Turkey: Religious Minorities Watch Closely as Election Day Approaches

The Princes' Islands, a small archipelago about an hour's ferry ride from Istanbul, are perhaps the last remnant of the city's cosmopolitan past. The summer home of a large part of Istanbul's Armenian, Greek and Jewish communities, the islands are one of the few places in Turkey where you can still hear Ladino and Greek spoken on the street.

Kinali, one of the smaller islands, is a favorite among Istanbul's Armenians. Along its leafy main street, markets sell Armenian delicacies, while down on the rocky beach, men and women of all ages sun themselves while looking out upon the Istanbul skyline.

Despite the island's tranquility, the vacationers' minds are not at ease. Turkey will hold parliamentary elections on July 22, and many members of Turkey's small, but historic religious minorities believe these elections are the most important in decades.

On the one hand, Turkey's successful government, led by the liberal-Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP), has been accused of trying to undermine the country's secular foundations and to promote the role of Islam in public life. On the other hand, the country's secular opposition has increasingly embraced rhetoric that is nationalist and anti-Western, part of a wider nationalist surge that has already turned violent. Last January, an ultra-nationalist teenager shot to death Hrant Dink, an outspoken Armenian journalist, on an Istanbul sidewalk. [For background see the Eurasia insight archive]. http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav012207.shtml A few months later, a group of young men brutally murdered three evangelical Christians in the Turkish city of Malatya. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav042507.shtml

While in previous votes people sometimes didn't bother to leave the beach to go cast their votes on the mainland, islanders say this election is different. "This time, people are aware of the seriousness of these elections. As minorities, these elections are very important for us," says Nadin Papuccian, a 22-year-old Armenian sitting with friends at a waterside café.

Though small, numbering less than 100,000 in a country of 70 million, Turkey's officially recognized minorities – Armenians, Greeks and Jews – loom large in the country's imagination, and in how Turkey is perceived abroad.

Ankara often uses the minorities' continued presence to present Turkey as a mosaic where different religious groups coexist peacefully. At the same time, religious freedom is consistently one of the barometers by which Turkey's progress on human rights issues and its ongoing European Union membership bid are measured. Also, problems revolving around the minorities – from the Armenian genocide debate to the Cyprus issue and the continuing closure of a major Orthodox Christian seminary on Heybeli, another of the Princes' Islands – continue to haunt Turkey domestically and in foreign affairs. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav110806b.shtml

The July 22 election comes in the midst of a raging debate over the role of Islam in public life and the question of whether the AKP is committed to maintaining Turkey's secular system. Despite that, it appears that a large number of Turkey's Christians are supporting the party, which has worked hard to portray itself as committed to democratization and human rights.

"The AK Party is more moderate and less nationalistic in its dealings with minorities. The Erdogan government listens to us – we will vote for the AK Party in the next elections," Mesrob II, the Armenian patriarch in Turkey, told the German magazine Der Spiegel in a recent interview.

Meanwhile, Agos, the Armenian weekly, estimates close to 60 percent of Turkey's 70,000 Armenians will vote for the AKP. "I'm a Christian, but I'm not scared of the AKP. They are working for the good of the country, they are respecting other cultures and accepting the rules of the EU," says Aret Cavdar, an Istanbul steel trader who is summering in Kinali. "I don't know if they are honest about this or not, but I haven't seen another government working this well."

Mihail Vasiliadis, editor of Apoyevmatini, a Greek-language daily newspaper based in Istanbul, says he believes Turkey's miniscule Greek community – an estimated 2,000 people remaining from a population that numbered over a million in the early 1920's – is also backing the AKP. "[AKP leaders] are more liberal towards the minorities. I do not deny that they are Islamists, but they are the only [ones] that will guarantee Turkey's integration with Europe," he says.

Vasiliadis points out to a debate last year in parliament over reform-minded legislation introduced by the AKP that would have liberalized the strict rules governing minority-run foundations and would have created a mechanism for returning minority property confiscated by the state. The bill was strongly opposed by MPs from the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP), Turkey's main opposition party. Opponents claimed the bill would give foreign powers more control in the country. "When you look at the other [Turkish political] parties, they consider minorities as part of another nation. They see us as a cancer within the nationalist structure," Vasiliadis says.

In contrast, members of Turkey's 20,000-member Jewish community appear to be leaning towards the CHP, currently the only viable secular opposition to the AKP, despite the fact that the party has grown increasingly hostile to the United States and the EU over the last several years and has a poor track record when it comes to minority rights. The party has also hinted that it might form a coalition with far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), whose stance on minority issues is even worse.

Still, for many Jews, Islamism in Turkey has been synonymous with anti-Semitism, and concerns about the AKP's Islamic roots and agenda have not been allayed. Nisim Cohen, a textile merchant eating at a kosher restaurant on Buyukada, the largest of the Princes' Islands, says he will vote for the CHP, though he's not happy about it. "I don't like [the CHP], but I don't have a choice," Cohen says. "The AKP shows a nice face, but in their hearts I fear they want to make this an Islamic country. They will not keep the Republic as it is."

Adds Viktor Kuzu, an advertising executive who is also a former columnist for Salom, the Jewish community's weekly newspaper: "The last year put questions in our mind. If [the AKP] could have the power to change the educational system, the court system and the interrupt the way we live, then that is not a good option."

"So let's have an AKP government that is still in charge, but has less power. Hopefully that will be the scenario," Kuzu suggested.

Members of Turkey's religious minorities are keenly aware of the reality that they are effectively, though not legally, excluded from top positions in public service, politics and the military. No party, for example, is running with any high-profile Christian or Jewish candidates. "In this country, Turk means Muslim Turk," Baskin Oran, an Ankara University professor who is running as an independent candidate for parliament in Istanbul, and who is also expected to get strong support from Armenian voters, told the English-language newspaper Today's Zaman.

Rifat Bali, an Istanbul-based independent researcher and historian who has written extensively on Turkey's minorities, says despite some improvement, the AKP's track record on minority rights is spotty. "I don't think they tried to change the atmosphere regarding minorities," he says. "Take the Malatya murders or the Dink murder: besides paying lip service, nothing was done. There was no strong statement issued."

Critics have pointed out that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister and leader of the AKP, continues to host on his private airplane writers from Vakit, an Islamist newspaper that publishes rabidly anti-Semitic articles. And when the mainstream media recently raised hackles after it turned out that one of the foreign investors in a consortium that bought Turkey's state-owned chemical company was of Armenian descent, the government quickly stated that it would review the sale.

Bali suggested that there was a superficial quality to Turkey's EU-mandated efforts to democratize society as part of the accession process, asserting that the AKP has taken no action to curb both Islamist and ultra-nationalist media outlets from promoting racist and anti-Semitic views. "It goes on as before, with no one interfering," Bali said.