Thursday, January 10, 2008

Christian Ministers at Risk in Turkey

As has been noted here previously, Christian communities in Muslim countries are more at risk now than they have been since the Middle Ages. The war in Iraq made the situation for that country’s Christians worse than it had been under Saddam. For Christians living as dhimmis under a Muslim majority, the protection offered by a sadistic despot is better than no protection all.

The remaining Christians in Turkey have been under attack in recent years during a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in Turkish culture. The increasing incidence of violence against Christians is not random, but is focused mainly on Christian ministers from various denominations. There seems to be a deliberate effort to weaken and demoralize Christian groups by taking out their central figures.

From yesterday’s Asia News:

The online Turkish agency Gazeteport broke the news: “at the last minute, a new assassination attempt against a Protestant pastor in Turkey has been foiled”. The setting of the possible act: the “Agape” Protestant church in Samsun (a Turkish city on the Black Sea), which has been a target of various acts of violence in the past.

The attempt against the pastor — Orhan Piçakçilar, a Turkish national — was prepared by the “umpteenth” young man, who was arrested in time by the police, thanks to telephone surveillance. The 17-year-old, who previously had threatened the pastor with death over the telephone, also used the telephone to brag to his two brothers, telling them to watch the television the following day. “Tomorrow you’ll see me on TV, I’m going to kill in Samsun”. The minor, who in a photo published by the Gazeteport newspaper appears provocatively in a black shirt, wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses and with his hair carefully arranged with gel, told the police — who captured him near the city of Ordu, on the northern border with Georgia, in possession of a pistol — that he simply wanted to scare the minister, saying that he did not belong to any terrorist organisation. So he was immediately released, on the sole condition that he not leave the country. Is he just the usual “troubled” youngster wanting to make a name for himself?

Episodes like this have by now become the order of the day in Turkey, and news of them seems to receive less and less attention, and to provoke little outrage.

On December 31, 2007, a 22-year-old man, Murat T., received money and a map of the Protestant church of Saint Paul in Antalya, for the purpose of burning it together with its pastor, Ramazan Arkan. In this case, too, the Turkish press praised the intervention of the police in preventing the attack, thanks to telephone surveillance and the man’s criminal record. In this case, too, the target was a Protestant pastor of Turkish nationality. In this case, too, the young man was released and simply sent into military service, something he had been trying to evade.

And the young man who tried to stab the Italian Capuchin priest Adriano Franchini on December 16 — what happened to him? It all ended without any serious reflection on this phenomenon of “hooliganism” with tragic consequences and precisely selected targets: Christian ministers.

What can be expected from a Turkish politics that is “schizophrenic” in regard to Christianity?

Anti-Christian efforts also focus on church buildings:
- - - - - - - - -
At the end of December, the Turkish press recounted the burning of more than ten churches in India on the part of Hindus, justifying it this way: “the Christians are guilty of missionary activities”. In other words, everything gave the impression of being a subliminal message for the burning of churches in Turkey as well, where the very presence of churches is seen as missionary proselytism (what a shame that it is forgotten that, apart from some of the Protestant buildings, the churches were there in Turkey before the Turkish state).

But now it’s going beyond subliminal messages.

Last November, the Turkish forest service destroyed an historic Orthodox chapel in Halki, near Istanbul.

And parallel propaganda appears in Turkish media:

And already appearing on YouTube is one of the many episodes of the already condemned television series “The Valley of the Wolves”, which proudly shows a young man entering a Christian bookstore and approaching the clerk or owner, courteously holding out a coin — probably posing as a kid who wants a handout — and then firing a pistol, instantly killing the man and leaving him there on the floor, to the indifference of all present. The show continues with the discovery of a printing press that publishes Gospel books, with a cover identical to the books commonly provided for the faithful in churches in Turkey.

It now seems that in Turkey it is the Christian as such who is identified as a missionary, and that Christianity is increasingly conceived as an element foreign to Turkish culture, and therefore necessarily an element to be eliminated, because it threatens the very unity of the country: in spite of the fact that Christians in Turkey are not even 0.2% of the population, the phobia that they are a destabilizing element for Muslim Turkish society has already reached the levels of a real and true paranoia.

Read the whole article for more details about what’s happening to Christians in Turkey.

Christians are fleeing Islamic countries in record numbers. The ones who escape to Europe are like the Jews who fled Germany for France in 1939: for those who were lucky enough, Paris was only a temporary way station on the route that led out of Europe.

The Treaty of Lisbon only highlights the fact that Europe will be next to join the Umma. Anyone who isn’t already a Muslim would be smart to have a bag packed and a passport readily to hand.


Hat tip: insubria.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Part of the reason for this persecution is the abdication of responsibility by the West. The Western powers used to lean on the Ottoman Empire to treat Christians well but no more. The US wants Turkey's help in accessing Northern Iraq and the EU Oligarchs need the multicultural fantasy for their collective psychological health.

MrB398 said...

It's too bad that there aren't more scenarios leading to arrests and persecutions of people with the aid of a criminal check.

dienw said...

Psalm 137: vv 7-9.
not too harsh.

Charlemagne said...

And just a few days ago El Presidente Bush was praising Turkey and recommending their accession to the EU. These types of stories need to cross his desk, with him at it, more often.

Anonymous said...

But it's the 'Religion of Peace', don't ya know Charlemange?

Didn't you get the memo?

/sarc

Diamed said...

The persecution of the christian minorities in majority muslim lands foreshadows what they will do with Europe once they get the majority there. There is no hint of moderate, enlightened, tolerant Islam anywhere in the muslim world that everyone keeps talking about.

David M said...

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 01/10/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

Geoffrey de Bouillon said...

I do not think it would matter if President Bush saw more stories like this. He and his administration are in love with the multicultural fantasy that all people are just alike and want the same things.

Charlemagne said...

Wearing hip boots so you don't have to:

LGF has a story about Ron Paul getting unsolicited advice from David Duke. David Duke supports VB, BP, et al and so does GoV so according to the LGF "six degrees" theory GoV supports Duke and Paul and that makes us racists and white supremacists.

No where did I see that the support for Paul was reciprocated by him nor am I aware of any European organization, short of some fringe skinheads perhaps, supporting Duke.

From LGF: "Anyone brave enough to don a hazmat suit and see what advice VB, Fjordman, GoV, LePen and the rest of the similar Eurotrash have to offer?"

and: "We’re playing six degrees of Vlaams Belang again, because the person dispensing the advice above is, of course, white nationalist David Duke—who’s also a huge supporter of the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the British National Party, the German NPD, the French National Front, and all those other European parties that Brussels Journal and Gates of Vienna keep trying to tell us are not fascists."

So, b/c Duke seems to support the efforts of Europeans to not lose their homelands to Muslim invaders they are fascists by association?

The LGF crowd will go to any length it seems to discredit the few parties standing up against the PC elite. Not sure why.

Anonymous said...

Charlemange,

Let it go - at least until such time you see from them some evidence of a basic understanding of fascism - what it is, and what it is not. That might be a while. The quote you provided sounds like an adolescent fishing expedition for affirmation to me. It's not worth trying to start another flame war over.

People will have to come to terms with their projection issues on their own terms. In the meantime, there are far more important and interesting things that you could be investing your brainpower on.

Work to protect Freedom of Speech, even speech you don't particularly like - and you'll eventually see the hysterical reflex reactions of effective indoctrinations come undone. Truth will eventually win the day . Perhaps one day, people might even be able to engage in rational discourse over contentious issues again - even issues like race.

And as far as racism is concerned, the equal rights/civil rights pendulum has swung well past its equlibrium point. Unlearning conditioned responses will lag behind that swing a bit. Even then you have an entire civil rights industry that must justify its existence in an attempt to survive beyond its obsolescence. It's funny, but it's the black American authors Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele that have a far better handle on race issues than the myopic lefties who see everything though the lens of race. They're the ones with the issue.

Duke and Paul are nuts in my estimation. That's not to say they can't make occasional good points. But such discernment is not the strength of the Inquisitors. Once labelled, all they hear is heresy. People have noticed this before:

"Burn her, She's a Witch!" -- Monty Pyhton

Charlemagne said...

Chalons,

I agree it is a waste of time. It seems like they like to engage in perpetual acts of self affirmation with this topic. We can ignore them, they may not go away, but GoV appears to be growing in spite of their best efforts.

As for racism in the US it seems to me it is the Left that can't let it go, not the Right or even whites. The MSM seemed shocked that Iowans could actually vote for Obama. I think most whites got over race in and of itself a long time ago. The problems whites have with blacks and other aggrieved minorities today is their politics, their constant claims of victimhood, etc.
Racism won't disappear until the Left lets it.

Sodra Djavul said...

Charlemagne & Chalons,
This issue persists, despite the interest of Baron, Dymphna, Paul Belien, etc. because I think CJ feels offended that his anti-Islamist movement has been "hijacked."

There's no sense in attempting to explain to him that a political movement belongs to its constituency, not an individual.

Therefore, in his view, when GoV and others decided to side with people active in the fight instead of the LGF nanas who like to swap cookie recipes under the guise of being anti-Islamists, he viewed it as the ultimate betrayal.

He should be used for amusement from this point forward, not cause for consternation.

- Sodra

Charlemagne said...

HA!

Love the comment regarding cookie recipes.

You are right Sodra they very much spend all their time singing to the choir and no time in actually organizing for the fight.
I shall waste no more energy on them!

Zenster said...

The minor, who in a photo published by the Gazeteport newspaper appears provocatively in a black shirt, wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses and with his hair carefully arranged with gel, told the police — who captured him near the city of Ordu, on the northern border with Georgia, in possession of a pistol — that he simply wanted to scare the minister, saying that he did not belong to any terrorist organisation. So he was immediately released, on the sole condition that he not leave the country.

In this case, too, the young man was released and simply sent into military service, something he had been trying to evade.

[emphasis added]

Anyone else sensing a pattern here? Islam needs to be clubbed over the head with its own intolerance. It's time to ban it in all nations that exercise freedom of religion. Odd as that may sound, Islam should not and cannot be tolerated by the free world. It is nothing but a spiritual gulag and death cult. Reciprocity needs to become an albatross that is hung around Islam's neck.

Charlemagne: Racism won't disappear until the Left lets it.

Don't hold your breath. This isn't going to happen until someone pries it out of their cold, dead hands. Note how Liberals are so fond of labling Islamophobia as "racism". This malaprop is a perfect example of how near and dear the race card is to these cretins. As with the University of Delaware, to be white is to be racist. So long as the Left is capable of deluding themselve in such a fashion they will be susceptible to far greater delusions, among them, such as how Islam is the Religion of Peace. [spit]