CHRISTIAN CONVERTS LIVE IN FEAR IN INTOLERANT TURKEY
By Annette Grossbongardt in Istanbul
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Spiegel Online, Germany
April 23 2007
Turkish converts to Christianity fear for their lives after the
brutal murder of three people at a Christian publisher. Angela Merkel
has called for Ankara to promote religious tolerance, while secular
intellectuals ask why the 99-percent Muslim country can’t put up with
a few Christians.
Family members and friends of Tilman Geske gather at an Armenian
cemetery for his funeral in Malatya on Friday April 20.
Tilman Geske, 46, had a dream when he moved to Turkey. As a practicing
Christian, he wanted to live in peace among Muslims in a country that
was a cradle of early Christianity. The German immigrant gave language
instruction, established a consulting firm and translated Christian
literature. "He was a likeable man," says a Turkish accountant who
worked in the office next to Geske’s.
"Whenever I asked him how he was doing, he responded in traditional
Turkish: ‘Cok seker — very sweet.’"
His sweet dream came to an abrupt end last Wednesday, when five
Turkish fanatics armed with bread knives stormed into the office
of the Christian Zirve publishing house in the south-eastern city
of Malatya, tied up Geske and two other employees, before torturing
them and finally killing them by slitting their throats. One of the
victims was stabbed 150 times in a particularly brutal attack. A note
left at the scene read: "This should serve as a lesson to the enemies
of our religion. We did it for our country."
But the attack undoubtedly did their country more harm than good. The
damage the murders have caused could hardly be more devastating. The
"missionary massacre," as Turkey’s papers have called the unusually
brutal crime, has plunged Turkey into new turmoil. It has also shone
an uncomfortable spotlight on the question of whether the country
will succeed in its bid to join the European Union.
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in your publication. For critics of Turkey, including some in German
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) party, the incident merely confirms their warnings that the
country simply doesn’t belong to Europe. Italian Prime Minister Romano
Prodi said the crime "certainly does not help" the country’s bid for
EU membership.
Merkel, who currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said Sunday
that she expected Turkey to take action to show it was tolerant of
Christianity after the murders. "This episode has no influence on the
accession negotiations, which will continue with the result open. But
the episode is a cause for concern," she told the Munchner Merkur
newspaper in an interview for its Monday edition. "Everything must be
done to inhibit a climate that makes such appalling deaths possible,"
she told the paper. "I expect clear action from the government in
Ankara (to show) that intolerance of Christianity and other religions
has no chance."
Optimists, on the other hand, hope the murder was merely a provocation
by opponents of democracy intent on steering Turkey away from
its westward course. "Just as one cannot claim, in the wake of the
killings in Virginia, that all Americans are serial killers, it would
be wrong to hold the entire country responsible for this crime,"
warns sociologist Dogu Ergil.
Nevertheless, there is no longer any doubt that Turkey has run into
serious difficulties as far as the development of its civil society is
concerned. The murder of the Turkish Protestants exposes a deep-seated
problem: Turkey is at a standstill — or even regressing — when it
comes to key issues like tolerance and pluralism.
"In Germany, Turks residing there have opened up more than 3,000
mosques. If in our country we cannot abide even by a few churches, or
a handful of missionaries, where is our civilization?" wrote Ertugrul
Ozkok, editor-in-chief of leading secular Turkish daily Hurriyet,
in a hard-hitting editorial on the murders. "Where is our humanity,
our freedom of belief, our beautiful religion?" he asks.
Part 2: An Unholy Alliance of Left and Right
AP Orthodox worshippers attend a morning mass at the Patriarchal
Cathedral of St. George in Istanbul.
The danger does not come — as one might expect — from the usual
fundamentalist Muslims. Instead, it is an unholy alliance of
nationalists ranging from the left to the Islamic right that is
inciting hatred against free thinkers and those of other faiths.
According to Ergil, there is a "mixture of fanatical nationalism and
militant religious fervor" that prepared the ground for the Malatya
massacre — and that also appears to have been behind the murders
of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and Roman Catholic priest
Andrea Santoro last year. Experts like Ergil see the murders as part
of an unsettling new trend, in which fanatical nationalist-religious
groups see violence as a "cleansing force" and themselves as supposed
"saviors of the nation" — like the 19- and 20-year-old attackers
in Malatya, who were students and all lived in the same conservative
Islamic dormitory.
The hate speech comes from both the left and the right. Rahsan
Ecevit, the widow of popular former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and a
supposed leftist, routinely launches into tirades against foreigners
who buy land in Turkey. She claims that those who encourage citizens
to convert to another religion want to divide Turkey.
Christianity is gaining ground in Turkey, especially in the southeast,
the chairman of the far-right nationalist Great Union Party (BBP)
recently warned, even going so far as to accuse Christian missionaries
of being "supported by the CIA." The bolder such conspiracy theories
are, the more popular they seem to be.
And yet, all nationalist sentiment aside, Turks were shocked by the
brutal murders, which the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan was quick to condemn. Erdogan wants to bring Turkey into the
European fold. But to do so, says Joost Lagendijk, a Dutch member
of the European parliament for the GreenLeft party who is himself
married to a Turkish woman, it must "actively appeal to its citizens
to accept people of other religions and ethnic origins."
In some cases state institutions even help to promote the hostile
mood. As far back as 2001, the country’s National Security Council,
under then Prime Minister Ecevit, classified "missionary activities" as
a threat to national security. The government office of religion has in
the past distributed sample sermons targeted against missionaries. In
addition, Erdogan’s government, which is dominated by his right-wing
Justice and Development Party (AKP), undermines its credibility when,
for example, an official like Minister of State Mehmet Aydin claims
that missionary activities are not "innocent declaration of religious
beliefs, but rather a planned movement with political goals."
With politicians stirring up public anger, some segments of the
population seem all too willing to fall in line. The more aggressive
forms of Christianity, such as that espoused by free evangelical
churches, are especially suspect to many Turks.
Even the friendly Muslim who worked in the office next door to
Tilman Geske became skeptical when he heard that the German was
"proselytizing." To ease his doubts, he took a look around Geske’s
office to see if there were Bibles lying around, but he found
nothing. "This terrible murder brings shame upon us," says the
horrified accountant, who prefers to remain anonymous. And yet,
he says, he is not pleased about some of the things he hears, such
as the rumor that missionaries "place money in the Bibles that they
hand out in front of our schools."
For the beleaguered Christians, it is sometimes better not to be
noticed at all. There was no sign on the door of the Zirve publishing
company’s office in Malatya — a deliveryman was attacked there two
years ago and nationalists later staged angry protests in front of
the building.
Part 3: ‘We Are Experiencing a Witch Hunt’
AP Tilmann Geske’s wife Susanne, shown here with the couple’s three
children, says she will pray for her husband’s killers.
"We are experiencing a witch hunt straight out of the Middle Ages,
and the Malatya victims were certainly not the last," complains Ihsan
Ozbek, the chairman of the Salvation Church, a union of Protestant
groups which claims to have 5,000 members throughout Turkey. "We are
portrayed as traitors and potential criminals," he says. Tensions
are so high that Ozbek warns that it has become very dangerous to be
called a missionary. "That would be the equivalent of a death sentence
these days," he says.
Christians are reporting efforts to file lawsuits against supposed
missionaries, even though proselytizing is not officially against
the law in Turkey. In fact, the opposite is true. It is against the
law in Turkey — theoretically, at least — to prevent anyone from
practicing or disseminating his faith. But creative approaches are
sometimes taken to prosecuting unpopular infidels, says attorney Orhan
Cengiz. In Silivri, a town west of Istanbul, two converts are currently
on trial for the uniquely Turkish offense of "insulting Turkishness"
and for "incitement of religious hatred," both considered crimes
under the notorious Article 301 of the country’s penal code.
Necati Aydin, a local pastor and one of the publishing company
employees murdered in the Malatya killings, had already been arrested
once before for distributing Bibles and religious pamphlets.
"Villagers claimed that Aydin and his colleagues had insulted Islam,"
says his attorney. They were charged with distributing "propaganda
against religious freedom."
One of the most difficult positions is that of Turkish converts who
turn their backs on the "true faith." Sociologist Behnan Konutgan, 54,
converted to Christianity while still a student. "While all my fellow
students were constantly reading the Koran, I had a Bible sent to me,"
he recalls. "I read the New Testament with excitement."
Konutgan now works as a pastor and is translating the Bible. "Society
is our problem, not the laws," he says, describing his own
experiences. "The church is perceived as an enemy."
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The murdered Christians were members of Malatya’s small Protestant
community, which included a few foreigners like Tilman Geske and
15 Turks who have converted from Islam to Christianity. The liberal
newspaper Radikal estimates that there are about 10,000 converts in
Turkey, expressing surprise that they could be seen as a "threat"
in a country of 73 million people, 99 percent of whom are Muslim.
But it seems that this is exactly the case. According to an
opinion poll, 59 percent of Turks favor taking legal action against
missionaries, and more than 40 percent said they would not want
Christian Armenians or Greeks as neighbors.
Tilman Geske was buried last Friday in his adopted Turkish home of
Malatya. In an interview on Turkish television, his wife Susanne
said that he was a "martyr for Jesus" and that she would pray for
forgiveness for his killers.
Ugur Yuksel, one of the two Turkish Christian employees murdered with
Geske, had already been interred. Unlike Geske, though, he had been
given a Muslim burial, admitted a spokesman from the local Protestant
community: "His family insisted on it."
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