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Tur Abdin: a Christian Minority Struggles to Preserve Its Identity

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Tur Abdin: a Christian Minority Struggles to Preserve Its Identity after they leave, and a fellowship is created that can be used of ations is better than a large production. Using such small-scale God. plans as models, and by rotating workers, JOCS can best imple­ Consultations with National Councils of Churches or other ment the "From Asians to Asians" concept. local bodies must be undertaken to clarify the following matters Self-sacrificing leaders who will serve as the middle-level before a JOCS worker is assigned to any particular place: Is there corps for training and developing field workers are' the key to the an overall development plan? If not, when will such a plan be success of such a program. More important than doctors are those undertaken? Is there an advance base, or a central or university who will go into the local areas. More important than highly hospital that can serve as a base? If there is not already a national trained nurses are assistant nurses and midwives. Such are the counterpart to the JOCS worker, what can be done to secure one? persons who must be prepared by JOCS to aid in the self­ Are there adequate resources for the professional development of development of people at the rice-roots as they move toward the JOCS worker and a place for him or her to work? For the self-reliance. Let us stand humbly and ready to give assistance as working relationship, a small-scale plan with familylike associ­ the Holy Spirit leads. Tur Abdin: A Christian Minority Struggles to Preserve Its Identity Norman A. Horner or Christians of the ancient and venerable Syrian Or­ building still in use anywhere in the world. "Still in use" is F thodox Church, the Holy Land extends beyond Jerusalem precisely what distinguishes the churches and monasteries of Tur and Palestine to include Tur Abdin, "Mountain of the Monks." Abdin from ancient Christian monuments in Asia Minor and There, across a hilly countryside of southeastern Turkey, a now elsewhere. Not only do pilgrims come to marvel, but faithful declining Christian population stoutly preserves the traditions, communities of villagers gather at each church building every language, and historic sites of its apostolic heritage. This is the evening for vesper prayers as well as on Sundays and feast days for region so graphically described by Oswald H. Parry in Six Months the liturgy. in a Syrian Monastery (London: H. Cox, 1895). Parry's book is still The Syriac (Aramaic) language continues to be the basic the only substantial source of information in English about the medium of communication in Tur Abdin, and indeed some of the Syrian Orthodox "homeland"; and his maps, although outdated, older generation understand neither Turkish nor Arabic. Yet it is a are still a useful guide to this corner of Mesopotamia. modern Syriac which, like all other languages, has changed with Five men traveled together to Tur Abdin during the latter half the times; the struggle to retain it amid the growing pressures of a of July 1975: Father George Saliba, patriarchal vicar of Mt. Leba­ Turkish educational system is not easy. TurAbdin is no longer the non and head of Mar Aphrem Seminary in Atchaneh; Dennis solidly Christian enclave of past centuries. The Muslim popula­ Hilgendorf, director of the Middle East Lutheran Ministry in tion is now a vast and growing majority. Some sixty villages have Beirut; Gabriel Bahnan, a layman of the National Evangelical managed to remain exclusively Christian, jealously guarding Synod of Syria-Lebanon; Benjamin Pannikal, a young Syrian Or­ against any Muslim residence in their midst; but for the most part thodox deacon from South India; and Norman Horner, an ecu­ it is a losing battle. menical consultant for the United Presbyterian Church and pro­ That Tur Abdin should be part of modern Turkey is a political fessor at the Near East School of Theology. Father George had accident. It belongs historically and linguistically to Syria, but was ready entree to places we could never have found otherwise, and it ceded to Turkey by foreign powers after the Ottoman collapse and was he who defined the purpose of the trip: "to see our situation the rise of the new Turkish state. There is Widespread feeling with your eyes, hear it with your ears, and feel it with your among the people that they would fare better as a religious minor­ hearts." The following account of what we saw, heard, and felt ity under Syrian law, a feeling doubtless heightened by lingering includes some interpretations for which the writer of this article memories of Turkish massacres in the 1920s when the Syrian must, of course, accept sole responsibility. Orthodox, with their own nationalistic ambitions, shared the fate To say that one who visits Tur Abdin leaves the twentieth of the Armenians. Father George told us the experience of his own century and moves back into the fourth or fifth is not strictly true. family. On his father's side, in an extended family of seventy, only One goes instead into a marvelous mixture of the antique and the two-his father and an aunt-survived the massacres. At that contemporary. Churches are there which were first built before time many thousands of these Syrian Christians fled across the the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451. At least one of them-at borders into the then more hospitable areas of Syria and Iraq, and Hakh-dates to the apostolic era and may be the oldest Christian today the most populous diocese of their church lies just south of Tur Abdin in the Syrian [ezira between the Euphrates and the Tigris. The Syrian Orthodox people who still live in Tur Abdin have more or less reconciled themselves to Turkish rule and even dis­ Norman A. Horner, Associate Editorof the Occasional Bulletin, was consul­ play the picture of Ataturk with appreciation: /IAtaturk meant tant on inter-church relationshipsin the Middle East and Professorof Mission well for the Christian minorities," they say. "Unfortunately, he and Ecumenicsat the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon, until died before his program was really implemented." Their major 1976 when he became Associate Director of the Overseas Ministries Study concern now is of neglect rather than persecution in this far­ Center. eastern Turkish province where such essentials as road mainte­ 134 Occasional Bulletin nance and electric power still lag far behind other parts of the ered the child's face with bandages. Now the anxious parents country. were bringing him to the visiting priest for anointing with oil. But if the political issues are now quiescent, inter-religious After a quiet and impressive ritual of prayer, the family went out relationships continue to be strained. No "Christian-Muslim as inconspicuously as they had entered. dialogue" has emerged there. We heard about the practice of some Back on the parish-house roof we prepared to bed down Muslims of spitting at Christians, quite literally and juicily, and under the stars. People reminisced about Ottoman days when the had occasion to witness it. The solidly Christian villages seem Syrian patriarchate was in Mardin. One story concerned a promi­ obsessed with the fear that Muslims will acquire property among nent bishop who had defected to Catholic allegiance and tried them-andthey feel that the settlement of even one such family in surreptitiously to assume the office of Orthodox Patriarch. He their midst is lithe camel's head in the tent." For the time being gained the sultan's firman through bribery. Those who opposed this mutual hostility seems quite beyond the point of reconcilia­ him fled and elected a proper patriarch at the monastery then in tion, and it is the Christians who suffer most in consequence. The Kulleth. They were captured and imprisoned, but when the youth see little future for themselves and move steadily away from prison walls collapsed after three days of unprecedented rainfall the area-to Istanbul, into Syria and Lebanon, some of them there was no further doubt about whose side God was on! ultimately to Europe and the Americas. Numbering 40,000 only Sunday liturgy began at 7:00 A.M., and this time the women one generation ago, the Christians of Tur Abdin are now less than were present-filling the entire back half of the church behind a 10,000 strong-most of them middle-aged or elderly. A dire pre­ screen. Scripture lessons, read with great strength and clarity, diction is voiced that twenty-five years hence there will not be any included passages most calculated to encourage a minority Christians left. They insist that the appraisal value of their lands is people, for example, "you are the light of the world." Homemade far higher than the amount they could get were they to sell. "The candles, pieces cut from a long coil of heavily waxed cord and Muslims intend to pay nothing, simply to move in and take over completely dripless, were held directly over the book of the Gos­ when our numbers are further reduced." pels in this building where there were no electric lights. Before the The fear-psychology of a minority people is evidenced by the Eucharist, a large group of women gathered before the priest and, fact that we did not meet a single Christian in the entire area half concealed by his wide, outstretched cape, made a group between Mardin and the villages eastward of Midyat driving a car confession. The service was in all the most vibrant and impressive of his own. Apparently this is due less to poverty than to fear, worship I have witnessed in a long while.
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