964 until December 2012, Trabzon’s Hagia Sophia functioned as a museum. But after a court ruling that, in the legacy of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, the building was rightfully a mosque, the Turkish Ministry of Culture was evicted. On July 5, the late-Byzantine church reopened as a mosque in time for the first Friday prayer of Ramadan.

“It has always been a house of worship,” Mr. Buyuk says, supporting the court ruling. “We already have a cultural museum.” 

The Hagia Sophia was the second such museum to be converted recently – Iznik’s Hagia Sophia was reopened as a mosque in July 2012 – and it may not be the last. The conservative opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) introduced a bill Nov. 8 to resume Muslim prayer in Istanbul’s famed 4th-century basilica, Hagia Sophia, first converted to a museum in 1935.

Dr. Şükrü Yarcan, a tourism specialist at Nisantasi University, says the restoration of Muslim prayer in historical sites like Trabzon’s Hagia Sophia is unlikely to stop non-Muslim tourists from visiting them, but it contributes to foreign impressions that the country is growing more religious, particularly in more distant regions like North America and East Asia. 

“They might think that Turkey is going to be an Islamic country and they might refrain from coming,” said Yarcan. “They might have an image of Turkey as a negative one.”

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Turkish pastor arrested on human trafficking accusations

A Turkish Protestant pastor arrested by police in the Black Sea province of Samsun this week is accused of involvement in prostitution and the human trafficking of refugees.

Pastor Orhan Picaklar of the Samsun Agape Church was summoned to local police headquarters for questioning on Monday afternoon (November 11).

The 42-year-old pastor was detained until Wednesday evening in a police investigation led by the Morals Bureau of the Public Order Division. The criminal case was reportedly based on a telephoned complaint from an unidentified person.

“It is obviously a deliberate plot,” a spokesperson from the Alliance of Protestant Churches in Turkey told World Watch Monitor, saying that Picaklar had been harassed for years by local media and city authorities who openly opposed the church’s existence.

While in detention with seven other individuals, Picaklar learned they were all being named as suspects in the same “human trafficking operation”.

“I hadn’t ever seen any of them, and none of them knew me either!” Picaklar told World Watch Monitor.

But the Turkish press was quick to trumpet the pastor’s arrest for the next two days, before Picaklar was finally brought to testify before the prosecutor on Wednesday afternoon.

A former Muslim who converted to Christianity 21 years ago, Picaklar has pastored the Samsun Agape Church since 2003. The congregation was granted formal “association” status in 2005, although like other new Christian congregations in Turkey, it is still prohibited by law from official government recognition as a church.

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Why Are 700 Greeks Praying In a Turkish Hotel?

There is a small town on Turkey’s western Aegean coast, called Ayvalik. On Sept. 29, a striking photo from this town hit the newspapers. A local hotel was hosting a religious service, attended by 700 clerics who came from various Greek islands.

Those familiar with the historic tensions between Turkey and Greece could assume that the clerics prayed in Ayvalik in a show of defiance. The actual story, however, is quite different, offering a good perspective of how much religious freedom non-Muslims enjoy in Turkey.

The clerics had in fact come to Ayvalik to hold a religious service at the local Taxiarchis Orthodox Church. But as they failed to obtain the “required” permission from the authorities, they had to make a last-minute arrangement and pray at a hotel.

Let’s see how things unfolded, as reported in the Taraf daily: “When the governor’s office denied them permission for a service at the Taxiarchis Church in Ayvalik, the 700 Greeks decided to book the conference hall of a hotel. The service, held in the conference hall of the Halic Park Hotel in Ayvalik, was attended by a total of 700 people, including 400 from the island of Lesbos and 300 from Athens, Crete and elsewhere. The Greek consul in Izmir, Theodore Tsakiris, a parliament member from Lesbos and the Orhomenos mayor also attended the service. A member of the Greek Orthodox community in Turkey, who requested anonymity, told Taraf : ‘Back in April, we applied to hold a service at the Taxiarchis Church on Sept. 29. We waited six months for a reply. The rejection came only three days before the scheduled service date. Why did they wait for six months? We believe they did so deliberately. Concerts are being organized in the church where we want to pray. It is hard to understand why our religious service becomes a problem while concerts are allowed to be held in the church.”

The Taraf story contains also the following information: “The Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul applied to the governor’s office in April for a permission for a religious service on Sept. 29 at the Taxiarchis Church, which has a ‘museum’ status. The governor’s office, in turn, sought an approval from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The ministry rejected the request on the grounds that ‘the Taxiarchis Church does not figure in the 2000 catalogue of churches where religious services could be held.’”

You may already be confused. Why has a church become a museum? Why does worshipping in a church require the permission of administrative authorities? Why do Greek clerics hold prayers in Turkey?

Let’s start with the last question. The Greek Orthodox patriarchate in Istanbul is an ecumenical patriarchate, according to the title it uses. The title signifies a declaration that the ecumenical patriarch is the spiritual leader of all Orthodox Christians in the world, just as the pope is for Catholics. Even though some Orthodox churches do not recognize the patriarch’s authority, many others around the world accept the patriarchate in Istanbul as their universal spiritual leadership.

Turkey, however, refuses to recognize the patriarchate’s ecumenical title. Officially, the patriarchate is considered to be the religious institution of the Greek community in Istanbul, which has today dwindled to 3,000 people.

Since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power, restrictions on the patriarchate have been eased to a certain degree, but measures that would meet the genuine needs of the institution have never materialized. A decision to reopen the Halki Theological School was removed at the last minute from the democratization package that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan unveiled on Monday, Sept. 30. The seminary is vital for raising future patriarchs.

This brief explanation should have made it clear why 700 Orthodox Greeks would come to Turkey for a religious service. They did so on the call of their spiritual leader to pray in a church which is historically theirs.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/10/turkey-greek-orthodox-patriarchate-restrictions-churches.html#ixzz2ggXhdGhs

Could Turkey’s Christians Wear Police Uniforms?

 Even though no such rule exists on the books, it so happens that not even one single non-Muslim army officer, policeman or judge exists in Turkey. Non-Muslims are absent not only from the security and judiciary establishment but from the public sector altogether. Why? Is it because of their small numbers?

Turkey’s non-Muslim population today is estimated at about 100,000. According to figures by the London-based Minority Rights Group International, it includes 23,000 Jews, 3,000 Greeks, 60,000 Armenians and 15,000 Syriacs. In addition, there are Turkish converts to Protestant Christianity, estimated to number between 3,000 and 5,000.

Could it be a coincidence that none of those 100,000-plus people are public servants? In an Aug. 8 article for Al-Monitor, I wrote about how non-Muslims are marked with secret codes in the birth registers. This practice became public knowledge by mere chance earlier this year when a woman, who applied to enroll her child in an Armenian school, received a reply from the Education Ministry which revealed that birth registration offices have been using ancestry codes to secretly mark citizens of Greek, Armenian, Jewish and Syriac origin.

In any other country, such revelation would have sparked a huge outcry and long occupied the public agenda, but in Turkey it merited only short-lived media coverage before being forgotten. The coding practice, in fact, provides an indirect explanation of why non-Muslims fail to become public servants in Turkey, since birth registration offices appear to keep records of ethnic and religious origins even after people change names or convert, almost like a permanent “criminal record.” The practice suggests that whenever a non-Muslim applies to become a police or army officer, the “secret” information in birth registries instantly flows to the related institutions.

The veto that non-Muslims face in the public sector came under the spotlight again this week through an intriguing incident. The spiritual leader of Turkey’s Syriacs, acting Patriarch Yusuf Cetin, gave an interview to the Milliyet daily, in which he questioned why “people of other faiths are not assigned posts in public administration, the military and the police.”

The directorate-general of police responded in a message on its official Twitter feed: “Mr. Yusuf Cetin, the Istanbul Metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox Church, has made remarks asking why Syriac citizens are absent from the police department. All citizens of the Turkish Republic, regardless of religion, race and sect, are able to become police officers. We invite our Syriac citizens, too, to enter the exams of the police department and become police officers.”

The Hurriyet Daily News reported that representatives of Turkey’s non-Muslim communities greeted the message with skepticism. They stressed that the problem cannot be resolved with just an appeal and that the discrimination non-Muslims face in the public sector under unwritten rules cannot be eradicated overnight.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/10/turkey-urges-christians-join-police.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=23327&utm_campaign=0#ixzz2i0a5pYNH

Monastery Land Returned

Turkish authorities decided the return of the lands of the historic Mor Gabriel Monastery to the Syriac community in Turkey, as local media report. The Assembly of Foundations, the decision-making body of the Directorate General of Foundations, approved to return land to the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation on Monday.

The Director General of the Directorate General of Foundations, Adnan Erdem, said the assembly unanimously approved the decision to return the land adding that this decision means the biggest land return during the republican history of Turkey. Mor Gabriel is a 1,700-year-old historic monastery located in the southeastern province of Mardin's Midyat district. In 2008, the Forestry Ministry, the Land Registry Cadaster Office and the villages of Yayvantepe, Candarli and Eglence sued the monastery for allegedly occupying their fields.

The lawsuit was finalized last year, recognizing the monastery as an "occupier." The case was then brought to the European Court of Human Rights. "The land of the Mor Gabriel Monastery will return to the monastery's foundation," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised last week, while declaring a wide range of reforms on democracy.

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Church bells ringing again

For almost a century, the bells of St. Giragos, a magnificent 14th-century church built of sturdy black basalt bricks, were silent.

Severely damaged during the 1915 massacre and deportation of local Christians, it stood roofless and abandoned for decades, a poignant reminder of the void left by the killing of its congregants.

Yet for several months now the tolling of bells can once again be heard emanating from the belfry and echoing through the city’s narrow alleyways and busy markets.

St. Giragos recently underwent an extensive $3 million dollar restoration that included a new roof, the reconstruction of all seven of its original altars—a unique feature for a church, which usually has just one—and the return of an iron bell to its belfry.

“Right now the bells are just symbolic,” said Arahim Demirciyen, an ethnic Armenian who rings the bells twice a day. “A priest is currently in training in the Armenian quarter in Jerusalem. When he finishes and arrives here we can also start holding regular weekly services.”

The reopening of what church officials say is the largest Armenian place of worship in southeastern Turkey is part of a re-evaluation by Kurdish Muslims of the active role their ancestors played in the killings of minorities including Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and Jews in the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire.

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Promised legal reforms disappoint Turkey’s religious minorities

The Turkish government’s long-awaited “democratisation package” of reform laws announced this week has met with considerable disappointment among Turkey’s minority religious communities.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed on Monday (September 30) a broad array of reform laws, drafted by his ruling Justice and Development Party for parliamentary debate and approval.

Although public focus remained on legal changes in the Kurdish resolution process, electoral reform and lifting the headscarf ban in public offices, there were some positive, if symbolic, steps affecting the nation’s non-Muslim communities.

But without question, the religious minorities were expecting more tangible changes to correct their status as second-class citizens: most prominently, the re-opening of the Orthodox Church’s Halki Seminary, along with recognition of the Alevis as a distinct faith community.

“There are positive aspects, but also there are important steps missing,” Laki Vingas told Today’s Zaman after Erdogan’s speech. A member of the Greek Orthodox community, Vingas represents non-Muslim foundations on the council of the Directorate General of Foundations under the prime minister’s office.

“The package in its entirety is positive, but there is nothing about Alevis,” Radikal columnist Yetvart Danziyan noted.

The Alevi community, estimated at 20 per cent of the Turkish population, is denied official recognition as a distinct faith community from the Sunni Muslim majority. As a result, Alevi cemevis (places of worship) are refused the state upkeep and tax exemptions granted to all Sunni mosques, Alevi dedes (religious leaders) are ineligible for the state salaries paid to Sunni imams, and basic Alevi beliefs are excluded from the required religion courses in all public schools.

Danziyan also observed, “The failure to open the [Halki] theological school has caused disappointment not only among the Greek community, but all minority groups.”
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Transformation of Hagia Sofia into a mosque challenges the entire Christian world

The famous Hagia Sofia Church in Istanbul may become a mosque again. An official request has already been submitted to the authorities. If it’s satisfied, the Christian world will lose one of its important symbols and a new wave of islamization along with the persecution of Christians will start in Turkey, according to experts.

Built in the middle of the 4th century, Hagia Sofia or Santa Sofia was an active mosque once. It was after the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century. Only in 1935, thanks to the policy of religious and ethnic tolerance carried out by a founder and the Republic of Turkey’s first President, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, one of the largest Christian churches in the world was transformed into a museum. It was included as a World Heritage Site on the UNESCO list in the late 1980s.

Calls for permission to hold prayers in the church have been repeatedly voiced over the last few years. However, they were ignored. Now Turkish politicians use is it in their political games trying to create public opinion, Stanislav Tarasov, the head of the Middle East-Caucasus Centre of the International Institute of the Newest States, believes:

“There are certain political circles which call for the transformation of the Christian church into a mosque, challenging the entire Christian world this way. They want to reduce global events happening in the Middle East to a conflict of civilizations.”

The Istanbul Hagia Sofia is not the first among Turkey’s Christian churches which became a target for some politicians who deliberately try to make a religious center out of it. In spite of repeated calls of Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople to return relics to the Christian world, churches in Nicaea and Trebizond (present day Iznik and Trabzon) were transformed into mosques. They were museums, just like Hagia Sofia, only a while ago. Soon Salat will be held in the oldest monument of Byzantine architecture – the Monastery of Stoudios. It’s a very disturbing tendency,” Tarasov believes.

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Armenian church on Akdamar Island hosts first baptism in 98 years

Armenians from Turkey and around the world have descended on Akdamar (Akhtamar in Armenian) Island on Lake Van for an annual Divine Liturgy on the island’s 10th-century church, which was reopened to occasional prayer in 2010 after a hiatus of close to 100 years.

Turkish authorities restored the church between 2005 and 2007 before opening it as a museum. The Divine Liturgy was celebrated there for the first time in 95 years in 2010.  This year, a baptism took place during the service in the historical church.
“During our religious service, we will pray for our country’s peace, unity and solidarity. There was no empty seats at the service four years ago, but as time passed, the number of attendees decreased. Nearly a thousand people have participated this year, unlike previous years’ thousands. For the first time in 100 years, we will have a baptism inside the church. I would like to take this occasion to thank our governor, the security forces and the mayor,” Ateşyan said.

Worshippers prayed for peace in the Middle East and in the world during the service.
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After 12 years, Turkey closes the door on American church volunteer

 After 12 years serving a church in Turkey voluntarily and peacefully, Jerry Mattix suddenly is on the country's blacklist.

Officially, the government has deemed Mattix a threat to national security. Yet the police have told him he is "welcome" to apply for a visa.

Such is the perplexing state of affairs in Turkey's southeast province of Diyarbakir, where Mattix and several other once-welcome Christian foreigners have become personae non gratae.

In April and June, Turkey denied Mattix, a U.S. citizen, a religious-worker visa. When he and his family tried June 7 to re-enter the country, they were turned away.

He and his family had lived in Diyarbakir for over a decade, helping the local church. Mattix also has authored several books, in Turkish, explaining Christianity.

"What exactly they cite as my crime that is so threatening to national security I do not know," Mattix told World Watch Monitor from the United Kingdom, "but I can only guess that it has to do with the fact that I have been serving the local Turkish churches all these years."

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Trabzonspor coach reads Bible to empathize with foreign players

Turkish football club Trabzonspor’s coach said he began reading the Bible for “a better communication” with his team’s foreigner players.

“I will find the way to reach my players’ hearts, I have been dealing with the Bible for the last six weeks. I’m spending my time on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and trying to understand with which perspective they look at the life, what sort of faith and love they have... That’s why I believe that my connection with them will not be so hard,” Mustafa Akçay said in a press conference on June 27.
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Istanbul pastor shows hope to protesters

While protesters and police furiously clash in Istanbul, a pastor there is quietly continuing his ministry.

Nicholas* lives and works in Taksim, the epicenter of the increasingly violent encounters of recent days in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city. In the most recent clashes, tear gas invaded Nicholas' home, forcing his children to abandon their bedrooms and sleep in the living room where it was bearable.

Despite the turmoil, Nicholas said he and his family are not afraid. He is concerned about the uncertainty of the future of Turkey but believes it is a blessing to lead a church so close to the action.

"It is important that the church continue normally and demonstrate our faith," he said. "God is the ultimate authority to whom we submit."

Nicholas said he believes his nervous neighbors need to see the peace that is evident among followers of Christ. On Father's Day, Nicholas led 30 people in a subdued worship service despite the brewing threat of violence on the street.

Refusing to be distracted by the events swirling around him, Nicholas said, "Our mission is beyond this neighborhood and really beyond this world."

He said he admires the passion of the protesters who flocked to Istanbul's Gezi Park, but he sees a lack of clear purpose and goals. That is a sharp contrast to his mission of sharing the real hope that comes from having a personal relationship with God, he said.

A few days earlier, Gezi Park had been the site of tens of thousands of protesters singing, dancing and drinking in defiance of the prime minister. That party is clearly over; driven out of the park by the police, the protesters have fled and taken to the streets. In addition to being battered and shaken, they are angry and defiant, demanding a change in the country's leadership. To the protesters, Nicholas says, "Ultimately we find our confidence in God."

There is a growing fear among Christians in Turkey, but Nicholas said there is always something to fear because Christians live in a broken world.

"Every day there is something to fear -- tear gas, cancer, flu and other illness," he said.

But Christians shouldn't overcome fear, he explained, by "self-righteousness or willpower." Victory over fear, Nicholas said, only comes from God.

"If we live life in fear and depression, we've stopped living," he said.

The church will continue on as it always has, because there needs to be a place for people to hear the Gospel. "There are many more dangerous places in the world where our brothers and sisters in Christ meet faithfully," Nicholas said.

Nicholas asks for prayer for Turkey's leaders to rule with wisdom and justice. For the citizens of Turkey, he prays they would discover the true hope that can be found in God.
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Some Turkish protesters, even non-Christians, light candles to St. Anthony

Before taking part in demonstrations in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, “many young people” visit Istanbul’s largest Roman Catholic parish to light a candle to St. Anthony, according to the parish’s pastor.    “They are people of all social classes and religions,” said Father Anton Bulai. “As Franciscans, in this delicate moment for the country we pray, through the intercession of St. Anthony, for the good and peace in the country.”
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Turkey: What to Know and How to Pray

Turkey has been in the news. It's been all over the front page and protests have made international news.

Some are speculating it is "on the brink." Considering how the Arab Spring has played out for many Christians, such movements are of particular concern to Christians. At this point, these protests are directed at the government, which has been leading the country in a more Islamist direction, so the protests are a bit more complicated and involve several issues.

So What is Turkey?

Many people outside of the region are unfamiliar with Turkey and the Turks. If you know your Bible, you've heard of places like Ephesus, Smyrna, Laodicea. If you know church history, you've heard of places like Nicaea.

That's Turkey now.

As a matter of fact, all of the seven ecumenical councils took place in Turkey.

If there was a Bible belt over 1,500 years ago, it was in Turkey. However, that changed with the rise of Islam and its eventual conquest of the region. Then, a few centuries later, the area would be at the heart of one of the world's most powerful empires, the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

After the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey took a road less traveled among majority Islamic nations—it leaned toward Europe rather than the Middle East.

Turkey has more recently been seen as a moderate Muslim country, though some (including the current President) reject that terminology, and there are troubling signs for the future.

For example, Turkey was recently added to the list of countries violating religious freedom, though not without debate.

However, anyone who has been there knows that Turkey is decidedly different from the rest of the Muslim-majority world.

 

Turkey matters for international relations—many have looked to Turkey as a model for the future. Its politics and foreign relations are different than much of the Muslim world. For example, although relationships have been tense lately, the historic relationship of Turkey and Israel is an open secret. But, it also is one of the few places in the majority-Muslim world where Christians can and do share their faith (though not without challenge).

How Can We Pray

So, how can you pray? Well, I will share how I am praying.

I'm praying:

1. That the protests geared toward the government will lead the people away from increased Islamization and to greater religious freedom.
2. For the safety of "workers" serving there right now.
3. For the safety of Turks and for a just end to the violence.
4. That Turks in Turkey (and the 75 million Turks around the world) will turn to Christ in the midst of the tumult.

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