Five on trial in Turkey for missionary murders
Saturday, 24 November 2007
Print
Email
Five men have gone on trial in the eastern city of Malatya for the murder of three Christian missionaries, in a case seen as a test of Turkey's willingness to tackle growing signs of religious intolerance.
The defendants face life sentences for tying up, torturing and slitting the throats of two Turks and a German on 18 April at the Malatya-based Christian publishing house they ran. Security was tight around the court house, as members of the victims' families read out opening statements to the judge.
"It's not these five young men I am asking to be punished, but the mentality behind them," said Semse Aydin, wife of one of the victims, adding that her children remain "unconsolable".
Susanna Geske, the wife of the German victim, spoke of the overwhelming support she had received from her neighbours, saying that she considered Malatya her home and had no intention of leaving.
By lunchtime, the judge had ruled the case adjourned until 14 January, citing a lack of lawyers for the defence. Already, though, lawyers for the families say there is evidence the case is being poorly prosecuted.
A known member of an ultra-nationalist group, the chief suspect, Emre Gunaydin, claimed that he was put up to the murder by a man he met while working for a local newspaper, according to Turkish media reports. However, the prosecutor has not investigated Gunaydin's claims.
Lawyers are also angry that 15 out of 31 dossiers presented to the judge contain documents taken from the victims' computers, including the addresses and phone numbers of their contacts. "This information is now in the public domain", said Orhan Kemal Cengiz, one of six of the families' lawyers in court. "Not only has the prosecutor failed to make an adequate investigation, he has also put many other peoples' lives in danger."
"Listening to proceedings, you'd think [the victims] were some sort of criminal gang, that they deserved what they got," said Ahmet Guvener, pastor of a Protestant church in the neighbouring city of Diyarbakir, who was present at the trial.
In some ways, life for Christian converts in mostly Muslim Turkey has eased in recent years. Pushing hard for EU accession, Ankara legalised missionary activity and relaxed legal restrictions on opening new churches. But the rise in anti-Western feeling since 2004 has been mirrored by a rise in violent attacks on Christian targets. Several churches were fire-bombed last year, and one Protestant church leader severely beaten. Last February, a Catholic priest in the Black Sea city of Trabzon was shot by a 16-year-old boy.
Despite official figures showing barely 350 cases of Muslims converting to Christianity in the past 15 years, nationalists – secularist and Islamist – continue to insist that missionaries represent an existential threat to the country.
"It's a perception from the past," says Jeremy Salt, a professor at Ankara's Bilkent University who has written on 19th-century missionaries in Turkey. "Back then, missionaries were seen as encouraging Christians to rebel. Some think the same is happening now."
One of them is Salim Cohce, a professor of history and sociology at Inonu University in Malatya. In Malatya alone, he claims, a city which once had a large Armenian population, there are 3,500 "crypto-Christians". The aim of missionaries is "to destabilise the country", he says. "If they are not controlled, this can be dangerous for Turkey."
