In the most recent event in İzmir, an attacker, M.A.E, started shouting, “We will keep you accountable, do not engage in missionary activities,” on the evening of April 1 on 1469 St. in the district of Alsancak, while Andrew Crag Brunson, priest of the Diriliş Church on the same street was outside.
M.A.E also started to fire into the air with a pellet gun and then tried to take a shotgun from a bag that he was carrying, but he was captured by citizens and the police. The police brought the suspect to the Anti-terrorism Directorate in Bozyaka for questioning. Police said M.A.E was residing in Manisa where there is another Protestant church. News agencies reported that the suspect´s Facebook page contained statements addressing youth of Manisa and targeting missionaries accusing them of changing Turkey´s religious direction.
“The English Cultural Association, the American Cultural Association and Doğuş Church in Manisa are doing missionary work, and nobody rises against this, while our governors allow such activity,” the suspect wrote on his Facebook page, according to the Zaman daily´s İzmir correspondent. “The issue of missionary activities has been used by politicians during the election period. This is typical,” said Soner Tufan, the press and public relations officer for the Association of Protestant Churches based in the Aegean province of İzmir.
Answering questions from Today´s Zaman, he said that a church in Bursa was attacked with a Molotov cocktail; two churches´ windows were broken, one in Yalova, the other one in Adana; and security camera cables were cut in a rest house in Yalova. He stressed that attacks against Christians and their churches increase prior to elections, during the Islamic religious month of Ramadan and during the Christmas period adding that the Protestant community -- which is estimated to number around 3,000 in Turkey out of a population of 75 million -- faces problems when its members become more visible in the community.
Erdal Doğan, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the Zirve murder case of 2007 when three people who sold Christian literature were brutally killed, told Today’s Zaman that this could be part of a strategy before the June 12 general elections to discredit the government.
He said: “There have been some attacks and even preparations for the murder of a Greek priest in İstanbul’s Fatih district. Just before his arrest last year, [retired Gen.] Çetin Doğan [former head of Turkey’s 1st Army and a major suspect in the Sledgehammer (Balyoz) probe] declared partial mobilization. It was an important declaration as there were 101 defendants, including serving and retired senior military commanders, charged with conspiring in 2003 to overthrow the government. Interestingly, there have been increasing threats to churches and priests.”
Additionally, the Cage Operation Action Plan, which was added in April last year to the case file on the 2007 Malatya murders, exposed plans to assassinate prominent Turkish citizens who are non-Muslim figures and place the blame for the killings on the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
The plan, suspected to be the Naval Forces Command plan targeting Turkey’s non-Muslim communities, was retrieved from a CD seized in the office of retired Maj. Levent Bektaş, a suspect in the Ergenekon case.
The CD exposed the group’s plans to assassinate prominent Turkish citizens who are non-Muslim figures and place the blame for the killings on the AK Party. The plan calls killings of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, Catholic priest Father Andrea Santoro and three Christians in Malatya an “operation.”
Doğan said even if the cases were criminally solved, some deep-rooted problems will not be solved unless the “racist and discriminative mentality” in Turkey’s education system, judiciary, politics and media changes
The Cage plan had caused fear particularly across İstanbul’s Adalar district, which is home to hundreds of non-Muslim families. Residents there said the plan was reminiscent of the Sept. 6-7 trauma.
The Sept. 6-7, 1955 events started after a newspaper headline said Atatürk’s home in Greece had been bombed by Greek militants. In revenge, Turkish nationalists attacked the houses and business places of non-Muslims, destroying 5,300 businesses and houses owned by Greeks, Armenians and Jews.
