Yesterday’s gruesome killing of three employees of a Christian publishing house was only the latest in a string of attacks on Turkey’s Christian minority.  The murder victims, two Turks and one German, had been bound hand and foot and their throats slit.  Jeff King, President of International Christian Concern, provides some personal details.

The two Turks who were slaughtered like animals were Necati Aydin and Ugur Yüksel. Necati was a convert to Christianity from Islam. Necati was a husband and father of two young children. He had met his wife when he boarded a bus and the only available seat was next to a girl who was reading her Bible. He was intrigued and began to ask her questions about the Bible. Eventually, they married. Ugur was trying to save up money to get married to his engaged sweetheart.

Necati and his coworker Ugur lived in Malatya, a known center of Turkish nationalism (it is the hometown of Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981).

While they are generally described as "Bible workers" in the press, what is not known is that they were devoted to their city and to Turkey.

They had a love for Turkey and wanted to make it a better place. In fact, they had recently been involved in the work of rehabilitating 3 Turkish (not Christian) schools that had fallen into disrepair.

The incident has heightened doubts about the government’s ability to protect religious minorities and cast into question the claim that Turkey is a secular state.  A Protestant pastor spoke to Asia News about that.

“Where are we? I am disgusted by theses atrocities which seem to repeat themselves again and again with ever increasing violence, in a country which promotes itself as a secular and democratic majority Muslim nation.  But where is the respect for differences, for the religious and ethnic minorities present on the territory?  We were almost used to the continual background slander and accusations of proselytism, of giving out money and faith, we were almost used to being ladled as “infidel Muslim grabbers”, who – poor things – allow themselves be brainwashed by us, convinced by a mere handful of dollars hidden in a Bible.  But we never could have imagined that all of this would have led to such an atrocious gesture, prepared in the name of God, carried out against Christians”.
. . .
Today, Turkey cries out at the shocking scandal, against the nightmare of religious hatred which persists, yet no-one is courageous enough to really take a stand, to condemn not only this religious hatred, but also the mass media which with great subtly and cunning continues to brainwash people with propaganda which incites them to believe that we are evil, that we want to wipe them out, to take away their faith and turn them from their beliefs in the God of Mohammad.  Is it not perhaps the opposite?  Look at the figures, look at the statistics: they tell us that since the era of Ataturk the construction of places of worship have been banned, and for this we are not authorized to open new churches, only there where there is already a Christian presence (usually foreigners), but the mosques sprout up like mushrooms all over Turkey.

Maybe Turkey is "secular" only for Christians.

Turkish police say that they have detained a total of ten people in connection with the brutal murders.  All are young men, around 19 or 20.  Several reportedly told police they killed to protect Islam.

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