TURKISH ISLAMISTS FACE CHRISTIANS’ DEATH TRIAL
By Damien McElroy in Malatya, Turkey
The Telegraph, UK
April 23 2007
A gang of suspected Islamic nationalists was facing the possibility
of trial for the torture and murder of three Christians at a Bible
publishers in Turkey last night after investigators called for their
prosecution.
A judge was considering whether the group – 11 men and one woman –
should face trial after they were questioned for eight hours over
the deaths of two Turks and a German, who were bound to chairs and
had their throats slit in Malatya on Wednesday.
As the victims sat dying, police, acting on a tip-off, burst through
the door. The alleged ringleader, Emre Gunaydin, the 12th member of the
gang, was critically injured after leaping from a fourth floor balcony.
The murders came amidst an upsurge in extremist violence as Turkey
struggles to join the European Union.
As European leaders repeatedly postpone a target date for Turkish
entry, resentment at the reforms being enacted to meet EU criteria
is building.
The attack was the third against Christians in Turkey in a year. In
the first case a Roman Catholic priest was stabbed at the altar in
the Black Sea port of Trabzon, then an Armenian journalist was shot
dead in central Istanbul. The common link was that the killers claimed
they were defending Islam from Christian proselytising.
However, many Turks reject that they are a sign of a rising Islamic
militancy that is sweeping the Middle East.
At first glance, Malatya appears far distant from any form of
extremism. Its streets are lined with modern clothing and furnishing
shops at the forefront of Turkey’s economic renaissance. Its young
population cheerfully lines up for buses to private universities that
specialise in technology studies. Placards sell the dream of owning
your own house.
On the journey between the Ilhas Vakfi Yurdu hostel and the publishing
house there are at least five shops with prominent hoardings for Tuborg
lager and Efes pilsner. If this were Baghdad and Islamic radicals were
exerting their grip, the owners of the alcohol outlets would be dead.
Emine Cemal, a middle-aged Turkish woman nursing a beer in a bar,
rejected the idea that the attacks were linked to a rising militant
Muslim orthodoxy.
"I don’t think this has a religious root, it’s about nationality,"
she said. "To be Turkish is to be Muslim and so Christians are here
working against Turkey."
In fact, Christians are a fraction of one per cent of Turkey’s 71
million people but it is common for Turks to complain that evangelical
churches are proliferating at an alarming rate. Courts continue to
prosecute converts for insulting "Turkishness". Three members of the
Turkish Protestant Church are currently standing trial.
Missionary activity, while not an offence, has been placed on the
list of threats to the nation by the National Security Council.
The fusion of extreme nationalism and anti-Christian activity has a
long history in Malatya. The city is the birthplace of Mehmet Ali Agca,
the Turk who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1982. It
was also the home town of the slain journalist Hrant Dink.
The city’s once large Armenian Christian population has been squeezed
out. The only surviving remnant of the community is a derelict
church. Yet the association lingers as a term of abuse. Rivals taunt
supporters of Malatyaspor football team with "Armenian Malatya".
The secular Turkish Republic established after the fall of the
Ottoman Empire does not fit easily into Brussels prescriptions of
democracy. To meet European demands, Turkey is rapidly dismantling
the rules established to purge religious influence from national life.
"Turkey is in a state of transition," said Hussein Ali Karacan,
a leading nationalist. "The speed of transformation is shocking to
the mindset of nationalists."
From: Baghdasarian