Erdogan's 'Holy War'

Turkey: Erdogan's "Holy War" Obsession

• When non-Muslims deny Muslim minorities the rights that Muslim-majority countries systematically deny non-Muslim minorities, extremist Muslims in Turkey seem to have the habit of threatening non-Muslim lands with holy war.
  
  
• President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who spoke of "a war between the cross and the crescent" because the Austrian government closed down seven mosques, does not seem to bother with any of those visible, documented cases of religious discrimination against non-Muslims and against Islam's minority sects.
  
  
• Muslim leaders complain of travel bans on some Muslim nations, but many Muslim countries have travel bans against other Muslims in addition to banning Israelis.
  
  
  
  

When non-Muslims deny Muslim minorities the rights that Muslim-majority countries systematically deny non-Muslim minorities, extremist Muslims in Turkey seem to have the habit of threatening non-Muslim lands with holy war.

"Soon religious wars will break out in Europe. You are taking Europe toward an abyss. That's the way it's going," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, predicted in a 2017 speech. The minister was angry with the European states that had banned Turkish Islamist political shows in their territories.

On June 10, Erdoğan said: "These measures taken by the Austrian prime minister are, I fear, leading the world toward a war between the cross and the crescent."

So, once again, we are hearing promises of holy war, and an angry Islamist threatening a Christian state because a Christian state had decided to close down seven mosques and expel some 60 Turkish-funded imams as part of a crackdown on extremist Islam.

The Austrian authorities had already launched a probe after images emerged in April showing children in a Turkish-funded mosque playing dead and re-enacting the World War I battle of Gallipoli. The photos of children, published by the weekly Falter, showed the young boys in camouflage uniforms marching, saluting, waving Turkish flags and then playing dead. Their "corpses" were then lined up and draped in flags.

Turkish Islamists' understanding of religious freedoms is limited to freedom for the Islamic cause only, for example here, here, here and here. 

Their understanding of religious pluralism is limited to defending pluralism in Muslim-minority lands -- and majoritarianism in Muslim-majority lands, again as, for example, here, here, here and here.

In a 2017 report, Turkey's Association of Protestant Churches noted that hate speech against the country's Christians had increased in both the traditional media and social media. Hate speech against Protestants, the report said, had persisted throughout 2016, in addition to physical attacks on Protestant individuals and their churches.

Andrew Brunson, an American pastor, has been in a Turkish jail for more than a year and a half on spurious charges of terrorism and espionage. He faces up to 35 years in prison.

Erdoğan, who spoke of a war between the cross and the crescent because the Austrian government closed down seven mosques, does not seem to bother with any of those visible, documented cases of religious discrimination against non-Muslims and against Islam's minority sects. This is vintage Erdoğan: Europe must treat its Muslim minorities well and with respect, or we will fight a holy war; for non-Muslim minorities in our Muslim lands, we give them two choices: convert to Islam or suffer the persecution.