GERMAN, TWO OTHERS KILLED AT CHRISTIAN PUBLISHER’S IN TURKEY
Agence France Presse — English
April 18, 2007 Wednesday 6:47 PM GMT
Assailants slit the throats of three people, one of them a German,
at a publishing house in eastern Turkey that had been threatened for
distributing Bibles and printing books on Christianity, officials
said Wednesday.
The gruesome murders in Malatya, 650 kilometres (400 miles) east
of Ankara, appeared to be the latest attack on minorities in Turkey
following the killings of a Roman Catholic priest last year and an
ethnic Armenian journalist in January.
Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said five suspects, including a
man who jumped out of a window to escape capture, were taken into
custody over the killings.
"Four suspects were detained by police at the crime scene with the
murder weapons. The fifth suspect has been hospitalized," he told
reporters here, refusing to give further details citing the ongoing
investigation.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to shed light on the
killings which he condemned as "brutality".
"There are suspects in custody, but the prosecutor’s office is
investigating the incident to reveal at once the real perpetrators,"
he said here.
The Anatolia news agency said the suspects were young men aged 19
and 20 years of age who were all found to be carrying a letter that
read: "We all five are brothers, we are going to our deaths and may
not return."
Malatya governor Halil Ibrahim Dasoz told the NTV news channel that
the victims were found with their hands and feets tied to chairs and
their throats slit.
The German embassy in Ankara confirmed that one of the dead was a
German citizen, without releasing any other details.
The Anatolia news agency identified the victims as 46-year-old Tilman
Ekkehart Geske and Turkish citizens Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel.
Dasoz said two of the victims were found dead in the third-storey
office of the Zirve (Summit) publishing house and the third died
in hospital.
Two of the dead were reportedly employees of the publishing house.
The Anatolia news agency identified the victims as 46-year-old Tilman
Ekkehart Geske and Turkish citizens Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel.
Zirve general manager Hamza Ozant told CNN Turk television that
the publishing house had received "certain threats," without giving
details.
An aide to the Malatya governor told AFP that Zirve "was engaged in
missionary activities."
The publishing house had been the target of protests by nationalists
accusing it of proselytizing, media reports said.
Proselytizing is generally viewed with suspicion in Turkey, whose
population is 99 percent Muslim. Small Greek Othodox, Catholic,
Armenian and Jewish communities are concentrated mainly in Istanbul.
Dasoz said the company had not sought any special police protection.
Turkey, which is seeking to join the European Union, always prides
itself on religious tolerance, but a string of recent attacks has
raised concerns that nationalism and anti-Christian hostility is on
the rise.
In February 2006, an Italian Catholic priest was shot dead as he
prayed in his church in the northern city of Trabzon. A teenager was
convicted of the murder and jailed for nearly 19 years.
Five days after the murder, a Roman Catholic priest in Izmir, western
Turkey, said he was harassed by a group of young men and, in July,
another Catholic priest was stabbed and wounded by a man officials
described as "mentally disturbed" in the Black Sea port of Samsun.
In January, journalist Hrant Dink, a prominent member of Turkey’s
Armenian community, was gunned down in the street in Istanbul. A
17-year-old, detained along with 11 other suspected ultra-nationalists,
confessed to the killing.