Turks accused of killing Christians go on trial
Pastor Dale Morgan
Turks accused of killing Christians go on trial*
· Three died in brutal attack during Bible study group
· Case begins amid growing intolerance to minorities
Helena Smith
Saturday November 24, 2007
The Guardian
Seven months after a German and two Turks were murdered in a Bible
publishing house in eastern Turkey, the five men accused of the crime
filed into court yesterday for their long-awaited trial.
The case is seen as a test of how the country will handle mounting
intolerance towards non-Muslim minorities. It began at a time of
draconian security and heightened nationalist fervour after attacks by
Kurdish separatists.
The members of a Protestant missionary group were killed during a Bible
study class in Malatya on April 18. Their attackers tied the men to
their chairs, targeting Tilmann Geske, a German father of three, before
turning to Pastor Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel. By the time police
arrived, the Turkish converts had been virtually decapitated, with their
buttocks, testicles, stomachs and backs repeatedly stabbed, their
fingers sliced and throats slashed from ear-to-ear. The accused, all
between 19 and 20, allegedly filmed clips on their mobile phones.
"I remember [the accused] attending our Easter gathering of believers.
They were boys, not even men," Geske's widow, Susanne, told the Guardian
in an interview earlier this year. "In Turkey, you hear so many stories
about missionaries: that we are agents of foreign powers who secretly
want to break up the state, that we hide $100 bills in Bibles to bribe
believers, things that are so untrue."
The killings followed other high-profile attacks on minorities. Last
February, Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist who dared to address
Turkey's great taboo - the mass killing of Armenians in 1915 - was shot
dead by a 17-year-old outside his office in Istanbul.
Twelve months earlier, Andrea Santoro, an Italian priest, was killed by
a teenager as he prayed in his church in Trabzon.
Lawyers representing the victims' families say the murders mirror the
rising tide in Turkey of isolationist, ultra-nationalist sentiment.
"Hatred towards missionaries has been actively cultivated and is
directly linked to the resurgence in nationalism," Mrs Geske's lawyer,
Orhan Kemal Cengiz, said. "This trial is unbelievably important because
these were the last in a chain of murders in which the perpetrators were
youngsters who were indoctrinated and exploited. If we don't get a clear
picture of who were behind them, it is very likely such murders will
happen again."
Few in Turkey have felt the resurgence of violent nationalism more than
Christians, who at the last count comprised less than 1% of the population.
"You live in a world of shadows, looking over your shoulder all the
time," said Canon Ian Sherwood of the Anglican church in Istanbul.
"There are certain historic sensitivities one should respect in Turkey
but this is also a country that professes to be a secular democracy and
yet innocent individuals are persecuted for pursuing what they would be
allowed to do in any other free society."
The trial was adjourned until January.