Murders of Turkey’s non-Muslims await illumination

In recent years, Turkey has been shaken by the murders of a number of prominent non-Muslims.
Some of their court cases received more attention than others, but lawyers suspect they might all be related. One such case was the murder of Catholic priest Andrea Santoro, who was killed in 2006 by a 16-year-old ultranationalist in his church in the Black Sea province of Trabzon. The Santoro case was completed with lightning speed.Then came the murder of Hrant Dink, the editor-in-chief of the İstanbul-based Turkish-Armenian Agos weekly.

The hitman was again an ultranationalist teenager. The court sentenced one suspect to life while acquitting all suspects of organized crime charges in the January 2007 murder. The high-profile case is expected to go to the Supreme Court of Appeals. After that, in April 2007, three Protestant missionaries were brutally murdered, bound to chairs, tortured and stabbed at the Zirve Publishing House in the eastern province of Malatya before their throats were slit. The publishing house printed Bibles and Christian literature.

In 2010, Catholic bishop Luigi Padovese, who led Father Santoro’s funeral service in 2007, was also brutally killed by his driver and bodyguard in the Mediterranean port of İskenderun in southern Turkey. The hearing of the case will be on Feb. 22, but the case has a low profile.

Ercan Eriş, the lawyer for the Roman Catholic Apostolic Vicariate of Anatolia, said the family of Bishop Padovese is not willing to pursue the case, just like the family of Father Santoro.

“I observe the hearings of the case on behalf of the church. We tried so hard to obtain formal permission from the family to represent them in order to pursue the case, but they are not interested in that. Therefore, the case is in the hands of the public prosecutor,” he said.

Eriş also said the reason behind the family’s unwillingness is totally based on the theological teaching of “forgiveness.” “Based on my previous experience, I can say their decision is related to their beliefs because in several other cases of attacks against churches and religious leaders, priests and churches have never filed official complaints,” he added.

However, things might change in the course of the case if new evidence emerges, just like in the case of the Malatya missionaries.

When Dink was killed five years ago, almost no one realized there might have been some links between the Dink, Santoro and Malatya murders except human rights lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz, who said this was the beginning of a pattern.

“We later found out about the Cage plan and learned how those involved in the Ergenekon gang had planned and carried out their attacks and their campaigns of intimidation against non-Muslims.
Murders of Turkey’s non-Muslims await illumination