wave of attacks" by Muslim militants against local Protestant Christians. Over the past six months, "vigilante groups in at least five Turkish cities" have threatened Protestant church workers and attacked their places of worship, Christian news agency Compass Direct reported from the region.
In addition Turkish media have allegedly condemned Christian missionary activity and even government ministers have claimed that foreign missionaries had political motives aimed at “damaging the social peace and unity of Turkey,” the news agency said.
The latest attack came Wednesday, May 18, and threatened the safety of Pastor Wolfgang Hade, a German national, of the Izmit Protestant Church, Compass Direct reported. Izmit said he saw a huge red swastika painted on his apartment door, with a handwritten hate letter shoved underneath.
LIFE THREATENED
In high-school-level Turkish, the writer threatened the safety of Hade and his family, including his Turkish wife of Christian background, "unless they left the country within a month," Compass Direct reported.
The hate letter reportedly questioned whether Hade was really serving Christianity or being “used” to attack Turkish values. “Your efforts to wear us down — as the inheritors of a great race — and alienate us from our values will come to nothing,” the writer allegedly declared. “Please forward this to the headquarters directing you,” the letter was quoted as saying.
Together with his wife and small daughter, Hade has lived for the past three and one-half years in Izmit, near the epicenter of disastrous Turkey’s 1999 earthquake in western Turkey. Their small congregation of 15 to 20 Turkish Protestants worship in a two-story building purchased through the foundation of their parent church in Istanbul.
The Izmit Protestant Church was apparently targeted in a violent attack the night after Christmas last year, when someone started a fire next to the outside wall of the building.
BURNING CHURCH DOWN
“The aim was to burn the church down,” Hade told Compass Direct. “There were black signs of burning and the window was partly broken, but the debris had been swept away.” On three separate occasions since, church windows have been broken out, the news agency said.
Local police investigated all of these attacks and the church installed iron burglar-bars to prevent damage to ground-floor windows. But after a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the upper floor on February 6, church leaders made an appointment with the local governor’s assistant.
“We sent a petition to the governor, and a local newspaper published part of it,” Hade recalled. “Then the attacks stopped. Until yesterday.”
Church officials say the string of Izmit attacks follow earlier reported violence in at least four other Turkish cities, where groups also threatened Protestant church workers and attacked their places of worship.
PROTESTANT CHURCH FIREBOMBED
In the Turkish capital of Ankara, for instance, the firebombing of the International Protestant Church in the early hours of April 21 inflicted $10,000 in damages, Compass Direct said. Several weeks before the attack, an email message had been sent to the pastor of the church’s Turkish congregation saying “it is our Islamic duty to see you are killed,” Compass Direct claimed. “The place you call a church will be wrapped around your heads,” the message reportedly added.
Last month, several acts of vandalism were also reported against the Agape House, a Protestant congregation in the Black Sea city of Samsun. The attacks included broken windows, as well as numerous incidents when eggs were thrown at the building.
Orhan Bicakcilar, the congregation’s Turkish pastor who lives in the building, said "the most destructive attack occurred on November 28 of last year, when the Agape House came under heavy stoning," Compass Direct reported. This incident came shortly after the mayor of the city’s Atakum municipality had insisted that he would never allow a church to be opened there.
Meanwhile, a Turkish Christian living in Istanbul’s Maltepe district told Compass he has been threatened twice in the past year to stop hosting fellowship meetings in his home. In the most recent letter, attached to the window bars of his ground-floor flat two months ago, he was told, “this is a Muslim country,” and he was urged to leave. If he loved his family, the letter advised, he should resettle in a Christian country.
"SECRETLY WATCHING"
“I don’t know how much of a real threat this is,” he admitted to Compass Direct. “I’m not afraid of people’s reactions, but I am afraid of threats against my family.” He said he never reported the incidents to the police because his brother had been told by a policeman that the authorities were “secretly watching” his group.
Perhaps the most life-threatening attempt against the Protestant community has occurred in Gaziantep, the second-largest city in southeastern Turkey. In early November 2004, three young men allegedly “seeking spiritual truth” went into the Gaziantep office of Wilbur Miller armed with a concealed gun and knife. An American, Miller and his family were part of a mixed Turkish-expatriate congregation meeting in the city since 1999.
After wrestling Miller to the floor, the three youths reportedly bound, gagged and blindfolded him, declaring they had been given orders by Al-Qaeda to “put him away.”
After an hour and a half, during which they ransacked and looted his office, the attackers finally told Miller they would spare his life if he and his family left the country immediately. Although the incident was investigated by local police and the U.S. Embassy, and Miller later identified two of his attackers, it is not clear whether the three minors were charged or convicted of a crime.
NOT AL-QAEDA
“I am sure it was not [terrorist network] Al-Qaeda, but a local group that is uncomfortable with the presence of a Christian church and foreign church workers here,” Miller told Compass.
Last month, two new incidents targeted the Gaziantep congregation. On the evening of April 9, two unknown persons tried to break into the church’s meeting place, using sound bombs to try to break down the front door and blow in a balcony window. Investigating police described the door blast as equivalent to 150 small firecrackers in a pipe.
“Lots of policemen combed the yard to see whether there was any other explosive device or clue,” a member of the congregation told Compass. A printed card like those sent to soldiers on active duty was found, inscribed “Protectors of the Motherland” with the handwritten names of two individuals in the fellowship.
On April 20, a similar bomb was reportedly left in front of the home of one of the Turkish Christians in the congregation. It exploded about 10:30 in the evening, startling the whole neighborhood, according to news reports. US and church officials fear the situation could escalate amid growing Islamis tensions. In a sign of that, a government-approved sermon was reportedly read out in Turkey’s mosques at Friday prayers on March 11 specifically warned worshippers against Christian missionaries, accusing them of pursuing political agendas to “deceive and convert” people.
HUNGARY SUPPORTS TURKEY
Despote concern about human rights, Hungary says the country should be able to join the European Union as soon as possible. Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany told BosNewsLife that no "new conditions" should be laid for Turkey’s road to Brussels than those already agreed in a previous agreement.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told BosNewsLife during his trip to Budapest las week that there can be "no doubt" that Turkey is a country based on the rule of law. Despite the democratic image presented by Turkey’s current government in its drive to join the EU “their comments have simply added fuel to the nationalist fire," reportedly noted Ihsan Ozbek, an Ankara pastor chairing the Alliance of Protestant Churches (APC) in Turkey.
Turkey’s miniscule Protestant community consists of an estimated 3,500 Christians gathering in 55 designated places of worship, along with 40 other known house fellowships, according to some estimates. (With Stefan J. Bos, Compass Direct and reports from Hungary and Turkey)
