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Yesterday, the European Union recommended that Turkey begin talks to put the country on the path to membership. Some European countries, especially France, were quick to point out there is no guarantee Turkey will become an EU member, and its future status is conditioned upon several reforms, particularly human-rights issues. For Christians suffering under strict oppression, Turkey's EU entrance may bring full religious freedom to the country, which it has not seen for centuries.

Turkey has already made significant progress. Guenter Verhuegen, the EU's enlargement commissioner told the Associated Press, "Turkey was simply too good … (its) progress was too good [to say no]. We can trust Turkey that the country will continue … improving the situation.'' Officially secular, Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim.

"Turkey has undergone remarkable changes over the last few years, putting in place the extensive reforms the EU asked of it. The EU must now deliver its side of the bargain,'' said the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw.

Despite the changes, Christians still suffer in the country, which is home to cities where the apostle Paul addressed some of his epistles. Even today, a bomb explosion "shattered windows at the seat of the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians in Istanbul." The Associated Press writes, "The blast came weeks after police clashed with hundreds of rock-throwing nationalist Turks who staged a protest outside the Patriarchate and burned an effigy of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, whom far-right groups accuse of working against Turkish interests."

Andrea Rombopoulos, a Christian, publishes Iho, one of two Greek-language daily newspapers still printing in Turkey. He is a descendant of Greeks from the Eastern Roman Empire, and hopes that EU membership will end the difficulties his community has defending its rights.

"We have about 60 foundations that run our schools and our churches," he told the Agence France Presse news service. "But for the past 37 years, the (Turkish) state has forbidden any elections to renew their management - has sometimes seized their property - and prevented them from functioning properly."

"Turkish membership in the EU," he said, "will be the best guarantee for the future of his dwindling community."

Rombopoulos said his community is on the verge of extinction, but EU membership could provide human-rights safeguards as well as economic development they need.

For the few evangelicals in Turkey, the country's efforts to clean up its human-rights record have made an appreciable difference. " The political atmosphere in Turkey has improved enough, he added, to allow Christians to meet openly, to have summer camps attracting several hundred people and to have public baptisms in the Mediterranean Sea," writes the Washington Times.

"We are relatively free and we are tolerated now," said Jerry Mattix, an American who pastors a 40-member church in the eastern part of the country. "What attracted me to Turkey is that here's a Muslim country that's relatively open to evangelism. We [evangelical Christians] ought to be all over this."

Mattix's congregation, Diyarbakir Kilisesi, "is made up of both Christians and Kurds, Turkey's main ethnic minority. Diyarbakir is in the heartland of a region known for its uprisings seeking self-rule for about 15 million Kurds."

The government, looking to quell potential uprisings, has displaced about 15 million Kurds. Because of their sufferings, Mattix says, they are open to accepting Christianity. However, they are still afraid to be open about their faith. "During lunch at a local restaurant," writes Julia Duin, "several members of his church were openly nervous about being asked — within earshot of other patrons — how they had become Christians."

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October (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48