This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ADANA 000149 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL PHUM TU ADANA
SUBJECT: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM STILL MIXED IN SE TURKEY 
 
REF: A. A) RSO ANKARA/DSERRC NOTE NOV 3 
     ¶B. A)REF: RSO ANKARA/DSERRC NOTE NOV. 3 
     ¶C. A) RSO ANKARA  DSERRC NOTE NOV 3 B) ADANA 000128 
     ¶D. ADANA 000128 
 
 
1.(SBU)  Summary: The situation for the Christian community in 
southeast Turkey remains mixed.  Christian contacts in 
Diyarbakir, Hatay, Mersin and Adana report a generally positive 
to neutral atmosphere in relations with local officials, but a 
continuing atmosphere of official suspicion and occasional acts 
of violence perpetrated by individual police members.  Recent 
events in Gaziantep (refnotice and septel) indicate continuing 
harassment of Christians in that city.  End Summary. 
 
Improving zoning for Diyarbakir Church ? 
 
2.(SBU) During a late October visit with PO, Pastor Ahmet 
Guvener of the protestant-affiliated Diyarbakir Church  said 
that he expected that the church would soon have its zoning 
obstacles lifted.  He said that he had heard this news from 
"authoritative Turkish ministry sources in Ankara in the last 
few days," but still lacked any documents to substantiate the 
promise.  He was encouraged by the news, as was an American 
religious worker who assists him. As of November 22, Guvener 
remained optimistic about a permanet onig hane based on 
both verbal assuranes andinermedate zoning decisions offered 
by lower level government review committees in early November, 
but said that "really permanent changes now would not be final 
until January 2005." 
 
3.(SBU)  Should the zoning ordinance obstacles be lifted, they 
anticipated remodeling their sanctuary's interior to reflect a 
more traditional worship area by removing artificially placed 
partitions earlier built to comply with Diyarbakir city zoning 
board direction. They also hoped to buy a small lot nearby the 
church to build a children's park for community children.  They 
said that doing so would entail being allowed to receive foreign 
donations to fund the purchase.  They said that city municipal 
leaders, in contrast to earlier national government resistance, 
had offered them support-in-kind for the park's construction 
once the church could acquire the property. 
 
Adana Christians still surviving, but not thriving 
 
4.(SBU)  The Adana-based Cukurova Christan Council's leader, who 
represents a collection of several hundred evangelical 
protestant Christians, said that the region's "new Christian" 
community generally was prospering, but still encountered 
official suspicion and formal questioning short of outright 
harassment and occasional individual police violence.  He noted 
that there is no actual church building in the Cukurova area, 
but that gatherings of Christians in homes in number up to 30-40 
each were known to authorities and had not experienced any 
systematic resistance or zoning challenges in Adana or Tarsus. 
Efforts to build a church in Mersin have been blocked thus far 
by zoning challenges, he said, but the effort to gain official 
zoning approval was ongoing.  He noted that the community just 
started a FM radio Christian broadcast reaching Adana, Mersin 
and Tarsus and that Adana police had summoned him last week to 
their offices to question him about its funding and the "role of 
foreigners in supporting it.  He said that he told that it was 
partly dependent on foreign funding, had material from Hope 
Broadcasting and a Republic of Korea programming source and had 
both Turkish and foreign funding.  He said that he did not feel 
harassed and that the police did not threaten him or the radio 
broadcast. 
 
5.(SBU)  He also reported that "recently" an Adana policeman 
allegedly had broken the nose of a parishioner selling copies of 
the New Testament on an Adana street, at a small council-linked 
kiosk.  He said that the parishioner had gone to a state 
hospital for treatment and received appropriate medical 
attention, but been denied when he asked for a medical report to 
document his wounds.  (Comment: Without more details, which the 
contact declined to offer, we cannot confirm this report.  End 
Comment.)  Overall, he characterized the atmosphere in the 
Cukurova region (Adana, Tarsus and Mersin) as "free of 
harassment and generally improving over the last year." 
Nevertheless he said that most officials that occasionally 
question him or parishioners are suspicious of: 1) why Muslims 
would convert to Christianity; 2) whether their work has foreign 
ties, which he explained was perceived as explicitly negative; 
and 3) from whence their funding stemmed. 
 
¶6. (SBU)  A leading Adana protestant church was informed by 
local Turkish National Police (TNP) on November 21  that 
unspecified threats against the Christian community in Adana had 
been received  by authorities.  The TNP urged church leaders to 
be cautious during the upcoming Christian holiday period. 
Christian community leaders expressed reassurance that the TNP 
constructively had reached out to them and reflected positively 
that TNP had offered additional protection for their church's 
neighborhood during December 2003. 
 
Hatay - continuing good story 
 
¶7. (SBU)   In recent PO meetings with Catholic and Eastern 
Orthodox leaders in the ethnically mixed Hatay province, no 
major religious freedom issues arose.  Catholic and Eastern 
Orthodox leaders, as well as even Arab ethnic Alawi 
representatives, offered positive comments about their 
relationship to the local government, including praising a 
regular governor-led interfaith council which met several times 
annually.  Both the Hatay governor and the Catholic priest in 
Antakya (modern site of ancient Antioch and seat of the province 
government) talked of a Vatican-supported project to develop a 
new museum for the city's world-famous mosaic collection which 
also could house a pilgrimage hostel for Christian visitors to 
the nearby St. Peter's Grotto.  Eastern  Orthodox leaders in 
nearby Iskenderun reflected to the PO that they enjoyed a 
positive relationship with government authorities, although they 
had concerns about "surprisingly liberal zoning decisions" which 
recently allowed a  non-historic multi-floor parking garage to 
be erected next door to their main church in the region. 
Nevertheless, they said that literature, funding and training 
travel for their clergy (who generally study in Lebanon) was not 
an issue.  They, like Jewish community leaders elsewhere in 
southeast Turkey, lamented that their community's chief 
challenge was economic because of high local unemployment and 
the flight of their youth to Istanbul, western Europe and the 
U.S. 
 
Mersin - zoning barriers, encroachment, but stable community 
 
8.(SBU)  Contacts with Mersin Catholic leaders reflect no 
significant changes since ref. B reporting.  The protestant 
evangelical community there continues to face zoning challenges 
to its effort to establish a church, which were it allowed, 
would be situated in the historical quarter of the city nearby 
existing Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.  Many Christian 
community leaders reflect that considerable stress has been 
placed on the historically Christian religious district of the 
city by its location in what has become the upscale center of 
the city, leading to encroachment on lands caused by first 
unregulated urbanization and later very conservative zoning 
backlashes which affect the wider district in an effort to 
regulate sprawling growth in the area.  For now, the protestant 
evangelical community continues to meet in personal homes and is 
several hundred strong, although dispersed among several 
different districts of the city.  Overall the Christian 
community in Mersin is quite wealthy and well-placed in 
influential city circles.  It is stable in size, although there 
does seem to be a trend of conversion from the Eastern Orthodox 
to the Catholic church.  Security authorities, when confirmed by 
baptismal records, have allowed identity cards' reference to 
religion to state "Christian." 
 
9.(SBU)  Comment:  The situation for the Christian community in 
southeast Turkey is mixed.  Recently two different Christian 
contacts independently interpreted regional events by noting 
that Turkish officials reluctantly are tolerating Christian 
activities "where foreigners are shining a light, but that 
nothing has changed in the government framework to allow 
isolated breakthroughs in tolerance to be applied elsewhere." 
Historic Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian communities, 
especially in Mersin and Hatay, have struck modus vivendi and 
seem under little or no pressure, but that pattern has yet to 
emerge for protestant evangelical communities, which seem to 
encounter varying levels of official and communal suspicion and 
resistance.  End Comment. 
 
 
REID