November 27, 2000
Message of Christianity regaining
a hearing among Turks
___By Erich Bridges
___SBC International Mission Board
___ISTANBUL, Turkey (BP)-- The 65 million people of Turkey--history's great crossroads of Europe and Asia--hunger and thirst for something.
___What that something is depends on whom you ask.
___Political leaders say Turks want international respect and economic clout. No, the nation must return to strict Islamic law and unity with the Muslim world, insist religioustraditionalists. On the contrary, warns the military, progress lies in firm adherence to the secular, modernizing path established by Kemal Ataturk, founding father of the Turkish nation.
MUSLIMS worship at Istanbul's huge, historic Blue Mosque. Nearby, the ancient Hagia Sophia church--heart of Eastern Christianity for a millennium until 1453--stands empty, a Muslim museum for tourists. But the silhouettes of long-gone crosses remain visible on its interior walls.
___Sprawling Istanbul, population 12 million-plus, embodies Turkey's contradictions. Europe's largest metropolis, it crosses the Bosporus Strait into Asia--the only world city straddling two continents. Thousands of minarets reach like fingers toward heaven--alongside countless high-rises and satellite dishes. Muslim calls to prayer compete with the techno-beat blasting out of nightclubs. Auto traffic scurries under ancient Roman aqueducts.
___The cavernous Hagia Sophia church--heart of Eastern Christianity for a millennium until 1453--stands empty, a Muslim museum for tourists. But the silhouettes of long-gone crosses remain visible on its interior walls.
___Just across the street, Nuri Sahin is open for business. Born in a village cave in eastern Turkey, he came to Istanbul and worked 20-hour days as a restaurant waiter. Today, at 30, he owns the restaurant--and a nearby hostel-travel agency. He wears a sharp gray suit, talks on a cell phone and drives a white BMW--though he craves a new $70,000 Volvo.
___Into this sound and fury comes a voice crying in the wilderness--the tiny Protestant Christian community (estimates range from 1,000 to 1,500 evangelical believers nationwide). It offers a different answer to Turkey's hunger and thirst: Jesus Christ.
___It's a still, small voice--tentative, often ignored, sometimes intimidated--in a land that remains more than 99 percent Muslim, where people still say that to be Turkish is to be Muslim.
___But the voice of Christians began to be heard more clearly after Aug. 17, 1999, a day that shook Turkey to its knees--physically and spiritually. A massive earthquake hit the crowded industrial heartland of western Turkey, killing tens of thousands, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, terrifying millions.
___Many average Turks threw themselves into aiding survivors. Turkish Christians joined in, aided by hundreds of Christian volunteers from abroad--including Texas Baptists and Southern Baptists. They offered blankets and clothing, set up and ran relief kitchens in quake-zone tent cities, financed prefabricated housing, began community centers. Most of all, they loved, served and wept with the suffering.
___Gail Davis and Susan Bell, Atlanta-area Baptists, worked in two tent camps. During free time they comforted survivors, like the mother who showed them pictures of her youngest daughter killed in the quake.
___"All we could do was hold her and cry with her," Bell explained.
___Such acts by foreign and Turkish believers alike altered perceptions of Christians among Muslims in and beyond the quake zones.
___"Everything changed on Aug. 17," said a veteran Turkey watcher. The country was shaken, and "the Turkish church was shaken--thrust out into service, into outreach, into blessing."
___Others believe the real cause of the nation's new opening to Turkish believers, however, is unseen--a global movement of prayer by Christians for Turkey in recent years. But far more prayer will be required, they quickly add.
___This land, the focus of so much Bible history, is the land of the Apostle Paul, the land where the disciples were first called Christians, the land of Christianity's earliest mission fields, the land of Revelation's seven churches, the land where Constantine built his great Christian capital.
___That was then. This is now.
___Modern Turks remain, statistically, the most unevangelized major people group in the world, according to mission researchers. There is perhaps one small church for every 3 million people.
___"Turks haven't rejected the gospel," claims one Christian. "They haven't heard the gospel."
___The church in Turkey is growing. But outside major cities, explained one worker, "you can still lose your life--and definitely your livelihood--for becoming a Christian." Arrests of believers and church closings still occur even in urban areas, despite supposed guarantees of religious freedom.
___Such threats will purify and ultimately strengthen the church, said pastor Yildirim. But that doesn't make them any easier to bear.
___"I don't like going to church with my family wondering, 'Should I take my toothbrush? Will I be spending the night in jail?'" he admitted. "But that's the way it is."
___"It's a place that looks easier than it is," warned an experienced worker. "There are demons here who knew the Apostle Paul, and they know what to do with Christians."
___They also know that Turkey is a bridge from Europe to Asia. From West to East. From the past to the future. From the church to the entire Turkic world--150 million people--that stretches all the way to western China.
___Southern Baptist mission workers believe God is beginning to beam a great light across that bridge, and they're asking fellow Baptists to help support this movement.
___The Turks are among the people groups featured in this year's week of prayer for international missions, which leads up to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.
___Baptists in Texas and beyond are invited to pray for the Turkish people, to give to the Lottie Moon offering and to have direct contact with Turks through prayerwalks, friendships with Turkish students in Turkey and in the United States, sports evangelism, business opportunities and consulting, Scripture distribution, evangelism and service projects.
___For more information, e-mail turkeypartner@iname.com. Also, check the World Wide Web at www.turkey-info.com.
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