Turkey: Non-Muslims Must Return Adopted
Abigail R. Esman
Imagine: You adopt a young child, a toddler whose biological parents abused him, or a small girl whose mother abandoned her at birth. You raise the child as your own in a loving home, providing all the opportunities available for happiness. And then the government demands you give the child back.
Or imagine you are that child, safe and secure with her foster family, a child who has joined the school soccer league, whose ballet skills have earned her scholarships and awards, whose foster siblings have known no life without her, whose puppy follows her everywhere she goes. And then the government demands you find another family to live with, because the family you’ve known for as long as you can remember practices the wrong religion.
And imagine, further, that it’s not even your own government.
Does this sound like Europe in the 1930s? Guess again: It is happening in Europe right now, as the Turkish government sweeps in to demand that foster and adopted children of Turkish immigrants who now live in Christian homes be returned to their biological parents or re-placed with Muslim families. Barring either of these, says Ayhan Üstün, who chairs Turkey’s Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights, they should be brought to Turkey.
Interestingly, the demand comes almost exactly a year after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his plan to raise “a religious generation,” as he put it, and only months after Turkish universities have announced plans to test applicants on their knowledge of religion as part of the admissions process.
Increasingly, it seems that Erdogan’s aim is not only to Islamize Turkey, then, but to Islamize all countries where Turkish immigrants and their descendants now live.
An estimated 5,000 to 9,000 Turkish children have found homes with adoptive or foster families in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, according to the Turkish Human Rights Commission, and rarely, if ever, are those foster families Islamic.
The commission has therefore accused Europeans of forcing these children to Christianize, to assimilate into Western culture – and according to Erdogan, assimilation is simply “a crime against humanity.” (As if removing a child from a loving home and returning him to an abusive parent is not?)
Hence in order to prevent any further such assimilation, Turkey says, the children must be “returned.”
But here’s the kicker: In the Netherlands, according to Lily Sprangers, director of Holland’s Turkish Institute, there are no Muslim foster families. None. And this despite the fact that the right to adopt or provide foster care is open to anyone who passes the application process.
Whether this is because no Muslim families have applied or because none have been shown to provide stable homes is not clear, but the results remain the same: In cases where a child must be removed from an unsafe situation, or where he or she has been abandoned, the only thing that matters is finding a loving and stable home, and doing so as quickly as possible. And apparently, the only such homes available are not in Muslim families.
Which should tell you something.
It should also tell you something else – something frightening, indeed: That for the Turkish government, the safety and security such families might (or might not) provide is less important than their religion.
Let me say that again in different terms: For the Turkish Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights, religion matters more than the welfare of a child.
This is the kind of attitude we see with the mothers of suicide bombers from time to time, mothers who speak with pride of their sons who have served Allah. It is the attitude one sees with the perpetrators of honor killings and honor violence, who justify abusing their children – or murdering them – for their god. It is the standard held by Islamic extremists, whoever they may be.
What should we think, now, if this has become the standard of the Turkish state?
Abigail R. Esman, an award-winning writer based in New York and the Netherlands, is the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West
This article may not be republished without expressed written permission from RadicalIslam.org
Source http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/turkey-demanding-return-adopted-children/#fm
Imagine: You adopt a young child, a toddler whose biological parents abused him, or a small girl whose mother abandoned her at birth. You raise the child as your own in a loving home, providing all the opportunities available for happiness. And then the government demands you give the child back.
Or imagine you are that child, safe and secure with her foster family, a child who has joined the school soccer league, whose ballet skills have earned her scholarships and awards, whose foster siblings have known no life without her, whose puppy follows her everywhere she goes. And then the government demands you find another family to live with, because the family you’ve known for as long as you can remember practices the wrong religion.
And imagine, further, that it’s not even your own government.
Does this sound like Europe in the 1930s? Guess again: It is happening in Europe right now, as the Turkish government sweeps in to demand that foster and adopted children of Turkish immigrants who now live in Christian homes be returned to their biological parents or re-placed with Muslim families. Barring either of these, says Ayhan Üstün, who chairs Turkey’s Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights, they should be brought to Turkey.
Interestingly, the demand comes almost exactly a year after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his plan to raise “a religious generation,” as he put it, and only months after Turkish universities have announced plans to test applicants on their knowledge of religion as part of the admissions process.
Increasingly, it seems that Erdogan’s aim is not only to Islamize Turkey, then, but to Islamize all countries where Turkish immigrants and their descendants now live.
An estimated 5,000 to 9,000 Turkish children have found homes with adoptive or foster families in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, according to the Turkish Human Rights Commission, and rarely, if ever, are those foster families Islamic.
The commission has therefore accused Europeans of forcing these children to Christianize, to assimilate into Western culture – and according to Erdogan, assimilation is simply “a crime against humanity.” (As if removing a child from a loving home and returning him to an abusive parent is not?)
Hence in order to prevent any further such assimilation, Turkey says, the children must be “returned.”
But here’s the kicker: In the Netherlands, according to Lily Sprangers, director of Holland’s Turkish Institute, there are no Muslim foster families. None. And this despite the fact that the right to adopt or provide foster care is open to anyone who passes the application process.
Whether this is because no Muslim families have applied or because none have been shown to provide stable homes is not clear, but the results remain the same: In cases where a child must be removed from an unsafe situation, or where he or she has been abandoned, the only thing that matters is finding a loving and stable home, and doing so as quickly as possible. And apparently, the only such homes available are not in Muslim families.
Which should tell you something.
It should also tell you something else – something frightening, indeed: That for the Turkish government, the safety and security such families might (or might not) provide is less important than their religion.
Let me say that again in different terms: For the Turkish Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights, religion matters more than the welfare of a child.
This is the kind of attitude we see with the mothers of suicide bombers from time to time, mothers who speak with pride of their sons who have served Allah. It is the attitude one sees with the perpetrators of honor killings and honor violence, who justify abusing their children – or murdering them – for their god. It is the standard held by Islamic extremists, whoever they may be.
What should we think, now, if this has become the standard of the Turkish state?
Abigail R. Esman, an award-winning writer based in New York and the Netherlands, is the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West
This article may not be republished without expressed written permission from RadicalIslam.org
Source http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/turkey-demanding-return-adopted-children/#fm
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