Christians Under Attack

Police, acting on intelligence, detained a 22-year-old man shortly after he arrived in Antalya, allegedly to attack 30-year-old Pastor Ramazan Arkan of the Antalya Evangelical Church, Christian sources and police officials said.  

However there was violence elsewhere Thursday, January 3, as a car bomb killed four people and injured 52 in the Kurdish-dominated city of Diyarbakir in south-eastern Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. It targeted a military vehicle as it passed through the centre, and officials blamed Kurdish extremists, reports said.

The suspect attemptig to kill the pastor, identified as Murat Tabuk, had reportedly told a friend, "I need a gun," although police officials said no weapon was found at the time of Tabuk’s detention. He apparently admitted under police interrogation that the popular Turkish TV serial 'Valley of the Wolves', regarded by critics as rabidly anti-American, had inspired him to plan Pastor Arkan’s murder.

The serial led to the $10 million 'Valley of the Wolves Iraq', the most expensive film ever made in Turkey, which include a real-life incident: the arrest by American forces in July 2003 of Turkish special forces in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq. The soldiers were led out of their headquarters at gunpoint, with hoods over their heads.

AMERICAN APOLOGY

America later apologized for the incident, but the offence ran deep in Turkey, further fuelling Muslim extremism here. Minority Christians in Turkey and Iraq have been accused by Muslim militants of supporting the United States and observing an "American" or "Western" religion."

Turkish nationalists and Islamic militants have also said that Christian missionaries operating in Turkey are a threat to national security. Some Christians say they feel less safe in Turkey than before. Fearing possible anti-Christian violence, Pastor Arkan had been placed under armed police protection since Christmas Day, December 25, Christian sources said.

Turkey has been under European Union pressure to step up security for minority Christians following previous incidents, most recently last month when Italian Priest Adriano Franchini narrowly survived after he was stabbed by a young man at his church in the western port city of Izmir.

MORE ATTACKS

Earlier in April, assailants slit the throats of three Christians -- a German national and two Turks -- at a Bible publishing house in the eastern town of Malatya.

Last year, Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro was shot dead in his church in the Turkish Black Sea city of Trabzon.

The EU has said that Turkey, which wants to join the Union, most do more to protect the religious freedoms of its tiny Christian minority, which numbers some 100,000 in a total predominantly Muslim population of nearly 75 million. (With BosNewsLife's Stefan J. Bos).