A court jailed five suspects Sunday on murder charges linked to the killings of three Christians who were tied up and had their throats slit at a publishing house which had drawn protests by nationalists for distributing Bibles.
Six others were released pending trial, the court said. It was unclear what charges the six faced and a trial date has not yet been set. A 12th suspect, who tried to escape from police by jumping from a fourth-floor balcony at the scene of the killings, remains hospitalized in stable condition and was expected to be charged later.
The three victims — a German man and two Turks who converted to Christianity — were killed Wednesday at a Christian publishing house in Malatya.
As the article points out, this incident will not help Turkey's bid for EU membership.
3 comments:
This incident illustrates why Turkey should NOT be admitted to the EU. The murder was committed, not by Islamists, but by nationalists. Recall that Turkey is, ostensibly, a secular nation. Why then would a small Christian publisher provoke nationalists if their nationalism is supposed to be secular in nature? Perhaps they view it as a foreign influence (that is the line the Russian Orthodox Church uses against missionaries--admittedly accurate when it comes to JWs and Mormons), linking Christianity to Armenians, for example. But, nonetheless, such religious based definition of "nation" ought to be inconsistent wiht a "secular" society. What this incident illustrates is that secularism in Turkey is superficial and shallow, being the preserve of the military and a small intellectual elite. The vast majority of Turks are traditional and Islamic. These incidents show Islam is an integral part of "Turkishness" and, therefore, Turkishness is wholly incompatible with Europe.
There's also the absurdity of Turkey as a genuine democracy. It has only 55 members of parliament in a country of up to 100 million people--55. In contact, the UK has over 600 members of parliament with of population of less than 70 million. Turkey is an authoritarian country, with a veneer of secular liberalism, a governing structure of authoritarianism and personality cult, and a mass culture of tribalism and Islam alien to European culture. Europe is turning into Eurabia fast enough now without the accession of Turkey, if the EU admits Turkey it's all over.
BTW, this incident also begs the question--why is our supposed "evangelical Christian" President, darling of the "religious Right" (who have their own poisonous combination of nationalism and religion) supporting the accession to the EU of a nation utterly hostile to our culture and traditional faith? As owl might say, "the world may never know"; then again, perhaps a better adage is "follow the money."
Turkey should not be admitted to the EU. No nation should be admitted to the EU. Supranational "states" should be disbanded, along with the states themselves, and reconstituted only if needed for defense. :)
Sorry, I made the mistake of relying on the New York Times for the figure on Turkey's parliament. The correct number (by way of BBC) is 550. But, that correction aside, I still believe Turkey's "secularism" is a thin and brittle veneer of authoritarianism and militarism on top of a deep well of old, oriental Islamic culture. The danger to Europe from EU accession ought to be apparent.
As for expecting genuine freedom of religion, the government reports more than 99% (yes, 99%) of the population is Muslim. Probably only the Gulf states are on par with that level.
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