ISLAMIC LINK TO MURDER OF MAN WHO PLAYED JESUS CHRIST ON TURK-7 TELEVISION
By Judi McLeod

Canada Free Press
April 24 2007

Necati Aydin, who played Jesus on TURK-7 television this Easter,
paid for it with his life.

An amateur actor, Aydin, husband and father of two children, was one of
three Christians murdered on April 18 in the city of Malatya, Turkey.

Authorities confirm that the three, workers of the Zirve Christian
publishing house, had been tied to chairs and tortured for three
hours before having their throats slit.

Aydin and his Christian colleagues were the victims of international
terrorism.

Four young men and a woman have been charged with terrorism offences
over their brutal murders.

The Courier-Mail reports that the four men, aged 19 and 20, were
captured at the crime scene where a German and two Turkish converts to
Christianity were slain last Thursday. They were charged with Òsetting
up a terrorist organizationÓ and murder, prosecutor Mustafa Demirdag
told Anatolia news agency.

An 18-year-old woman was charged with aiding a terrorist group,
he said.

Authorities identified her as the girlfriend of the alleged leader of
the gang, Emre Gunaydin, 19, who remains in hospital with a serious
head injury after jumping from the third-floor office of the publishing
house to escape arrest.

The alleged terrorists were found at the scene of the crime after a
local, suspicious of a locked door, notified police.

Given that a Catholic priest was killed while praying in his church
last year and that an ethnic Armenian journalist was slain in January
in an atmosphere where violence against non-Muslims is on the rise,
AydinÕs role as Christ one week before his death, was an act of
courage.

The Passion of the Christ, Turkey style, was featured on TURK-7Õs
Easter season programming.

ÒTURK-7 broadcasts on SAT-7 PARS, which is part of the Christian
satellite network created by and for the people of the Middle East and
North Africa.Ó (Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST Ministries, April 20,
2007). ÒWe are praying for the families, for the Church, and for the
nation of Turkey that God will bring some good out of this terrible
tragedy. Aydin, a man who portrayed Jesus on one of our broadcasts,
was himself the target of religious hatred simply because he worked
so that others would have a chance to understand the story of Christ
in Turkish.Ó

TURK-7 is an indigenous Turkish television ministry that broadcasts
four hours a day on SAT -7Õs Farsi and Turkish channel. Christians
make up less than one percent of the population of Turkey.

Launched in 1996, SAT-7Õs programs help equip the churches of a
minority Christian community and provide the wider non-Christian
audience a better understanding of the beliefs and teachings of
Christ. Christians make up approximately four percent of the Middle
East, down from about 20 percent in the year 1900. Each week between
nine and ten million people watch the channels in Arabic, Farsi
and Turkish (Intermedia research, 2004-2005), and those numbers are
growing in many countries. In 2005, nearly 40,000 people responded
to SAT-7 broadcasts by contacting counseling centers located across
the Middle East and Europe. SAT-7 can be viewed via satellite in the
Middle East, North Africa, Europe and much of Central Asia.

Programming can also be watched worldwide at

Meanwhile, the loved ones left behind by Aydin, take solace that one
of the last acts their husband and father performed before his brutal
murder was the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the rotating
presidency of the European Union, said she was troubled by an
Òunacceptable intoleranceÓ in Turkey, a membership candidate.

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference also denounced the
murders. Its secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said he felt
compelled to condemn the Ògrisly crimes because their perpetrators
linked them to IslamÓ.

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