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Turkey's Christians face backlash
Several recent murders have confronted Turkey's growing ranks of Christian evangelicals.
By Yigal Schleifer | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the April 25, 2007 edition
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DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - The Assyrian Meryem Ana Church, nestled on a narrow cobblestone lane in this ancient walled city in eastern Turkey, has seen continuous use since about 300 A.D. But these days, its services rarely draw more than a handful of worshippers.
By contrast, the 4-year-old Diyarbakir Evangelical Church across the street, held a sturdy congregation of 40 this past Sunday – mostly Islamic converts – who were rocking and clapping exuberantly to a vaguely familiar hymn: A distinctly eastern rendition of Amazing Grace, accompanied by the saz, a long-necked Anatolian lute.
As evangelical groups like the one at Diyarbakir make inroads among a largely Islamic population, their visibility has vexed many Turks who seem them as foreign interlopers. An increasingly violent nationalist backlash, fed by both secular and religious rhetoric from politicians and the media, church leaders say, has had deadly consequences for Turkey's growing evangelical community.
Last week saw the brutal murder of three evangelical Christians – two Turks and a German – working at a Bible publisher about 150 miles away in the city of Malatya. According to Turkish newspaper reports, the five young males arrested at the scene told investigators they committed the crime in defense of Islam.
"There's a huge witch hunt that has been opened up in Turkey about missionary work," says Jerry Mattix, a missionary from Yakima, Wash., who has been working with the Diyarbakir church for the last five years. "The risk is that we live in an overwhelmingly Muslim society where certain segments of the society see you as divisive to the country. We are a target."
Church officials say their work has become both easier and harder in recent years. On the one hand, reforms associated with Turkey's European Union (EU) membership process have meant that proselytizing is now legal and that more churches have an opportunity to obtain legal status.
On the other hand, violent attacks against Christian targets are becoming more frequent. Last year, several evangelical churches were fire-bombed, and a Protestant church leader in the city of Adana was severely beaten by a group of assailants. Last February, Andrea Santoro, a Catholic priest working in the Black Sea city of Trabzon, was shot and killed by a 16-year-old.
"We didn't expect [the Malatya murders], but on the other hand it wasn't a surprise," says Carlos Madrigal, leader of an evangelical church in Istanbul, the first such church given legal status in the Turkish republic's 84-year history..
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