HATRED AGAINST CHRISTIANS HAS ESCALATED IN TURKEY
Assyrian International News Agency
Jan 22 2008
On December 30, 2007, in the popular tourist resort of Antalya, Turkey,
the police revealed and stopped a secret murder plot. The aim was
to kill Ramazan Arkan, a priest working in The Church of Incil, in
Antalya. The case resembles other attacks targeted against Christians
in Turkey, where the hatred against Christians has escalated lately.
In a news feature, the Turkish TV channel HABERTURK reported that
Turkish police in Antalya has revealed and thus prevented the planned
assassination. A 22-year-old man was arrested for preparation of
murder of the Orthodox priest Ramazan Arkan.
According to several Turkish newspapers, the suspect has,
during interrogations, said that he has become inspired by the
TV-series "Valley of the Wolves", a popular TV-series among Turkish
ultranationalists. The series has also been released here in Sweden
in a movie version on DVD. The police neither confirms nor denies
these statements.
ESNA has earlier reported about an Italian, Catholic priest, who was
stabbed in his stomach by a younger male in the port city of Izmir,
in western Turkey. The priest, Adriano Franchini, survived the attack,
and shortly thereafter the perpetrator, who had been influenced by
different Internet sites which point out Christians as traitors,
was arrested.
In April 2007, five university students in Malatya, eastern Turkey cut
the throats off three Christians – a German citizen and two Turks –
at a Bible publishing company. Before the killings, the three victims
had been tortured for hours.
On February 5, 2006, the Catholic Italian priest Andrea Santoro was
shot to death in his church by a 16-year-old boy, in the Turkish
city of Trabzon at the Black Sea. The Agape church, which has
reopened for divine service since 2003, in Samsun at the Black Sea,
has been terrorized several times. The minister, Orhan Picaklar,
received several threats via e-mail and telephone. Despite several
reports to the police, the threats have continued. The police, who
on January 5th tapped the telephone conversation of a suspect, heard
the 17-year old adolescent brag about how he would kill the minister
of the Agape church, and become famous on TV. But the court handling
the case saw no need for detaining the young man; he was released,
but however prohibited to leave the country.
On hundreds of Internet sites, Christians are pointed out to be
missionaries, and thus threats against national security. On TV-series,
such as "Valley of the Wolves" (Kurtlar Vadisi), which is aired on
"Show TV" and "Black Snake" (Kara Yilan), which is aired on tv-channel
"A TV", ultranationalist emotions are incited. All these actions make
Christians feel unsafe in Turkey.
On January 19 2007, the Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, was murdered
in broad daylight outside the premises of the newspaper Agos, in
Constantinople (Istanbul). A few days after the murder, the 17-year
old killer, Ogun Samast, was arrested.
The Turkish police, who treated the murderer like a national hero,
proudly posed with a Turkish flag in their hands, in front of the
cameras, and boasted about taking pictures with the killer.
On Ocotber 12, 2007, Arat Dink, son of the murdered Hrant Dink, and
the responsible for the publication of the newspaper Agos, Serkis
Seropyan, were sentenced to one year of conditional jail sentence for
"desecrating Turkishness". The sentence is based on the very same
paragraph that Hrant Dink was judged for, paragraph 301 in the Turkish
penal code. Arat dink, who received several threats after the sentence,
was forced to flee Turkey on the 6th of November 2007.
The European Union has for a long time protested against the fact
that Turkey, a country applying for membership in the European Union,
has failed protect the human rights and the religious freedom of the
very small Christian minority. On the contrary – the development has
been towards the opposite direction.
However, Turkey sees herself as a secular state with religious
freedom. In the beginning of the 20th century, one third of the
population in Turkey was Christian. As a consequence of Seyfo –
the genocide against the Assyrians, Armenians and Pontic Greeks
during World War I – with subsequent pogroms, barely 100,000 of the
Christians remain out of a 75 million large population in Turkey.