Tag: Erol Dora

  • Turkey’s “First Christian”

    Turkey’s “First Christian”

    Editor’s Note: Soner Cagaptay is Director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. He is the co-author, with Scott Carpenter, of Regenerating the U.S.-Turkey Partnership.

    By Soner Cagaptay – Special to CNN

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    Amidst news of Turkey’s political turmoil – a parliamentary boycott led by the main opposition party has overshadowed the June 12th election victory of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP), and the Turkish political system faces a stalemate – a key development has almost gone unnoticed. On June 12th, the Turks elected the country’s first Christian deputy, Mr. Erol Dora, to the Ankara parliament (Meclis), literally making him Turkey’s “First Christian.”

    Mr. Dora’s election to the Turkish Meclis is a true breath of fresh air. Not counting a handful of Christians who were allocated legislative seats in the twentieth century due to legal quotas, Mr. Dora is the first Christian deputy elected to sit in the Ankara legislature.

    This is big news. Christians represent just 1/1000 of the country’s population. In a symbolic move, Muslim Turks have chosen to elect a Christian Turk to represent them.

    This development presents an opportunity for Turkey to come to terms with its rich Christian heritage. Moreover, it signals that the country’s opposed camps, clustered around the conservative AKP and its liberal-secular opponents in an almost homogenously Muslim Turkey, can learn to live together under a liberal roof.

    The first element of symbolism in Mr. Dora’s election is that he has de facto become the “First Christian” in Turkey, which was, as many say, “the first country in history to have a Christian majority.”

    Since Jesus, Turkish Christians have dwindled in numbers and the country’s Christian heritage has weathered a tumultuous and debilitating period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Now, with Mr. Dora in the Meclis, Christian heritage in Turkey has found voice, as well as a reminder of the country’s thriving, and once dominant, Christian past.

    However, the symbolism of Mr. Dora’s election does not stop there.

    Today, Turkey is about to draft its first civilian constitution. As the military drafted the country’s previous charters, all Turks agree that they need a new constitution. But the question remains: will this charter assure the opposing factions of the society, including those clustered around the AKP and its opponents, that they can live together?

    Since the AKP came to power in 2002, the struggle between pro- and anti-AKP groups has nearly torn Turkey in two. There have been coup allegations against the AKP followed by the Ergenekon case.

    The opposition says the government has used the case not only to prosecute coup allegations, but also to crack down on its secular and liberal opponents. In addition, the AKP has levied massive tax fines against independent media. Furthermore, the judiciary is split along ideological lines. Conservative and secular powers steadfastly attempt to destroy each other.

    This, then, is the recipe for the new Turkey: pro-AKP and anti-AKP Turks try to undermine each other out of mutual fear. Hence, the country’s new constitution must provide room for everyone. If the Turks, who are over 99 percent Muslim nominally, can elect a Christian to represent themselves, surely they can write such a constitution.

    To that end, the AKP must realize that secular, liberal Turkey, which comprises at least half of the country’s population, is too big to ignore. And the secular liberals must realize that, unlike a decade ago, Turkey has a large, established conservative-Islamist elite and political party with widespread support.

    Both halves of the country must work together toward a new constitution, lest Turkey suffer a split down the middle. That would be bad for the country – the only experiment in the world that unites Islam and democracy – and for those watching it.

    Mr. Dora faces a tall order, whether or nor he is aware of it. First, he is elected to the Turkish parliament representing a Kurdish nationalist party. Second, he is a Christian voted in by Muslim constituents. Third, he sits in a conservative-Islamist dominated legislature as the deputy of a secular party. Then there is the issue of politics versus violence. Mr. Dora’s party, the BDP, does not hide its sympathies for the Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK), which employs violence and terror attacks.

    The list is not done yet: in fact, Mr. Dora is neither Turkish, nor Kurdish, but rather an ethnic Syriac. He embodies every dichotomy facing Turkey: Kurdish and Turkish, Christian and Muslim, secular and conservative, Islamist and liberal, and last but not least, political activism versus violence.

    Yet he also represents hope for Turkey’s future. Mr. Dora’s very election stands as a sign that Turks can live together if they take a hint from his election: drafting a liberal charter that accommodates the country’s many identities and political aspirations.

    The views expressed in this article are solely those of Soner Cagaptay.

    via Turkey’s “First Christian” – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs.

  • Syriac Christian elected in Turkey after 50 years

    Syriac Christian elected in Turkey after 50 years

    ANKARA – A Syriac Christian has been elected to Turkey’s new parliament, not seen in the overwhelmingly Muslim country for 50 years, it was reported Monday.

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    Erol Dora, 47, is a member of the orthodox Syriac Church and part of a small community also known as Assyrians based in Mardin in southern Turkey.

    Elected as an independent, Dora was nevertheless backed by the main pro-Kurd group the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Sunday’s vote.

    The sole Christian member of parliament, dominated once again by the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), has committed himself to being a voice for the country’s Christians.

    After his election Dora called on the European Union to welcome Turkey as a member and show that it is not a “Christian club”, the Cihan news agency reported.

    Turkey is home to Armenian Christians and members of the Greek Orthodox Church as well as Syriacs.

    The country has seen a number of attacks against Christian communities in recent years.

    © Copyright (c) AFP

    via Syriac Christian elected in Turkey after 50 years.

  • Hope is high for man who may become Turkey’s first Christian MP for 50 year

    Hope is high for man who may become Turkey’s first Christian MP for 50 year

    Erol Dora could be on his way to Ankara. Photo courtesy of Erol Dora

    ErolDoraISTANBUL // A 47-year-old former refugee has a chance to become the first Christian member of the Turkish parliament in half a century.

    If he succeeds in parliamentary elections on Saturday, Erol Dora, an attorney, could also go some way in adjusting the electoral status quo in this mostly Muslim nation that critics say does not provide its religious minorities with fair representation.

    “There has not been a Christian MP since the 1960s,” Mr Dora said in an interview from his campaign in the south-eastern city of Mardin this week. “I don’t think that’s normal.”

    Mr Dora is a Syriac Christian, an ancient community that numbers about 13,000 in Turkey and that still uses Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus.

    The region around Mardin is the traditional home of Syriac Christians, but many fled to Istanbul or western Europe when Turkey’s south-east became a battleground between Kurdish rebels and the government in the 1980s.

    If elected, Mr Dora has promised to speak for Syriac Christians in the national assembly and “work for democracy as a Turkish citizen”.

    Mr Dora is running as an independent backed by the Party for Peace and Democracy, or BDP, Turkey’s main Kurdish party.

    Political parties in Turkey must gain at least 10 per cent of the national vote to enter parliament, but that clause does not apply to independent candidates.

    The BDP, which holds 5 to 6 per cent in the polls, hopes to send deputies to Ankara by having them run as independents.

    In Mardin, a region with an ethnic and religious mix of Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Muslims, Christians and Yezidis, Mr Dora has a chance of being among the five deputies the province will send to Ankara.

    His life story resonates with voters in the region. Mr Dora was born in a Syriac village that was evacuated by the military during the fighting between rebels and soldiers in the 1990s.

    The village’s inhabitants, like millions of other people in the region of south-eastern Anatolia, lost their homes and became refugees in their own country.

    Mr Dora, who lives and works in Istanbul, said he would like to rebuild his village once the fighting between rebels and the army was over for good.

    “We want this war to end,” he said.

    Mr Dora claims his background is nothing special in this region known for its ethno-religious diversity.

    “We have been living together for millennia here. If people were prejudiced against Christians, I would not have been able to run,” he said.

    His candidacy is seen by some as an extraordinary development for Turkey, where national unity is prized above cultural diversity.

    Christian and Jewish communities number about 150,000 people in a country of roughly 74 million. The small voting base, however, is not the only reason non-Muslim deputies have been rare.

    Although it is a secular republic, the Turkish government has traditionally regarded Christians and Jews with suspicion because of alleged links to hostile foreign powers.

    Nationalists view Islam as the force that binds the nation. Political reforms inspired by Turkey’s bid to join the European Union have improved the situation for non-Muslims in recent years, but those improvements have yet to be translated into a larger minority presence in government.

    Sahin Alpay, a political scientist and newspaper columnist, said: “We have had extremely few non-Muslims” in parliament. An election victory for Mr Dora in Mardin, he said, “would be significant”.

    The last Christian member of Turkish parliament was Berc Sadak Turan, an Armenian politician in the 1960s.

    Cefi Kamhi, a Jewish businessman who served as a deputy in Ankara in the 1990s, was the last non-Muslim politician in parliament.

    Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, has a Jewish candidate, Mari Gormezano, on its ballot in Istanbul for the upcoming election.

    Yet Ms Gormezano’s low rank on the CHP list means it is unlikely she will enter parliament.

    Antoni Vilkosevski, a Catholic politician of Polish descent, is running for the People’s Voice Party, or HAS, an offshoot of an Islamist party.

    Mr Vilkosevski has virtually no chance of entering parliament, as the HAS party will stay well below 10 per cent, Adil Gur, head of the polling firm A&G, told the Vatan daily this week.

    Some observers say Turkey’s main political parties still have a long way to go in opening up to religious diversity.

    Reha Camuroglu, a deputy of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and a member of the Alevi ethnic minority, said his party had turned its back on minorities.

    Turkey has an estimated population of 15 million to 20 million Alevis, followers of a branch of Shiite Islam who are sometimes viewed as heretics by members of the country’s Sunni majority.

    At the last election in 2007, the AKP fielded several Alevi candidates.

    For Saturday’s election, however, the party reckoned that this strategy was “no longer profitable”, Mr Camuroglu said. The party also declined to let him run for re-election.

    The CHP is fielding more than 40 Alevi candidates in viable positions, according to news reports. Even so, Mr Camuroglu said the main problems of religious minorities remain unsolved.

    “It’s just tactics, just window dressing,” he said.

     

    tseibert@thenational.ae

    via Full: Hope is high for man who may become Turkey’s first Christian MP for 50 year – The National.