While Christians make up less than half a percent of Turkey's population, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Reconciliation Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) depict them as a grave threat to the stability of the nation. With Erdogan's jihadist rhetoric often stereotyping Christian Turkish citizens as not real Turks but rather as Western stooges and collaborators, many Turks seem to be tilting toward an “eliminationist anti-Christian mentality,” to use historian Daniel Goldhagen's term. Small wonder that the recent launch of an official online genealogy service allowing Turks to trace their ancestry has kindled a tidal xenophobic wave on the social media welcoming the fresh possibility to expose “Crypto-Armenians, Greeks, and Jews” mascarading as true Turks. [1] “The Mosques Are Our Barracks” Persecution of Turkey's Christian minority has long predated Erdogan and the AKP. As it stood on the verge of extinction, the Ottoman Empire engaged in mass deportations and massacres that culminated in the Armenian genocide. The end of World War I saw the expulsion of more than a million Greeks,[2] and the position of the dwindling Christian community only somewhat improved in Mustafa Kemal Atat

Anne-Christine Hoff is an assistant professor of English at Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas.