country after being denied entry for being a "threat for the national security."
It came shortly after Turkey became the only European Union candidate country on the Open Doors World Watch List of 50 countries involved in persecuting Christians. Mentioned as number 36, Turkey treats Christians even worse than countries such as Algeria, Syria or Oman, according to Christian human rights watchdog, Open Doors.
The situation is especially difficult for foreign missionaries, church sources said.
German missionary Alex Eisele, for instance, told Christian news agency Compass Direct that he and his wife Jutta and their two children Sarah and Joshua were refused entry into Turkey in February after making a routine trip to northern Cyprus to renew their three-month tourist visas.
THREATENING MESSAGES
The German family said they had been singled out often for their Christian activities, even receiving several threatening text messages on their cell phones.
Eisele linked the difficulties to his involvement in "organizing a foreign [music] group’s concert" and "advertising for Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion," on the suffering of Jesus at the cross and Christ’s resurrection from that painful death.
The missionary was active in the southeastern city of Adiyaman, known for religious tensions. Officially proselytizing and conversion to any religion is apparently allowed under Turkey’s secular legal system, but evangelical Christians often are forced to hide their work as "cultural activities," BosNewsLife learned.
AUTHORITIES HOSTILE
Turkish authorities remain especially hostile to foreign missionaries suspected of having ulterior political motives and supporting the Kurdish minority. In eastern Turkey, where Kurdish separatists have recently renewed violent attacks, foreign interaction with Kurds is an especially sensitive issue.
A BosNewsLife team saw stepped up security measures near the border with Iraq with journalists being closely monitored.
When representatives of the German Evangelische Landeskirch (Lutheran) visited southeast Turkey in June 2005, the Islamic national daily Zaman reportedly said that the Turkish Foreign Ministry sent a secret paper to Parliament warning of the Lutheran’s political motives.
Suspicion towards foreign missionaries impacted the work of Eisele, 35, who arrived in Adiyaman in 2002, with his family following a year of language study in Istanbul. He opened a foreign language consulting company and taught English on a work visa so he could finance his missionary work.
PERMIT DENIED
But the Ministry of Work and Social Security refused to renew Eisele’s work permit two years later, Compass Direct reported. The July 2004 letter indicated that a copy of the decision had also been sent to the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), Turkey’s secret police.
Ankara’s 8th Administrative Court apparently upheld the decision, citing a law that a foreigner can be refused permission to work if he “forms a threat for the national security, public order, general security, public interest, general ethics and general health.”
Other foreign missionaries have complained of similar procedures or delays in obtaining a one-year work permit. The Turkish government has denied religious rights abuses and says it wants to adhere to European norms. But human rights watchers suggest the reality remains different.
DEADLY VIOLENCE
With foreign missionaries leaving, Turkey’s embattled Christian minority of roughly 100,000 people are left alone to deal with persecution, including deadly violence, church leaders say. Recently a young man attacked a monk and a priest with a kebab knife in a Catholic monastery in Mersin, a small city on the Mediterranean.
"We are no longer safe here," the Vicar Apostolic for Anatolia, Luigi Padovese told Der Spiegel, a leading German magazine. "Until now, Mersin was one of our most peaceful congregations," he added. Nowadays, the bishop never travels without bodyguards, a precaution the interior ministry has practically forced him to accept.
Shortly after the murder in Trabzon another nationalist youth reportedly attacked a Catholic priest in Izmir. They grabbed him by the neck and shouted: "We will kill you!" and "Allahu akbar! God is great!" The priest barely made it to safety and after the incident, police officers were routinely posted in front of the church in Izmir, reports said.
NO RIGHTS
Leaders of Turkey’s Christian minority hoped that reforms introduced by the administration of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan — as part of its effort to gain EU membership — would improve their situation. Although Christians are permitted to practice their faith freely, in many cases their churches have practically no rights and often have no claim to the property they stand on. Der Spiegel reported.
"The basic level of anti-Christian sentiment has increased," said Felix Körner, a German Jesuit whom the Vatican sent to Ankara to encourage a Christian-Islamic dialogue. Turkey’s efforts to enter the EU have triggered nationalist counter-reactions, Körner was quoted as saying. "Even in educated circles, people are saying that Turkish unity and national sovereignty are in danger."
When Bishop Padovese requested work permits for two church employees in Trabzon, the interior ministry denied his request, arguing that because a Catholic Church doesn’t exist in Turkey, it cannot file requests. "That’s the paradox," Padovese told Der Spiegel. "We are here, but legally we don’t exist." (With BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife and other reports from the border with Iraq and BosNewsLife News Center).
