The Affair at Agia Triada

It' a small church in Bahariye quarter of Anatolian Constantinopolis. Well preserved by local supporters and very unlike many churches in Asia Minor that share the common fate of destruction by ignorance.

Anything about it is hardly news. Small community, a young priest and a family of carekeepers. However a recent attack highligted this small church in the hearts of many Christians living in this neck of the woods and abroad.

In almost one month, just after the celebrations of Christmas holidays and Epiphany, it will be January 19th. The first anniversary of Hrant Dink's(1) murder. It has been almost one year since an Agos(2) cartoonist renamed his corner as "I want to go back in time before January 19th". One would expect in one year, since the assasins were caught immediately after the murder, they would be sentenced, and precautions were taken to protect at least minority leaders of the land and the affair would have come to a closure both in courts and public conscience.



Well, just the opposite is what happened. The accused are benefiting from exemplary treatment from authorities, a conviction is still far away although many relatives and friends of the deceased are one way or another convicted of an archaic law code named "301", and both suppression and attacks against minorities are intensified heavily. Many minority middle school kids go to school everyday under the veil of fear, clergymen are afraid of their lives on a daily basis. In fact four of them violently massacred and one recently kidnapped.



Here, I wish to center the attention of my readers to the latest act of vandalism. At Agia Triada, two "drunk men" according to some media(3) "entered the church and started to break windows, kick the furniture around, and one even hurt himself trying to break the windows of the main entrance door. Then carekeeper's wife came upon and asked them to leave, they ignored her and kept doing what they were doing. Then she called the cops and they came and took the attackers to the hospital." (Since one of them was hurt) The story also tells us how one of the attackers followed her to her residencial quarters, and how there were blood stains on its door. And how they -at least- verbally abused the elderly woman.



In Turkey, the existence of Ecumenical Patriarchate fools many outsiders, but the country has very few Greek Orthodox citizens and even less Greek Orthodox churchgoers, and even lesser number of Greek Orthodox churches. In Smyrna for example, despite a small Greek community, there are no ongoing Orthodox services provided for these. And any attack against such a small, socially insignificant, repressed and scared community should be significant sociologically.



And the outcome is in fact sociological reality. One should but notice the deepening hatred in the common man against "the others". In Turkey "the others" could be anybody during a daily confrontation. The Other can be the police if you are driving drunk, or a Kurdish grocer if you are sentimental about terrorist attacks by PKK (Kurdish Liberation Army), or an Armenian journalist, or a Greek father if you are a mainstream Kemalist(4) and so on. But the constant is, there is always "an other" for any Turk living in this country. It would be far fetching to analyze the reasons for that in the scope of this article, but one could easily speculate about the effects of 80 something years of education in this country that promotes the illusion that Turks in the history were always right and righteous while every other nation or ethnic group were wrong or wrongdoers against Turks!



Everyday life is simply determined by that fact. Social anarchy and confrontational behavior is obvious in daily interactions and many live their lives in oblivion. Some see Islam as a way out of this vicious circle and to attain peace, some believe in excessive economical welfare for one's self to fend off the daily disturbances of life, but the vast majority of the population is helpless. Helpless even against themselves.



One should recognize all the facts when exploring political attitude towards a nation, which deserves full attention of all International institutions, since it is one of the largest populations of Eastern Europe and might as well be one of the main braking points of a future conflict in the Middle East.

(1) Hrant Dink was a prominent Armenian-Turkish journalist and writer.
(2) Agos is a weekly newspaper published in Constantinople in Turkish and Armenian, founded by Hrant Dink.
(3) The news of the attack appeared only in marginal or minority media. Mainstream media turns a deaf ear to all atrocities against minorities in Turkey.
(4) Kemalist is a word depicting a person believing in the official doctrin of Turkish Republic and sees everything against the official truth as a threat against the Republic. (After the founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal)