IZMIR, Turkey (ABP) — Turkey's handful of Baptists and other evangelical Christians fear increased persecution as the nation continues to reel from political upheaval and the brutal murder of three Christians, allegedly by radical Islamists.
Meanwhile, Turkish Christians of all stripes, their allies in Europe and American officials are calling on the nation to prove its commitment to religious freedom.
According to Klaus Rosler, an official with the European Baptist Federation, worship services at the Baptist church in the Buca district of Izmir, Turkey, “are being shielded by the police.”
The church hosted the funeral for one of the three victims of the murders, which were committed April 18. It is the nation's only congregation officially affilated with a Baptist denominational body, although EBF General Secretary Tony Peck said there are other “baptistic” churches in Turkey.
Rosler, in an April 27 article on the EBF website, also said the Izmir church's pastor has received police protection after being falsely accused of engaging in coercive evangelism. Ertan Cevik said a local Buca newspaper published an article accusing him and the Izmir congregation of being a missionary center for evangelical Christians trying to convert Turkish Muslims. It said the Christians are engaging in “brainwashing and using money to attract young people,” whom they “make pliable” with drugs.
The articles came in the wake of the murders, which took place in the conservative Eastern Turkish city of Malatya. According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, similar accusations have been made against evangelical Christians by local publications and activists elsewhere in Turkey.
The events come against the backdrop of broad social upheaval over the role of religion in Turkish public life as the nation makes a bid to join the Western world more fully.
A May 1 ruling by the nation's highest court halted a parliamentary election process that had favored Abdullah Gul, the nation's prime minister. Gul got the most votes in the first round of polling April 27.
In response, as many as one million secularist Turks protested in Istanbul April 29. The protests followed similar ones in Ankara, the nation's capital, two weeks prior.
Gul, who is currently Turkey's foreign minister, and the nation's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, belong to the AK Party. The party was formed from a moderate Islamist party the government had previously banned. AK enjoys strong support among Turkish Muslims, who tend to be poorer and more rural than the secularist elites centered in Istanbul and other large Turkish cities.
However, the party's economic reforms have earned the support of many Turkish moderates and business leaders. Gul has spearheaded Turkey's bid to join the European Union.
AK politicians control the parliament, but Turkish military leaders threatened to unseat the government if Gul wins. The military, which views itself as the guarantor of Turkey's secularist ruling ethos, has unseated three other governments in the last half-century, including another moderate Islamist government elected in 1997.
In response to the court ruling, AK leaders promised to rush through Parliament constitutional reforms allowing the president to be elected via popular vote.
Turkey's population is, according to most estimates, 99 percent Muslim. However, unlike most other majority-Muslim nations, the government has been staunchly secularist since the Turkish Republic's 1923 founding. Many Turks have criticized Gul and Erdogan, for instance, because their wives wear Islamic headscarves. Under current law, such scarves are banned in Turkish government buildings.
Much of the nation's elite — concentrated in large cities such as Istanbul and Ankara — are staunch defenders of secularism. But, in recent years, many of Turkey's more religious and rural citizens have gained more economic and political power.
Nonetheless, AK Party leaders condemned the Malatya murders. According to Compass Direct, a news service that tracks persecution of Christians, two victims — Necati Aydin, 36, and Ugur Yuksel, 32, were Turks who converted from Islam to Christianity. The third man, Tillman Geske, 46, was a German citizen.
According to Rosler, the three worked for a small Protestant publishing house that was translating a study Bible into Turkish and were members of the city's tiny Kurtulus Protestant Church, where Aydin was the pastor. The attacks took place in an office that served both the church and Zirve Publishing.
Local authorities reportedly have arrested 10 men in connection with the attack, including the five alleged killers.
In an April 19 press conference televised live on CNN's Turkish station, the head of the Alliance of Protestant Churches in Turkey said the attacks were “not a surprise” and linked them to anti-Christian propaganda in conservative parts of Turkey.
“Turkey was buried in the darkness of the Middle Ages” by the attacks, said Ihsan Ozbek, who is pastor of an Ankara church. He compared opposition to Christian missionaries and rumors spread among non-Christian Turks about Christian proselytism to the witch hunts of the last millennium.
A letter about the details of the murders, purportedly from Protestants in the hometown of one of the victims, has spread to Christians around the world via e-mail. It said the perpetrators had done surveillance prior to the murders by posing as potential converts and attending an evangelistic meeting hosted by the Malatya church.
The letter, from “The Protestant Church of Smyrna,” also includes details about gruesome torture the victims allegedly underwent prior to their deaths. It accused political leaders of fostering suspicion of Christians that led to the murders and linked them with other recent attacks against Turkey's tiny Christian minority.
Smyrna is the Greek name for Izmir, a large, ancient city on Turkey's Aegean coast. Ancient Smyrna was home to one of the earliest Christian churches.
Aydin's funeral was held in the courtyard of the Baptist church there. It is unclear if the Baptist congregation was the same as the one in which the letter originated. It was dated April 24 and contained the tagline “reported by Darlene Bocek.”
Jeff Sellers, Compass Direct's managing editor, said April 30 that his reporters in the region had not been able to confirm the letter's accuracy or authenticity.
European Christians have also weighed in on the situation. Turkey is seeking admission to the European Union, but many European leaders are leery of accepting a nation that physically and culturally straddles Europe and the Middle East.
“The Malatya tragedy can have serious consequences for the image of Turkey and its relationship with the European institutions,” said an April 25 statement from the Conference of European Churches, an ecumenical body that includes the EBF. “We urge the Turkish government to adopt a new attitude towards religious minorities, so as to protect religious minorities, to improve their legal status and to ensure the peaceful coexistence of the different religions.”
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Gruesome murders, Islamist candidate worry Turkish Christians, secularists (4/30)