TURKEY (ASSIST News Service) -- Turkish police in a popular tourist resort of Antalya stopped a murder plot on Dec. 30 last year.
According to a story published by the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) the objective was to kill Ramazan Arkan, a priest working in The Church of Incil, in Antalya.
AINA said the case resembles other attacks against Christians in Turkey, where the hatred against Christian believers has escalated lately.
AINA said that the Turkish TV channel HABERTÜRK reported the news of the planned assassination. A 22-year-old man was arrested in connection with the incident.
AINA said that according to some Turkish newspapers, the suspect said during interrogations he was inspired by the TV series “Valley of the Wolves,” a popular show among Turkish ultranationalists. The series has also been released in Sweden on DVD as a movie. Police would not comment on this.
AINA said that the Eastern Star News Agency (ESNA) had earlier reported about an Italian Catholic priest, who was stabbed in the stomach by a young male, in the port city of Izmir, in western Turkey.
The priest, Adriano Franchini, survived the attack, and the alleged perpetrator, who had been apparently influenced by a number of anti-Christian Internet sites, was arrested.
AINA reported that in April 2007, five university students in Malatya, eastern Turkey, cut the throats off three Christians – a German citizen and two Turks – at a Bible publishing company. Before the killings, the three victims had been tortured for hours.
On Feb.5 2006, AINA further reported, the Catholic Italian priest Andrea Santoro was shot to death in his church by a 16-year-old boy, in the Turkish city of Trabzon at the Black Sea.
Then the Agape church, located in Samsun, at the Black Sea, has been terrorized several times.
AINA said that the minister, Orhan Piçaklar, received several threats via e-mail and telephone. Despite several reports to the police, the threats have continued. The police, who on Jan. 5 tapped the telephone conversation of a suspect, heard the 17-year-old brag about how he would kill the minister of the Agape church, and become famous on TV.
According to AINA, the court handling the case saw no need to imprison the suspect and he was released, but not allowed to leave the country.
Christians are targeted on hundreds of Internet sites as missionaries and thus threats against national security. Then on TV series such as “Valley of the Wolves,” and “Black Snake,” “ultra nationalist emotions are incited,” AINA commented. All these actions make Christians feel unsafe in Turkey.
AINA said that on Jan. 19 2007, an Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, was murdered in broad daylight outside the offices of the Agos newspaper, in Constantinople (Istanbul). A few days after the murder, the 17-year old killer, Ogun Samast, was arrested.
The Turkish police, who AINA commented “treated the murderer like a national hero, proudly posed with a Turkish flag in their hands, in front of the cameras, and boasted about taking pictures with the killer.”
AINA said that on Oct. 12 2007, Arat Dink, son of Hrant Dink, and the publisher of the Agos newspaper, Serkis Seropyan, were sentenced to a one year “conditional” jail sentence for “desecrating Turkishness.” Arat Dink, who received several threats after the sentence, was forced to flee Turkey in Nov. 2007.
The European Union has for a long time protested that Turkey, a country applying for membership in the European Union, has failed protect the human rights and the religious freedom of the very small Christian minority. In fact, AINA commented, it has moved in the opposite direction.
However, AINA said that Turkey sees itself as a secular state with religious freedom.
AINA said that in the beginning of the 20th century, one third of the population in Turkey was Christian. But as a consequence of Seyfo – the genocide against the Assyrians, Armenians and Pontic Greeks during World War I - with subsequent pogroms, scarcely 100,000 Christians remain out Turkey’s 75 million population.
Jeremy Reynalds is a freelance writer and the founder and director of Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter, [url=http://www.joyjunction.org]http://www.joyjunction.org[/url] or http://www.christianity.com/joyjunction. He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. in intercultural education from Biola University in Los Angeles. His newest book is "Homeless in the City: A Call to Service." Additional details about "Homeless" are available at [url=http://www.homelessbook.com]http://www.homelessbook.com[/url] He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information contact: Jeremy Reynalds at jeremyreynalds@comcast.net. Tel: (505) 877-6967 or (505) 400-7145. Note: A higher resolution JPEG picture of Jeremy Reynalds is available on request from Dan Wooding at danjuma1@aol.com.
