"You Are Finished!": Turkey's Growing War on Christians

by Raymond Ibrahim • June 7, 2020 at 5:00 am

When pretexts cannot be found, assailants sometimes resort to other tactics. In an apparent attempt to conceal the online presence of at least one church, for instance, authorities labeled its website "pornographic," and blocked it.
"[T]his hateful environment did not emerge out of nowhere. The seeds of this hatred are spread, beginning at primary schools, through books printed by the Ministry of National Education portraying Christians as enemies and traitors. The indoctrination continues through newspapers and television channels in line with state policies. And of course, the sermons at mosques and talk at coffee houses further stir up this hatred." — Uzay Bulut, Ahvalnews.com., March 16, 2020.
Just what, then, do so-called "radical" Muslims... regard as the "proper" treatment of Christians?

On May 8, 2020, a man tried to torch the Surp Asdvadzadzin Armenian Church in Istanbul, which had been repeatedly attacked with hate-filled graffiti, among other desecrations. (Image source: Vmenkov/Wikimedia Commons)

Islamic terror attacks that target Christians in Turkey have been noticeably on the rise. During Christmas in 2011, for instance, a large-scale al-Qaeda plot to bomb "all the churches in Ankara" was exposed. Before Christmas 2015, ISIS issued death threats to at least 20 Protestant churches, and warned that "Koranic commandments... urge us to slay the apostate like you."

In 2017, as widely reported, a gunman dressed as Santa Claus entered a nightclub in Istanbul during New Year celebrations, and murdered 39 people. A "heroic soldier of the caliphate," the Islamic State ("ISIS") later claimed, "attacked the most famous nightclub where Christians were celebrating their pagan feast." The statement further characterized the government of Turkey as being the "servant of the cross."

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Return of Nation-States Need Not be a Threat

by Amir Taheri • June 7, 2020 at 4:00 am

The trend we witness in world politics is away from the initial forms of globalization and toward a reassertion of the nation-state as one of the two key players in international economic and business relations, the other player being transnational businesses.
The disastrous performance of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the current Covid-19 pandemic is just one example of a more general malaise. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been shining in their absence in the looming economic crisis affecting every single nation on earth. As the World Trade Organization (WTO) fades into irrelevance, its director jumps ship to look for a more rewarding job.
Apart from Trump... nationalism has made spectacular comebacks in some other places, notably India, Brazil, Australia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and, with Brexit, even Great Britain.
The return of the nation-state, if reconfirmed in the years to come, could lead to a revival of classical international cooperation that, taking shape after World War II, created the mechanisms which have helped keep the peace, spread prosperity and foster the rule of law as never before in human history.
For that to happen we must do away with trompe-l'oeil devices such as G7 which, at best, have never been more than insipid photo-ops for politicians craving attention.
Nations reasserting their identity need not be a threat to world order; it may actually offer a second youth to an ailing geriatric system.

Had things continued as before, that is to say before the twin pandemic and economic downturn, reporters would have been packing their bags to head for Washington to cover yet another of the G7 summits that have grabbed headlines since the 1970s. Pictured: Leaders of the G7 nations attend a work session in Biarritz, France on August 26, 2019, at the annual G7 Summit. (Photo by Ian Langsdon/AFP via Getty Images)

This year, however, having been postponed twice, the annual ritual may not even take place at the new October date announced by the rotating host, US President Donald Trump.

I doubt if anyone, perhaps apart from a few Sherpas and bureaucrats, would regret the demise of the "summit" that pretended to sort out world affairs with a mixture of motherhood-and-apple pie inanities laced with bluff and bluster.

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