PAPAL ENVOY LINKS MURDERS AT CHRISTIAN BOOK PUBLISHER TO ELECTIONS
Agence France Presse — English
April 19, 2007 Thursday
The papal envoy to Turkey has linked the grisly murders of three
men at a Christian Turkish publishing house to upcoming presidential
elections in the country, a press report said Thursday.
"Events like this have already happened during electoral campaigns,"
Monsignor Antonio Lucibello told the Italian daily La Stampa.
The papal nuncio linked the murders to Saturday’s protest in Ankara,
when half a million people demonstrated against any presidential bid
by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan’s critics fear he would seek to Islamicise Turkey if elected.
He announced Wednesday that he would announce his party’s nomination
for upcoming presidential elections next week.
Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a staunch secularist, must
step down on May 16.
Three men including a German had their throats slit Wednesday in the
eastern Turkish city of Malatya at the Zirve (Summit) publishing house,
which distributes bibles and Christian literature. The publishers
had already received threats.
Police have taken ten people into custody over the killings, which
shocked the mainly Muslim country and fuelled fears among Turkey’s
tiny Christian community.
Lucibello noted the "presence of well-known fanatical,
ultra-nationalist groups" in Turkey, but he urged against generalising
because "Turkish society has very different positions … from those
of the fanatics."
Christians of various denominations including Syriac, Armenian,
Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic or their places of worship have
come under attack in the past.