Death threats campaign targets 15 Turkish Protestant churches
Christian leaders received jihadist messages via email, Facebook and mobile phones. Association of Protestant Christians: “threats are not anything new” but became “systematic” in August.
ISTANBUL · 07 SEPTEMBER 2015 · 13:19 CET
Emails, Facebook accounts, websites and mobile phones of 15 Protestant and evangelical churches and its leaders have been targeted in Turkey in only one week. The Association of Protestant Christians in Turkey is among the affected.
According to information gathered by World Watch Monitor, the messages followed the “style and jargon” typically used by Daesh (IS), “vowing to kill, massacre and behead apostates who the messages accused of having ‘chosen the path that denies Allah’ and ‘dragged others into believing as you do… As heretics you have increased your numbers with ignorant followers’”.
One pastor attacked over both email and SMS messages explained: “They are saying things like they had been waiting for us to return to Islam, and that we are responsible for other Muslims turning to Christ, that our time is up and that Allah will give them our heads”.
“THREATS ARE NOT ANYTHING NEW “
The Association of Protestant Christians in Turkey, affiliated to the European Evangelical Alliance, responded to the intimidation campaign with a statement on 1 September. “Threats are not anything new for the Protestant community who live in this country and want to raise their children here”, they said.
“But with the recent increase in systematic threats, from this country’s west to east and north to south, in different cities, we think that these messages, coming close together and resembling each other, are coming from the same source.”
EVANGELICALS: GOVERNMENT COULD DO MORE
Turkey has seen a growth of public expressions of the Christian faith in recent years.
In December 2015 “around 3.000 people were challenged with the Christmas gospel during one weekend in Turkey”.
In a recent interview, evangelical pastor serving in the country Marc Madrigal explained that “social prejudices still abound”.
“While one municipality may grant evangelicals permits to use public buildings for concerts, others do not even give the evangelicals a rendez-vous.”
Madrigal asked the Turkish government to keep “fight prejudices, condemn wrongdoings and pass laws against hate crimes.”
Turkish citizens have the legal right to change their religious identity or leave blank the religion column on their IDs.
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