By Carlos Madrigal, Evangelical Focus.
Spanish national Carlos Madrigal lived in Turkey for more than three decades. He comments on the government’s response to the European Parliament’s condemnatory resolution on the expulsion of foreign Christians.
How do you analyse the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s response to the European Parliament’s resolution on the expulsions of foreign Protestant pastors? Well, it’s the response you would expect. Although the Ministry’s statement does not say so, the Turkish courts are using a technicality to deny the expulsions.
Because we have not been literally deported. We have had to leave the country because our residence permits were cancelled in such a way that we simply cannot re-enter the country for the rest of our lives. Supposedly, we can return by applying for a special visa. But that visa is never granted… (I already tried).
In practice, it is indeed an expulsion. The response of the Ministry and the Turkish justice system, as they say, is to ‘change A for B’. Or, as the ancient Greek storyteller Aesop recounts about the fox who cannot reach the grapes, ‘they are not worth reaching because they are sour’. It is denying that ‘they have been expelled’ by saying ‘they have left’. But they have left because you no longer allow them to reside in Turkey, even though they were there legally and had been living peacefully and respectfully in the country for decades.
And this is not an isolated case of irregularities with a foreigner’s residence. Rather, all of these are individuals with valid documentation who, one after another, are being forced to leave the country against their will. This is not a one-off case but a systematic strategy that has been repeated with more than two hundred people.