THE TRIAL of five men accused of the murder of three Christian missionaries in the eastern-Turkish town of Malatya last spring has been adjourned until January.
The men, who all face life sentences, are accused of the torture and murder of two Turks and a German, who together ran a Christian publishing house in the town. The dead men were members of a Protestant missionary group and were killed, allegedly by Turkish nationalists, during a Bible-study class (News, 27 April).
The gruesome nature of the killings and the religious hatred which appears to have motivated them have provoked widespread revulsion among Turkish liberals. On the day of the court hearing in Malatya, small groups of demonstrators gathered in Saray Square in Istanbul holding placards saying: “We are all Christians.”
Christians in Turkey, who make up less than one per cent of the population, are feeling increasingly vulnerable. Many link the murders with the assassination of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink last February, and the killing of an Italian priest in Trabzon, and see them as part of a trend of crimes of religious hatred.
Orhan Kemal Cengiz, one of the lawyers representing the victims, believes that “hatred towards missionaries has been actively cultivated and is directly linked to the resurgence of nationalism.”
Although Christian missionary activity is no longer illegal in Turkey, many Turks retain a deep-seated historical suspicion of missionaries. Their anxieties can be traced back to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, when missionaries were widely believed to be attempting to destabilise the country.
This perception has acquired greater resonance among many modern-day Turks, who are insecure about Europe’s ambivalent attitude to Turkish EU membership and increasingly attracted by the nationalist rhetoric of the Turkish far-right.
Some Turkish analysts are concerned that such attitudes may even extend to the police and judiciary in Malatya. Files brought to court by the prosecution, and now in the public domain, appear to reveal serious flaws in the police investigation of the case.
More worryingly, the prosecution files, which are publicly available, contain the names and addresses of other Christians in Turkey. Orhan Kemal Cengiz fears that, “while the prosecutor in the case has failed to make a thorough investigation, he has also put many other lives in danger.” |
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