Planned church assassination might signal further attacks

One person was arrested last week in Kocaeli on charges of planning an attack on the İzmit Protestant Church to assassinate its pastor following a round of detentions in the town shortly after the Kocaeli Police foiled the alleged plot, which has brought fears that an illegal group behind many attacks on non-Muslims in 2006 and 2007 is currently highly active.

The discovery is not only very important because it prevented a potential attack, but also shows that groups looking to trigger a coup d’état and who have planned and carried out attacks in the past against non-Muslims as part of a larger plan against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government are still operating.

Not everybody agrees that the recent threats directed at the İzmit church necessarily mean that Ergenekon extensions are making a comeback. Ziya Meral, a London-based Turkish analyst and academic told Sunday’s Zaman in an e-mail interview: “It is not clear whether these individuals are part of a larger network that carried out similar attacks on non-Muslims in the 2003-2008 period. It might well be that this is a local independent initiative.” He said, however, that he did not find the threats surprising, noting: “Last year, there were various false reports in local media that the İzmit area was a target for missionary activities and there were thousands of secret churches in the city. Sadly, years of scapegoating non-Muslims in Turkey and paranoia over activities of non-Muslims continue unchallenged by the courts or the state. It was only a matter of time for various ultranationalist groups to be incited to act on such dangerous media reports and statements by public officials.” He said the role of the overall atmosphere could not possibly be ignored: “While attacks against non-Muslims in Turkey stopped overnight in 2008 when deep-state trials and arrests began, we are seeing a dangerous comeback of attacks and sinister media reporting. This might well be signs of a new play by groups seeking to create unrest, or it might well be the automatic outcome of years of social manipulation through psychological warfare. In other words, this attack might not be directly led by the deep state, but it carries the marks of what they started and sustained.”

But it is clear as day now that past atrocities against non-Muslims, such as the Wealth Tax of the ‘30s, the deportation of Jews in Thrace and the pogroms against Greek Orthodox residents of İstanbul in 1955, the Dink murder, the murder of Father Santoro in Trabzon and the Zirve murders are parts of a long-running campaign by shady groups, says Cemal Uşak, a journalist and writer who is the vice president of the Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV). He said he agreed that recent, almost simultaneous, acts targeting non-Muslims do create the impression that they are part of the same plan and a continuation of it. “Certainly, the judiciary will have the last word on this, but the developments don’t leave us much room to think of this in any other way.” He also noted that a culture of hate that allows viewing one’s fellow citizens as if they are an enemy has been engrained in the subconscious of some segments. “Heinous social engineering can make murderers from this subculture. Ogün Samast [Dink’s shooter] is an example. In the long term, what we should fight is this culture of hate.”

The İzmit Police Department’s counterterrorism unit was monitoring a group in the Çukurbağ neighborhood of İzmit, following the emergence of intelligence indicating that they were gathering information on the İzmit Protestant Church and its İzmit representative, Emre Karaeli. After a lengthy period of surveillance, police conducted an operation to take the suspects into custody on Jan 15. Twelve suspects were detained in the provinces of Kocaeli, Şanlıurfa and Diyarbakır in connection with the group. Six were released; six others were referred to the İstanbul Prosecutor’s Office, while one was arrested by the court and placed in prison.

Speaking about the discovery, Kocaeli Governor Ercan Topaca said the governor’s office has been monitoring the church to ensure the safety of the congregation. He said an attack was planned to take place during a four-day church event between Jan. 17 and Jan. 21. He said the fact that 12 people came together to gather intelligence, make observations about the church and plan the attack is an organized criminal activity.

İstanbul Protestant Church Foundation İzmit representative Emre Karaali said his church’s door was open to everyone. “We don’t ID people who come to the church or do any other kind of questioning.” He said the police work that led to the operation started about a year ago, when he reported receiving threats. Karaali also said there had previously never been threats directed at the church or any of its officials. The church has been active in Kocaeli for 14 years.

He also said there were some he knew among the suspects, saying these were individuals who attended church services and meetings from time to time. “Some of them told us they were Christians. Two of these suspects I know personally. They have played with my kids, spent time with my family, we have broken bread together. What I find odd here is this: Outside, many people might hold biases against us without knowing anything about us at all. Two of the suspects were people we knew, and never ever suspected.” He also thanked the security forces for their good work.

He said his church only sought to serve people trying to live according to their beliefs. “They say everyone thinks of the other in terms of who they are. We have never held any ill will towards anyone, and we don’t think ill thoughts about people. We believe the sincerity of those people who come here. What we are doing here in the end is serving people in the best way we can to help their relationship with God. In this respect, we don’t eye people suspiciously or with worry. Our door is open to anyone who wants to sincerely live their faith, or learn about our faith.”
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Zirve killers planned Bible publisher murders well in advance

The brutal massacre of three Christian missionaries who operated the Zirve Publishing House in the city of Malatya in 2007 was planned well ahead of time and in a highly calculated manner, documents found on a computer belonging to a suspect in the killings have revealed.

Police have found a large number of documents that serve as evidence of how the murders were premeditated over a long period of time on a computer seized from the house of gendarmerie intelligence officer Maj. Haydar Yeşil -- one of the suspects in the Zirve trial. The hard drive of the computer includes video footage of the victims, phone conversation recordings belonging to them and a chart that details the organizational structure of Christian missionaries in Malatya.

Victims Necati Aydın and Tilman Geske, a German citizen, had been tagged by the criminal network months prior to the murder, the documents on the computer show. In addition to Geske and Aydın, there is detailed information, complete with pictures and video recordings, of US citizen Ronal Lolgal and Zirve publishing employee Hüseyin Yelki. These individuals were shown on a document supposedly revealing a “missionary organization chart,” created inside the gendarmerie. Some of the photographs found on the hard disk are from Geske's funeral. The killers also had a list of missionaries residing in Turkey with personal information such as their passport numbers and detailed information about their families and residential addresses. Police have established that the documents were created by different members of the Gendarmerie Command in Malatya.

The documents confirm the assertion of co-plaintiff lawyers in the trial that began four years ago that the gendarmerie was actively involved in the killings. The murders are believed to be part of a general plot targeting missionaries, devised either by Ergenekon -- a clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government -- or a related organization. Evidence that came out in the trials regarding the 2007 murder of journalist Hrant Dink, the 2006 killing of Father Santoro, an Italian pastor, in Trabzon and other attacks on non-Muslims shows that they are also likely to have come from the same master plan. Prosecutors and lawyers in these trials have found evidence linking these events to each other.

Another police finding was that there was a briefing on the slain missionaries at the Malatya Provincial Gendarmerie Command where a slide presentation was used. During the briefing at the gendarmerie command, detailed information and intelligence work conducted in the city on the missionaries was also given to the gendarmerie officials.

Prosecutors believe that the campaign against missionaries in Malatya and other parts of Turkey was launched by a clandestine and illegal unit called the National Strategies and Operations Department of Turkey (TUSHAD), allegedly established in 1993 by former four-star Gen. Hurşit Tolon, who is one of the key suspects in the Ergenekon trial. Last week, the Malatya court hearing the Zirve trial ordered Tolon's arrest based on the evidence found on the computer at Yeşil's office.

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Assassination bid on Kocaeli pastor foiled

Police in Kocaeli have prevented an alleged assassination attempt against Emre Karaali, the northwestern province’s only known Protestant pastor, detaining 12 men and seizing a number of weapons.

Karaali said the police confiscated guns, detailed records of his daily routine, a schedule of religious ceremonies, as well as a layout of the İzmit Protestant Church and his house, in a recent raid against suspected assailants. Six of the detained were released on Jan. 18, while the remaining six were testifying in court when the Daily News went to print.

“Some of the detainees periodically used to come to our services, and some others were not familiar at all. Police told me that people in this organization had ties with another city and someone from another country, but they did not name them,” Karaali told the Daily News on Jan. 18 over the phone.

Karaali said he had been receiving threats over the phone for nearly a year. The İzmit Protestant Church was founded as the first church in the city in 1999, the same year a massive earthquake killed 40,000 in Kocaeli, whose administrative center is İzmit.

Some locals had criticized the church at the beginning, accusing it of missionary intentions.

The church was preparing for four days of celebrations between Jan. 17 and 21 and had invited top local officials in the city before the plot was revealed.

On Jan. 15, local daily Çağdaş Kocaeli had criticized the church for “overrating” the event’s announcement.

“Many citizens who did not even know that there was a church in İzmit until yesterday, found out about the existence of the İzmit Protestant Church after leaflets were delivered to buildings and postboxes. It is not known how many members this mentioned church has, but the event was announced in the leaflets day by day,” the daily said in an anonymously published announcement, adding that some locals had become “annoyed” by the leaflets.

The report also accused the church of missionary activity and of aiming to detach local youth from Islam and bring them toward Christianity.

Zeynep Kübra Özçiçek, the daily’s managing editor, said her paper had made no attempt to target the church or Protestants but had only sought to convey that their readers were irritated.

“Our readers asked us to take the local mufti’s opinion. … The mufti did not make any comment, but invitations were sent to all the local brass in the city; this was not ordinary,” Özçiçek told the Daily News on Jan. 18.

Karaali, who has been living in İzmit since 2009, said he had never had any problems with locals but noted that ultranationalist writer Banu Avar had alleged on May 20, 2012, during a book fair in the city that İzmit had been chosen as a “pilot city by Christians to make Turks Protestants.” The comments were subsequently published in many papers, as well as the Kocaeli Municipality’s website.

Karaali said they filed a criminal complaint, but the court found Avar not guilty. Similar incidents occurred before the Zirve Publishing House massacre in Malatya in 2007, Karaali said.

Although the church was founded 14 years ago, the İzmit Protestant Church has only 20 members, Karaali said.

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Police break up plot to assassinate Turkish pastor

Police in Turkey say they thwarted an assassination plot against a Christian pastor Tuesday when they arrested 14 suspects, two of whom had been part of his congregation for more than a year.

Emre Karaali, pastor of Izmit Protestant Church and the target of the alleged plot, said two of the arrested suspects were regular members, feigning interest in Christianity. One of them, he said, participated in a baptism in July.

Some of the other suspects also had visited the church, Karaali told World Watch Monitor. He said three of the suspects are women.

“These people had infiltrated our church and collected information about me, my family and the church and were preparing an attack against us,” said Karaali, 33, a native Turk and a convert to Christianity. “Two of them attended our church for over a year and they were like family.”

Accounts of the arrests in Turkish media reported that the suspects were planning to murder Karaali this week during a series of evangelistic outreach meetings.

“They caught them last minute,” said Hakan Tastan, an Istanbul Christian who was visiting Izmit Wednesday. “If they had waited one week, we would have lost them,” he said, referring to the pastor, his family and potentially other church members.

The 14 had collected personal information, copies of personal documents, created maps of the church and the pastor’s home, and had photos of those who had come to Izmit to preach. In one of the homes raided by police, two guns were found, Turkish media reported. Police have recorded the telephone conversations of the 14 suspects.

Press reports said the Izmit anti-terror police decided to close in when they learned the network of suspects had brought in someone from Diyarbakir, in eastern Turkey, to carry out the murder.

The police are not talking about the arrests, claiming their investigation is ongoing.

Karaali said he learned about the arrests reading the morning newspaper Wednesday. Later that day, he said, the police called him in for questioning and a briefing that lasted more than five hours.

He said police showed him photos of some of the 12 suspects who, unlike the remaining two suspects, had not been regularly attending the church. He said he recognized some of the 12 as occasional visitors. Karaali said his treatment at the hands of the police was “exceptional.”

The pastor said he has been working with police since January 2012, when he informed them of a death threat he had received.

“I received a threat by phone and that’s when the police started to investigate,” Karaali said. It’s not yet publicly known whether any of the suspects arrested Tuesday are connected to that initial phone threat.

Karaali said he declined police protection that was offered at that time, though his wife and two young children did move into an apartment building with better security. Another threat was made during the summer.

“They said, ‘You talk too much. We’re hearing your voice everywhere and we’re going to break your head.’ They didn’t say they’ll kill me exactly, but that if I didn’t shut up it would be bad.” Police have not revealed whether any of the 14 suspects arrested this week are suspected of making the threat.

Izmit, about 100 miles east of Istanbul, is the heart of an industrial region of about 1 million people, known for the devastation it faced in the earthquake of 1999 that claimed thousands of lives. The Izmit Protestant Church, operating for 13 years, is a small congregation, ministering to 20 people, all of whom are Turkish converts to Christianity. Karaali and his wife have served the church for four years, in an environment he described as difficult.Link

The Most Persecuted Religion in the World

Christianity is facing elimination in its Biblical homeland. Between a half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have departed or been killed over the past century. Short attributes the intolerance and violence towards Christians to the rising Islamicization of Middle Eastern countries. Some of the oppression is government sanctioned and some government permitted; most is government ignored.

We can move more quickly through the countries. Consider apostasy laws in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Iran, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Sudan and Malaysia. By apostasy, read "Muslim convert to Christianity." Of the plight of apostates, Ziya Meral, a London-based Turkish scholar, writes: "Apostates are subject to gross and wide-ranging human rights abuses including extra-judicial killings by state-related agents or mobs; honour killings by family members; detention, imprisonment, torture, physical and psychological intimidation by security forces; the denial of access to judicial services and social services; the denial of equal employment or education opportunities; social pressure resulting in loss of housing and employment; and day-to-day discrimination and ostracism in education, finance and social activities."

We have scarcely skimmed the surface of violence and intolerance to Christians in Muslims worlds. If it should continue at its present rate, Christianity will very soon be completely eradicated in its homeland. While the cultural loss is deeply worrisome, the lack of liberty, intolerance and violence in Muslim countries is even more worrisome. Reports by the Freedom House think-tank echo this concern: religious liberties are most threatened in Muslim-majority countries.

Christianity is not, as Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury reminds us, an import to these countries. The Christian communities that are now being threatened and even wiped out are nearly as old as the New Testament itself. Christians have called these countries home for two millennia; Christianity is not a Western imposition on historically Islamic countries.

Why has the tragedy of Christians in the Muslim world been ignored? Short blames this on the media's fear that criticizing Muslims is tantamount to racism. I attribute it as well to secular media's lack of interest in and sometimes even scorn for religious belief.

Western media must overcome its fear of criticizing Muslims and its disinterest in religious belief. Religious liberties are the most fundamental human liberties -- they are indicators of a country's political willingness to allow people to choose their own way of life. In countries were religious liberty is conspicuously absent, one is likely to find a host of other liberties threatened as well.

Finally, the U.S. government must actively defend Christian liberty in Muslim-majority countries. While no U.S. politician worth his or her salt would deny the right to a Jewish state in the Middle East, so, too, no politician worth his or her salt should ignore the plight of Christians in the Middle East. Sadly, in the Middle East both Judaism and Christianity are threatened by Muslim extremists intent on violently recreating the world in their own image.
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First Open Air Christmas Celebration!

On Saturday, December 22nd, Protestant Christians gathered for their first ever Christmas celebration in a public square. They began by marching together down a walking street before gathering before a stage where a choir sang Christmas carols. A local pastor, Levent Kinran gave a short message about Christmas and the Chairman of the Board at Holy Scripture Information Association, Ercument Tarkan, led the group in prayer.  Several hundred Christians attended and their were no problems from the crowd that gathered.  Here is a video of the event:

Have divine question? Ask an English-speaking imam in Istanbul

Istanbul’s Fatih Municipality and Religious Affairs Office have begun a new project to teach imams (Islamic clergymen) English. The project mainly aims to enable imams to communicate with tourists visiting mosques. 

Yesterday, a test measuring English skills was given to the imams. After a written exam, the first English lesson was held. The imams had the most difficulty with the oral exam. Beyazıt Mosque’s muezzin (caller of daily prayers for Muslims), Mahir Sarıkaya, said they really needed such training. “One wants to communicate with the tourists that come around,” he said. 

Istanbul Mufti Rahmi Yaran, who also contributed to the project, called imams to use their body language along with spoken language. “In order to express yourselves, your religion and country, you need both body language and spoken language. You should place emphasis on both of them,” Yaran said, addressing the imams. 

Also, Fatih Mayor Mustafa Demir said they aimed to please tourists and provide them first-hand information with the project. Demir said learning a new language was a very challenging process. “It is like cycling up a hill on a bike. If you stop, you will fall,” he said. 

Demir also said teaching English to imams would enable them to give religious sermons in English. “One of our aims is to enable [imams] to recite religious sermons in English at mosques, especially at the ones such as Sultanahmet and Yeni Camii, which attract many tourists. English sermons are recited after the ones in native languages in all over the world. I think giving English sermons in Fatih is necessary.”
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Finally, Istanbul gives Syriac Christians a place to build: a cemetery

Three years after a Syrian Orthodox foundation applied to build a church in Istanbul, the Greater Istanbul Municipality has granted them a large plot of land and a building permit.
Banner headlines in the Turkish media praised the early-December decision as “a first in the history of the Republic,” declaring that never before had Turkey allowed a non-Muslim minority to build an official new house of worship.

Still, Syriac Christians were far from pleased.

For one thing, the land they were “granted” by the municipality is, in fact, a Latin Catholic cemetery.

“We don’t want a Syriac church on top of a cemetery!” the website suryaniler.com stated. “This is a big scandal.”

In fact, the graveyard had been donated back in 1868 to the Italian Catholic Church in what is now Istanbul’s Yesilkoy district. It was then officially registered as Catholic property in 1936, although later confiscated in 1951 by the city.

The Council of Europe’s 2011 progress report noted that Turkey was not fully implementing Law No. 3998, which states that cemeteries belonging to minority communities can no longer be taken over by local municipalities.

According to lawyer Nail Karakas, the Latin Catholic foundation had applied to the city last summer, in accordance with the government’s August 2011 pledge to restore expropriated minority properties, to regain possession of their property and resume Christian burials in the graveyard.

So Syriac leaders are insisting that the cemetery land newly designated for their church be returned instead to its rightful owners. “It is clear that (the authorities) want to cause conflict between the minority communities,” commented Syriac layman Sabo Boyaci.

Boyaci also faulted the government for trying to exploit the Syriac community politically. “I don’t believe the government’s sincerity. They delivered this land to us in order to silence us on the matter of Mor Gabriel Monastery. The government simply aims to make a good impression on the European and Turkish public,” he told Hurriyet Daily News.

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Religion questions now part of university entrance exam in Turkey

Turkish PM Erdogan had a remark this year saying that he desires a pious nation. His AKP government works tirelessly to fulfill his wish. Lastly questions pertaining to religion will be part of the university entrance exam starting in 2013.

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Mayan apocalypse: Turkish village becomes latest doomsday hotspot

A Turkish village has become the latest apocalypse hotspot, with believers of the Mayan calendar prediction that the world will end on December 21 flooding into the area.




Some New Age spiritualists are convinced of a December 21 "doomsday" foretold by Mayan hieroglyphs – at least according to some interpretations.

Sirince, a village of around 600 inhabitants near the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, has a positive energy according to the doomsday cultists, who say that it is close to an area where Christians believe the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven.

The Mayan prophecy has sparked a tourism boom in the village, which is now expected to host more than 60,000 visitors according to local media.

"It is the first time we witness such an interest during the winter season," said Ilkan Gulgun, one of the hotel owners in Sirince, quoted by the media.

He said the tourists at his hotel believed that the positive energy of Sirince would save them from an apocalyptical catastrophe.
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Special Warfare and Christians

There are some real life stories in Turkey that can only be narrated by masterful directors without giving you the feeling that the movie is unrealistically exaggerating them. These are stories unique to Turkey: When you tell them exactly as they are, you may create the feeling of sensation and surrealism for the people who listen to you.

They are so real, but the sense of realism can only be given by a creative artist. Let me explain to you what I mean by telling you a story. Imagine you watch this film about Turkey shot by a Turkish director: A Turkish sergeant major penetrates into the Christian community as a result of orders he received from his superiors. In a short while he is accepted by the Christian community as a member, he starts doing missionary activities across the country, distributing thousands and thousands of Bibles on the streets in shops and other places. He invited Turks to become Christians.

Meanwhile, he becomes one of the prominent figures in the community he penetrated; he even becomes a pastor and establishes his own church. However, his commanders then send him a second order saying that he has completed the first phase of his mission, and that he now needs to be a Muslim once again. But this of course needs to be done publicly.

He starts to appear on one TV channel after another, explaining that he has become enlightened, that he saw the “ugly” face of Christians and therefore became a Muslim once again. Following his dramatic appearances on TV channels, quite an intense psychological lynch campaign starts all over Turkey. And this lynch campaign is followed by physical attacks and murders.

If you watch all these in a movie on screen I am sure you would tell yourself the film exaggerated everything to a great extent. However, all these unbelievable things happened in Turkey starting from 2005 onwards.

İlker Çınar, one of the key witnesses in the Malatya massacre case, which concerned the brutal and tragic murder of three missionaries in 2007 in Malatya, revealed all this and explained in great detail how he manipulated Turkish public opinion in the past. The authenticity of his statement will be established at the end of a court trial, of course. However, we already know beyond a reasonable doubt that some of the key elements in his narrative are indisputably true. First of all, these dramatic TV appearances are something we all saw with our own eyes. And again we saw the documents in the court files showing that he was receiving salaries from the General Staff both during his missionary activities and while declaring on TV channels that he had once again become a Muslim.

Çınar said that all the orders he received reached him in sealed envelopes or by telephone. He explained extremely interesting details in his statements to the prosecutors and the court. He said that after receiving an order to appear on a TV channel, he would then receive an invitation from the said TV channel. Apparently, the commanders who give him orders for public appearances had a lot of friends in the media, at universities and in many different places. Their network was so efficient that they were able to arrange TV programs for a sergeant to appear on most popular TV channels during primetime.

I remembered all these stories once again while reading a report from the parliamentary commission investigating military coups. The report turns our attention to the Special Warfare Department, which was associated with many past atrocities before, starting with the Sept. 6-7 pogroms that targeted non-Muslims in İstanbul in 1955.

The report tells us that this department, which was established in the 1950s against the so-called Soviet invasion (as happened in many NATO countries in those years), was involved in many atrocities against civilians during this whole period of time.

One of the interesting details in this report says that the estimated numbers of civilians connected to this center is over 100,000. These people are from all walks of life, from merchants to peasants, from doctors to journalists; they are called “white forces.” This is a hidden army designed to wage civil resistance to any invasion, but apparently all these civil elements were somehow involved in the dirty work of this department.

Quite interestingly, Çınar also mentioned these so-called white forces in his statement in connection with psychological warfare against Christians. When I put all these stories and information side by side, new questions marks come to mind. Might these people who invited Çınar to speak on TV and who organized conferences for him at respected universities in Turkey and arranged all other things be somehow a part of these white forces? There are so many other questions to be asked, and I hope they will be able to answer some of them in the near future.

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Turkey: Becoming a Facial Hair Hub

News on the lighter side:

Health tourism can be a hairy business anywhere, but for Turkey this is literally the case. Hair transplants have been a cornerstone of the country’s billion-dollar-plus medical-tourism market for more than a decade. But recently, a growing number of medical tourists, especially Middle Eastern men, have been traveling to Turkey specifically for facial hair implants.

“Both in Turkey and in Arab countries, facial hair is associated with masculinity, and its lack can cause social difficulties,” commented Dr. Selahattin Tulunay, a transplant surgeon who has a private practice in Istanbul. He estimates that up to a quarter of his monthly hair-transplant patients are Arab men from the Middle East interested in more facial hair.

“Businessmen come to me to get beard and moustache implants because they say that business partners do not take them seriously if they don’t sport facial hair,” Tulunay added.

Hair-transplant surgeon Dr. Ali Mezdegi has noticed the same trend. About 75 percent of his customers are Arabs, mostly from the Persian-Gulf countries, and many tell him they want transplants before contemplating marriage. “Thick hair is a status symbol, and a sign of strength and virility,” Dr. Medzegi explained. “Some patients want to look younger, some more manly -- both important factors in the Middle East if one looks for a new wife.”

But why is Turkey emerging as the go-to place for mustache-and-beard work?

“This trend was made possible because of our government’s excellent relationship with many Arab countries,” suggested Irfan Atik, the general manager of an Istanbul tourism agency that specializes in hair-transplant tour packages. Arabs now constitute a major share of Turkey’s tourism sector, with more than 4 million tourists from Arab countries out of a total of 30 million visitors in 2011.

Atik estimated that at least 50 Arab tourists arrive in Istanbul each day for a facial-hair transplant. Most of his own customers are from the United Arab Emirates, but some also arrive from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq. “Many of my visitors tell me how much they love [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan,” Atik said. But, he continued, so far none have asked for the so-called “almond,” the nickname for the closely cropped mustache sported by the prime minister and typically associated with supporters of his pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party.

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Turkey, the EU and Treatment of Turkish Christians

Turkey was once a Christian country.

However, from the Fall of Constantinople until now, Christians have been subjected to severe discrimination and violence. This violence reached its peak with the Armenian Genocide early in the 20th Century.

I have seen the tiny corners of society into which Christians are pushed in Turkey. I stood at the spot where the Patriarch was hung by a mob in the early 20th Century. Christians can not build churches there, and there are severe restrictions on ordination of new priests.

Turkey is a beautiful country with many wonderful people. Their hospitality is incredible. I believe that Turkey can become a great nation. But it must move past its history of discrimination and violence against Christians to do this.

An important German politician recently took the same position regarding Turkey’s admission into the European Union. Volker Kauder, chairman of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, says that Turkey must allow Christians to build churches in Turkey before it can be admitted to the EU.

Frankly, I think that is a bare minimum. Christians in Turkey should have the same rights as all other citizens. They should be free to worship, and to witness for their faith publicly.

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Syriacs to build new church in Istanbul

Turkey’s Syriac community is granted land in Istanbul on which to construct its first official church in the city, but the move has become the subject of controversy after Catholics said the parcel in question legally belongs to them. Father Simonelli says they will take the issue to the court.

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Turkish High Council Removes Third Prosecutor from Christian Murder Trials

A prosecutor in the case for the 19 suspects accused of inciting brutal 2007 murders of three Christians in Matalya, Turkey, has been removed from High Council duty, stalling the country's long-running trials—again.

Prosecutor Hikmet Usta was probing links between the Malatya murders of three Christians and the earlier assassination of a Christian newspaper editor when he was abruptly transferred from his position last week and re-assigned prosecution duties in an Istanbul court. Usta had been preparing objections to the verdict of the Turkish Supreme Court that "no illegal group" had been behind the January 2007 murder of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

"There was an illegal group, and there is evidence," Usta protested to the Turkish media.

As a member of the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors, Usta was investigating the connections between Dink's murder and the Malatya massacre, in which two Turkish Christians and a German citizen were tortured and stabbed to death in the Zirve Christian publishing house office on April 18, 2007.

"This cannot be called a 'routine' procedure, to remove a prosecutor wanting to intensify his appeals investigation," Erdal Dogan, a plaintiff lawyer for Zirve, told Taraf newspaper on Dec. 2.

But this is not the first time prosecutors trying to uncover the real perpetrators behind the Dink and Zirve murders have been removed from their duties, notes Dogan.

In September, the Turkish Justice Ministry removed two prosecutors and two judges who had been trying the Malatya case just two days before a week of hearings on the case was to begin. The sudden changes left only the presiding judge familiar with the massive files of evidence on the murders.

The 19 suspects accused in the Zirve murders went on trial before Matalya's Third Criminal Court in early September, following the court's acceptance of a third indictment in the case in June, when allegations against primarily military officials finally went public."This indictment provides the first solid evidence that our military authorities officially assigned the named suspects to monitor and attack the Christians in Malatya," Umut Sahin from the legal committee of the Turkish Association of Protestant Churches told Open Doors News in September.

The 761-page indictment alleges that the attack by five young murderers who stabbed, tortured, and slit the throats of three Christians had been masterminded by a retired general in Turkey's 1st Army Corps and ultranationalist military officials in the Malatya gendarmerie. The gendarmerie is a law-enforcement arm of the military which has jurisdiction outside of Turkey's cities and towns.

According to the indictment, the Zirve murders were part of the so-called Cage Action Plan hatched by military officials trying to undermine the ruling Justice and Peace Party government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan through assassinations, threats, and acts of terror against Turkey's non-Muslim minorities.

But just two days before the Sept. 3 hearings began, Turkish authorities shocked the lawyers for the victims by abruptly replacing the two prosecutors, and two of the three judges, in the case, leaving only presiding judge Hayrettin Kisa familiar with the evidence in the case.

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