Inspire Magazine, UK
Feb 4 2006

Landlord demands eviction as Turkish church is vandalised

Assailants on Turkey’s Black Sea coast vandalised a Protestant
church, days after nationalists from the region murdered a well-known
Armenian journalist.

Attackers shattered the Agape Protestant Church’s windows and
spray-painted its street sign on January 28 in the city of Samsun,
Pastor Orhan Picaklar told Compass News Direct.

Located in a region infamous for producing the nationalist killers of
Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and an Italian Catholic priest last
year, the congregation has suffered a dozen stoning attacks and
weekly e-mail threats during the past two years.

`I was shocked, because, though we’ve been stoned before, it was
never this big an attack,’ Pastor Picaklar said. `When I arrived at 5
am there were about 20 police on the premises, including Samsun’s
deputy police chief.’

According to the pastor, about 30 heavy rocks had been thrown through
church windows, some of them smashing interior windows and denting
walls.

He said a note was left inside the church but that police refused to
show him what was written on it, claiming that it `wasn’t important’.

Samsun’s police chief later refused to include the note in the
official investigation, stating that it had `nothing to do with this
case,’ he added.

The pastor said he had received two death threats by e-mail on the
day of the attack, one signed by the Turkish Vengeance Brigade.

`I will kill you Orhan, you have very little time left,’ read one
e-mail, which cursed the congregation as `Christian pigs’ who would
`burn in hell’.

`I’ve received so many of these in the last three years that I don’t
even pay attention to them, I just delete them,’ Pastor Picaklar told
Compass. `But in recent days I’ve started to take them seriously.’

The murder of Armenian writer and thinker Hrant Dink, gunned down by
a young nationalist from the Black Sea city of Trabzon on January 19,
has created concern over growing militant nationalism in Turkey.

The event has also fuelled debate over the responsibility of the
state to protect individuals targeted by violent elements in society.

`After these events, both Dink’s death and this church attack, the
police are planning to provide us with security,’ the pastor said.

Sunday’s attack has convinced the church’s landlord that the
congregation must leave. The church only moved into the building
from its former location three weeks ago.

`I think people don’t want to work with us because of the
rock-throwing attacks,’ Pastor Picaklar said. `Where are we supposed
to worship this winter, on the street?’