Turkey

The Huffington Post gives a brief history of the Armenian genocide and reports that the goal of the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire was the “complete the eradication of the empire's Christians.”

“Today, Christians, who have been reduced to a mere 0.15 percent of Turkey’s population, are treated as a fifth column by the state, thwarted in their ability to preserve their churches,” Nina Shea writes in the National Review Online. "All of Turkey’s Christian traditions still face tight restrictions: rules against the possession of churches, bans against seminaries to train new clergy, and prohibitions from wearing religious garb in public."

Five years ago today, “three Christians were bound to their chairs, tortured, and stabbed repeatedly at a Bible print shop in Malatya,” CBN reports.

“Wednesday 18th April 2012 will be the fifth anniversary of the murders of three Christians… at the Zirve Christian publishing house in Malatya, Eastern Turkey, in April 2007,” Middle East Concern reports. “Five men, aged 19 and 20 at the time, were arrested at the scene and were charged with the murder. Their trial opened in November 2007 and became complicated as a result of efforts to identify those behind the perpetrators.”

“The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2012 annual report recommended designating Turkey as a ‘country of particular concern (CPC)’ for its ‘systematic and egregious limitations on the freedom of religion,’” the Armenian Weekly reports.

"Pastor in Black Sea region’s bastion of nationalism feels the hate; slow justice in Malatya," Compass Direct News reports.

“Christian clerics in Turkey have expressed their anxiety regarding the growing threats they face in wake of an attack against Pastor Semih Serkek of the Protestant “Lütuf” (“Grace”) Church in Istanbul’s Bahçelievler district on April 7,” Hürriyet Daily News reports.

Wolfgang Häde, the pastor of a Protestant congregation in the Turkish city of Izmit, challenges German Christians to exemplify the persecuted church in Turkey.

“The plateau of Tur Abdin… is the historical heartland of the Syriac Orthodox Church, whose patriarchate resided here until tensions with the Turkish republic pushed it to move to Syria in 1933… A century ago, [Christians] numbered 200,000... Today, no more than 4,500 Syriac Christians, who speak a local dialect of the Aramaic language as well as Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish, remain in Tur Abdin,” The New York Times reports.

“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in written responses to questions submitted by Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA), the Ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, offered inordinate and undeserved praise for Turkey for taking “concrete steps” to return a tiny fraction of stolen religious properties, but did commit to continuing to both press Ankara to return additional properties confiscated from minority religious communities to their rightful owners,” Asbarez.com reports.

Although writing that Turkey should not be labeled a “country of particular concern” for its religious freedom abuses in a recent U.S. government report, Turan Kayaoğlu, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, does believes that Christianity is endangered in Turkey.

“A major national publication has revealed the inner-workings of how allies of Ankara in Washington twist arms to mute legitimate criticism of Turkey’s anti-Christian abuses,” PanArmenian.net reports.