Turkey: Persecution of Converts

I have written about the case of the Malatya murders here and here. As well as these violent crimes against Christians, it appears that you will also find in Turkey the insidious, low-level, persecution of converts which I have commented about so much in Egypt.

According to this report, two converts are accused of “insulting Turkishness”:-

During a 50-minute hearing yesterday in Silivri, 45 miles west of Istanbul, Judge Metin Tamirci summoned two alleged eyewitnesses, five gendarme soldiers, two policemen and three local residents to appear at the next hearing before the Silivri Criminal Court, set for March 13.
. . .

The prosecution had previously requested several of these individuals as potential witnesses, but their admission into the case had been denied by the previous judge. Judge Neset Eren withdrew from the case in September after Kerincsiz accused him of improper bias in his handling of the litigation.

“A year has passed, and the court has already heard all the testimonies on both sides of this case,” defense lawyer Haydar Polat told Compass yesterday. “But it is clear from today’s hearing that the court plans to continue this unfounded case for at least another year or more.”

Stonewalled Judicial Process

In July, State Prosecutor Ahmet Demirhuyuk had called for the Christians’ release, declaring that no credible evidence had been produced against them.

Not only did the three plaintiffs give contradictory testimonies, he said, but the prosecution failed to provide any concrete proof that the two men had ever cursed Turkey or Islam.

Accordingly, Polat told Compass, his clients should have been acquitted of all the charges at the next hearing on September 12. Instead, the presiding judge’s resignation and replacement in effect stonewalled the judicial process.

Without explanation, Demirhuyuk has been replaced by a succession of other state prosecutors at subsequent hearings on the case.

. . . and so it goes. One wonders whether this is a deliberate ploy to keep this case dragging on as a "punishment" for their conversion. The article continues:-

The new presiding judge yesterday overrode objections by lawyers Polat and Gursel Meric against calling new witnesses. The defense team had argued specifically that those persons who prepared the official statements for the case did not have the legal right to now come up with any other information differing from what had already been presented to the court.

The prosecution repeated its claims that the Christian defendants were part of an organized, illegal group suspected of possessing weapons and using immoral means to spread their influence.

Tastan and Topal are accused of insulting Turkishness, reviling Islam and secretly compiling files on private citizens for a Bible course by three young men, two of them minors.

What a dreadful crime - running a Bible course! There's more:-

Halting Hate Language

After the gruesome killing of three Christians who were tortured and their throats slit in the southeastern city of Malatya last April, the Turkish Interior Ministry admitted in June that there had been an increase in individual crimes against non-Muslim citizens and their places of worship.

The Interior Ministry’s official circular urged provincial governors to take precautionary measures.

But to date, no open steps have been taken to halt trumped-up legal pretexts against Christians or other non-Muslims, nor to prosecute the use of hate language that could incite violence against them.

Last night, still another episode of Turkey’s highly popular “Valley of the Wolves” weekly series on Show TV featured derogatory scenes against Christianity. In one scene, a character voiced the threat, “Just as we drove out the Christian crusaders, we will drive them out. If you don’t have a gun, let me give you one.”

In a thinly veiled variation of the Malatya murders, this fall the TV series even portrayed a teenage boy commissioned by a nationalist group to kill a Christian book publisher. Episodes on November 8 and 15 implied Christian missionaries were enemies of society, guilty of links ranging from the sale of body parts to prostitution.

This month Turkish Christians started a protest campaign against the overtly anti-Christian slant of the TV series, which has repeatedly dramatized popular misconceptions of the Turkish populace against missionaries, the Bible and so-called proselytizing of Muslims.

Sounds like a variation on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", except that Christians are substituted for Jews.