Berkley Center

During the Ottoman Empire, the people of Anatolia defined themselves largely by religion, and those who shared the religion of the ruling family considered themselves special citizens with special privileges and legal exemptions from taxes, etc. However, people of several religions made their home in the empire, and members of religious minorities usually formed the backbone of even the smallest city’s economy, trade, and industry. Today, many people look to cities such as Antioch, near the Syrian border, with nostalgia for a time when Christians, Jews, and Muslims all lived together along the happy, go-lucky, tolerant, and diverse stone-cobbled streets of the city. This nostalgia glorifies a bygone era, but, like most myths, it certainly has a basis in historical truths.

All across southeast Turkey small remnants remain of religious communities that once thrived and played an integral economic, social, and political role in Anatolia. In Antioch, for example, there once lived a large and prosperous Jewish community, but today the Jewish community in Antioch can barely sustain itself, and the Synagogue of Antioch only opens for special occasions. Additionally, the once-large Syriac Orthodox Christian community of Mardin (near the Iraqi border) now numbers only 75 families. On the outskirts of Mardin, surrounded by rolling hills covered with olive and apricot trees, a huge Syriac Orthodox Christian monastery that once housed many monks today houses two. As a religious minority, the Syriac Orthodox Christians get lumped together with other minorities and, in some respects, the government neglects them. Unlike the Greeks and Armenians, who, upon the inception of the Republic, received permission to run their own schools and educate students in Greek and Armenian, Syriac Christians have no opportunity to send their children to schools that teach secular and religious subjects in Aramaic. Today, the large Muslim population of Mardin largely knows little about the beliefs and traditions of their Syriac neighbors, and the bulk of interest in the Syriac community comes from Christians embarking on “faith tourism” trips through Turkey.

But, even while Christian tourists discover places such as the supposed birthplace of Abraham in Urfa and St. Peter’'s Grotto in Antioch, the Southeast Anatolia Project (In Turkish referred to with the acronym GAP) has literally submerged underwater other remnants of religion in southeast Turkey as part of its efforts to develop water resources, infrastructure, education, and forestry in the southeast. The construction of one particular GAP dam has submerged underwater the ancient city of Zeugma. Luckily, excavations sponsored by a member of the Dell family allowed many incredible mosaics to be removed from the site almost completely intact; however, tourists can no longer visit the entire site, once a major entry point for the eastern Roman Empire and an important place for early Christianity. The movement of Roman soldiers through Zeugma greatly aided in the spread of Christianity and various ancient cultic beliefs such as Mythricism.

Thus, in the face of one of Turkey’'s many great contradictions—the belief in an internally focused Turkish, predominately Muslim national identity paired with development that aims to compete with the outside Western world——minority religions in southeast Turkey confront a variety of survival obstacles. And while government-monitored Turkish textbooks work arduously to ingrain in Turks a version of history that paints Turkey as a place always destined for a Turkish nation, communities such as the Syriac Christians live in the southeast virtually unnoticed by most of Turkey’'s increasingly urban-focused population.

Turkey boasts an abundance of beautiful landscapes. The people here proudly embrace their musical and other artistic traditions. Turkish hospitality actually does exist, and I dread returning to the United States where strangers usually receive suspicious looks rather than glasses of hot tea. And Turkey'’s aim to improve the lives of many of its citizens through GAP represents a noble effort; however, as the case of Zeugma demonstrates, development goals have superceded efforts to preserve a huge part of Turkey’'s history of religious diversity. Kuznets curve, when applied to issues of environment, suggests that people will not show concern for environmental issues until they have reached a certain level of economic success. Perhaps this theory can also apply to issues of historical preservation and religious diversity. Perhaps, as more Turks find work in tourism and other industries, more concern will develop for those non-Muslim communities that have called or that do call Turkey home.