The Associated Press: Priest Attacked, Hurt in Turkey A Catholic priest was hospitalized Sunday after being stabbed, the Italian Embassy in Turkey said. Police said they detained the suspected attacker.
The assault was the latest in a series of attacks on Christians in Turkey and was likely to add to concerns about whether the predominantly Muslim country — which is bidding for European Union membership — can protect its Christian community.
The priest, Adriano Franchini, was stabbed after Sunday Mass at St. Anthony's church in the port city of Izmir, said Simon Carta, the Italian consul there.
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German cardinal seeks OK to build church in Turkey : Religion General A German cardinal is appealing to Turkey for permission to build a Christian shrine in Tarsus, the birthplace of Saint Paul, a newspaper, the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger, was set to report Saturday. The Catholic archbishop of Cologne, Joachim Meisner, suggested this as a goodwill gesture to end a dispute in the city about planning permission for a big new mosque for Cologne's Turkish Moslem community.
Cardinal Meisner said a centre for Christian pilgrimage in the Mediterranean port city of Tarsus would be a symbol of religious freedom in Turkey.
"We Christians don't have anything there," said Meisner, who has held back from welcoming plans by Ditib, a Turkish religious affairs agency, to build a grand mosque in inner-city Cologne to replace a crowded existing mosque.
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Turkey : Malatya murder scandal - JOURNAL CHRETIEN ’Turkey at the moment is like a restless sea with several dangerous currents getting stronger and stronger, threatening to create a serious storm.’ We prayed for the storm to be stilled (Matthew 8:23-27). These ’dangerous currents’ are being whipped up by monsters raging with agitation. The stronger one is ’Turkish nationalism’ and the weaker but growing one is ’Islam’. Please pray that they will be fully exposed, confronted and dealt with.
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Compass Direct News : TURKEY - MALATYA ‘INVESTIGATION SCANDALS’ ROCK TURKISH PRESS Reacting to a storm of media reporting seriously flawed conduct by state prosecutors in Malatya, the Turkish Interior Ministry last weekend opened a judicial investigation into alleged collusion of public officials in the torture and murder of three Christians in the southeastern city last April.
Mounting evidence emerged that the five confessed murderers had direct, repeated links with local police officers, members of the special military forces, a regional council member of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and even a chief public prosecutor. The reports included banner headlines in national newspapers and a leading slot on evening TV news broadcasts for five consecutive days.
Implications swirled over why the Malatya Prosecutor’s Office had ignored obvious leads from telephone records of the suspects and failed to investigate two very detailed, incriminating letters by “informers” who claimed to be close to the perpetrators behind the five young killers.
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Turkey investigates possible police collusion in Christian murders Two suspects, Abuzer Yildirim and Salih Guler were quoted by Radikal newspaper as saying that another suspect, Emre Gunaydin, had told them that he had met with police officials who gave him the locations of Christian churches in the city.
According to Radikal, Yildirim said, "I asked him [Gunaydin] who are the police chiefs that you are speaking to, he said: 'Don't ask, take it easy."'
Allegations of police collusion also arose following the murder in January of Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian who roused the ire of Turkish nationalists when he describe the killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as genocide –Turkey has always denied genocide.
According to FoxNews, some believe the authorities failed to act on reports of a plot to kill Dink, although no evidence has linked any government or police officials to Dink’s murder.
There are fears that a “deep state” may exist in which a network of informers and ex-officials are linked to organised crime that sometimes targets reformers and other “enemies” of Turkish nationalism.
In addition, Christian leaders in the country have expressed concern that nationalists are promoting hostility against non-Turks and non-Muslims by exploiting the uncertainty of Turkey’s place in the world, reports FoxNews.
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Bianet :: Turkey's Human Rights Situation "Discouraging" The existence of the Department of Religious Affairs, obligatory Religious Education classes at school, and clothing rules are still problems. There are still attacks on non-Muslims. Cem houses, the places of worship for Alevis, are denoted as “culture centres”.
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Turkish pastor receives increased protection following hit-list discovery Turkish police have increased their protection of a Baptist pastor in the country, after his name was discovered on a hit list being carried by three suspected terrorists.
The suspects were arrested after being found with a cache of weapons. It is believed they were planning on carrying out an attack.
Pastor Erstan Mesut Cevik, who runs a Baptist church in Izmir, was originally put under police protection in April this year after he carried out the funeral service of a murdered Turkish convert to Christianity, reports Baptist Times.
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TODAY'S ZAMAN Suspects in the investigation of the brutal killing of three Christians at Zirve Publishing House in Malatya in April of last year have links to numerous individuals in the state, including security officers, the police and even prosecutors, but the most surprising link they have is to an academic. Ruhi Abat, a research assistant at Malatya University’s Department of Theology, was accused in a letter -- signed by a man named Ali A. -- of having incited Emre Günaydın, one of the three suspects captured at the site of the murder. The picture above shows Abat in a conference on “Islam, [Christian] Missionaries and Destructive Activity.” Abat refused to comment on the accusations directed at him. Photographs and information related to him have been removed from the Web site of Malatya University’s Department of Theology. Abat’s research focused on missionary activity. He is also the author of an article titled, “The Breaking Points in the Discourse of Dialogue between Religions,” and “The Claims Missionaries Spread about Belief in God,” both available on the Internet.
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TODAY'S ZAMAN The investigation and trial of the suspects in the brutal murders of three Bible publishers in the southeastern city of Malatya last April have been marred by serious allegations of cover ups and obstruction of justice, but the government could intervene, according to a number of prominent columnists, political leaders and lawyers. The government has so far remained inactive in the face of what seems to be a process of grave obstruction of justice but could act and change the course of events, columnists, political leaders and lawyers said in their appeals to the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) on Friday.
“The Malatya case shows the usual practice of the protective shield of the state with its security forces and judiciary. The security forces and the judiciary here are protecting each other by not conducting a detailed investigation. Those who are protected are the hit men who say they committed the murders with ‘nationalist feelings’, secret or non-secret services they had contacts with, meaning police and military intelligence units. The common point among all these similar incidents is this protection.”
Öndül said, in addition to the Dink murder, the same pattern was evident in the murder case of Trabzon’s Father Andrea Santoro, killed last year by an ultra-nationalist teenager and the attempt to assassinate Akın Birdal, a former head of the İHD.
Öndül said the murderers in all these cases said they committed the acts out of nationalist and patriotic feelings, but the investigations were never successful because the state prosecutors and judges have the same mentality. “The judiciary’s approach is a one that is state-oriented rather than protecting the rights of the people. Minorities’ differences are perceived as a threat to state security. According to Öndül, the only way to break through this shield is a “strong and determined political will.”
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COURT EVIDENCE RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT INVOLVEMENT OF TURKISH OFFICIALS IN KILLING OF CHRISTIANS - Eurasia Daily Monitor It has now emerged that, in the six months preceding the murders, four of the suspects changed their telephones a total of 106 times, suggesting a concerted attempt to avoid surveillance. The cost of changing telephones so frequently has also raised the question of whether they were receiving financial support. Perhaps more alarmingly, the records of the telephones used by the accused showed that those with whom they had been in regular contact included a local council member from the ultranationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP), someone in the Ankara headquarters of the Special Police Unit, a public prosecutor, and a member of the military (Milliyet, Radikal, Vatan, NTV, CNN-Turk, November 4).
There is nothing to suggest that the institutions themselves were involved in the murders. However, the latest revelations have disturbing parallels with the trial of those suspected of killing Hrant Dink and have raised questions about the prevalence of racist and religious prejudices among those responsible for maintaining law and order. At the trial of Dink’s suspected murderer, it emerged that, despite reporting numerous death threats, Dink had not been offered police protection. More worryingly, telephone records presented to the court suggested that some of those accused of Dink’s murder had close links with elements in the police force in their native city of Trabzon, on Turkey’s eastern Black Sea coast. After the main suspect had been arrested, the Turkish media published photographs taken by the detaining officers, showing him a variety of heroic poses in front of the Turkish flag. Similarly, after a 16 year-old was convicted of the February 2006 murder in Trabzon of the Italian priest Andrea Santoro, his family received photographs taken by detaining police showing their son proudly displaying a Turkish flag (Milliyet, October 5).
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TODAY'S ZAMAN Phone conservations of five suspects accused of torturing and murdering two Turkish and one German Christian on April 18 in a publishing house in the southeastern province of Malatya have raised serious questions over the shadowy connections among the suspects, prosecutors, police officers and military personnel.
Though the murders first appeared to be motivated by hate toward the three publishers -- Necati Aydın, Uğur Yüksel and Tilmann Geske -- working at Zirve Publishing House, the phone calls made over the last six months prior to the killings by the five suspects -- Emre Günaydın, Hamit Çeker, Abuzer Yıldırım, Cuma Özdemir and Salih Gürler -- have revealed unexpected connections.
A security officer, a chief public prosecutor, a writer, a parliamentary deputy candidate and even members of special military forces are among the figures the suspects conversed with before the murders, noted media reports.
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The Baptist Standard :: The Newsmagazine of Texas Baptists A Baptist pastor in Turkey has been placed on a death list.
Ertan Mesut Cevik, pastor of a Baptist church in Izmir, the modern name for biblical Smyrna, and Turkey’s third largest city by population, has received increased police protection after his name was found on a list carried by three suspected terrorists. The three, who are arrested, are suspected of planning wide scale attacks after a large cache of weapons was found in their possession.
Cevik has been under police protection since April 2007 after he hosted a funeral service for one of three Christians that was killed in Turkey on April 18. Two of the murder victims, Necati Aydin, 36, and Ugur Yuksel, 32, were Turks who converted from Islam to Christianity. The third man, Tillman Geske, 46, was a German citizen.
The Baptist pastor was also protected after he and the Baptist congregation were accused in a Turkish newspaper article, published after the three murders in April, of engaging in “coercive evangelism” by using money and drugs to attract young people. These charges were denied by the church.
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Compass Direct News : TURKEY - SPURIOUS CASE AGAINST CONVERTS PROLONGED Bowing to demands of prosecution lawyers, yesterday the judge presiding over a contrived case against two Turkish converts to Christianity for “insulting Turkishness” ordered 12 more witnesses to testify.
During a 50-minute hearing yesterday in Silivri, 45 miles west of Istanbul, Judge Metin Tamirci summoned two alleged eyewitnesses, five gendarme soldiers, two policemen and three local residents to appear at the next hearing before the Silivri Criminal Court, set for March 13.
Ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz claimed on behalf of his three young plaintiffs that the potential witnesses on his September 4 petition to the court had “information and eyewitness details” pertinent to the accusations against defendants Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal.
The three Silivri residents summoned are listed on the defendants’ computers as people who had requested Christian literature and a visit from a local Bible correspondence course with which Tastan and Topal worked.
The prosecution had previously requested several of these individuals as potential witnesses, but their admission into the case had been denied by the previous judge. Judge Neset Eren withdrew from the case in September after Kerincsiz accused him of improper bias in his handling of the litigation.
“A year has passed, and the court has already heard all the testimonies on both sides of this case,” defense lawyer Haydar Polat told Compass yesterday. “But it is clear from today’s hearing that the court plans to continue this unfounded case for at least another year or more.”
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blog_turkey The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) encourages imams to display Koranic verses at the gates of Turkey’s mosques. The verse that the imam of Zeynep Sultan Mosque in the busy Eminonu district of Istanbul chose to display was Maida, 51 that says: “Oh ye, the believers! Take not the Jews and Christians for your friends. They are friends to each other and he who befriends them is one of them. Allah does not guide those cruel oppressors to the path of truth”
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