HATE CAMPAIGN LEADS TO ATTACK AGAINST PRIEST
by Mavi Zambak
AsiaNews.it, Italy
Dec 17 2007
Turkey’s press and government tend to play down the attack, choosing
instead to refer to it and similar incidents as "isolated cases." The
long list of attacks against Christian clergymen shows by contrast
that a widespread campaign of defamation and hatred against Christians
is underway. In the country for the past 27 years, Father Franchini
himself has been the object of various media attacks in the past.
Ankara (AsiaNews) – Turkey’s press has expressed regrets for the latest
incident involving an attack against a Christian clergyman. Fr Adriano
Franchini, an Italian-born 65-year-old Capuchin who has been in Turkey
for 27 years, was in fact stabbed to the stomach but is now out of
danger. Turkish newspapers have however failed so far to take notice
of the ongoing defamation campaign against Catholics in the country.
Ramazan Bay, the 19-year-old man who carried out the attack,
surrendered to police a few hours after the stabbing. He had fled after
he carried out his attack in a church in Barakli in Izmir right after
mass and in front several witnesses. He was quickly identified as a
young Turkish man who had recently expressed a desire to convert to
Christianity and complained about the long procedure the Church in
Turkey required for conversion.
In fact the young man told police that he took the decision to stab
the priest after searching the internet for information on Christian
activities and watching the last episode of a made-for-TV movie
titled The Valley of the Wolves, which focuses on alleged Christian
propaganda and proselytising.
Upon learning the news Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ali Babacan offered
the priest his best wishes for a quick recovery. In expressing his
regrets for the incident, he criticised the young man for his actions,
reiterating that Turkey was a country where different religions,
sects and cultures had lived together for centuries, and condemning
anyone, whatever their motive, who tried to destroy that harmony.
Such views reflect in a nutshell what Turkish authorities think
about the incident but in so doing they show a failure to grasp
the significance of this and similar events. By simply disagreeing
with and dismissing this kind of violence as the action of a crazed
individual or a random act by a Muslim fanatic Turkey’s leaders are
underestimating the problem.
In recent years Father Franchini was not the only Christian clergyman
to be attacked. Fr Roberto Ferrari was threatened with a kebab knife
in church, in Mersin, on 11 March 2006; so was Father Pierre Brunissen
who was knifed 2 July 2006 outside his parish church in Samsun. None
of the three were killed in these attacks.
Fr Andrea Santoro was not so lucky. He was shot to death on 5 February
2006 as he was praying in church in Trabzon.
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was killed the same way on 19
January of this year just outside his newspaper’s office in a crowded
Istanbul street. The fate of three Protestants, including a German,
was even more tragic. After being hog-tied, they were tortured and
knifed to death in the offices of the Zirve publishing company which
prints Bibles and Christian books in Malatya.
What all these cases have in common is the fact that all the culprits
are young Turkish men, all supposedly unbalanced, crazy or mentally
feeble, who ostensibly acted according to investigators on an impulse
triggered by watching TV programmes and reading online material that
focused on "missionary activities" by religious and secular Christians.
Father Franchini accused of proselytising
Fr Adriano Franchini is a case in point. Originally from Levizzano
Rangone, a town in the north-central Italian province of Modena, he
joined the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in 1959. He was ordained
priest in 1968 and in 1980 moved to Turkey where he served as director
of Caritas Turkey for more than ten years, demonstrating his great
devotion to the Turkish population, especially in the great earthquake
of 1999.
Pulling up his sleeves so to speak, he was involved in fund raising
for quake victims and played an important role in the implementation
of several projects in their favour, helping them quickly rebuild
their villages.
Even then he was falsely and unfairly accused on the internet of
proselytising; his selflessness, passion and desire to help, all his
efforts were treated as means to "create Christians," when in fact
all he wanted to do was to help powerless Muslims exhausted by the
cold and hardships with no ulterior motive like converting.
At that time accusations went away, eventually, and the false charges
laid against him, taken back. But online news have a long shelf-life
and tend to be recycled and come back unchallenged.
In light of this and other episodes local Christians and Muslims wonder
whether Turkey can be trusted since its authorities seem incapable
of instilling its youth with the values of tolerance, dialogue, and
respect for those who are different and for minorities, for allowing
information based on untruths to circulate and letting its mass media
continuously spread patently false, biased and defamatory information
about Christians, especially via internet and on TV late at night.
All one needs to do is read the daily press summary by the Catholic
Bishops’ Conference of Turkey (CBCT) to realise how Turks are
bombarded every day with inaccurate, abusive and scandal-mongering
stories about Christians and their faith.
What kind of harvest can one expect from this kind sowing? One that
is full ignorance, prejudice and hatred.
The Turkish government shows very little restraint when it comes to
censoring those who attack "Turkishness," but does precious little when
it comes to defending Turkey’s secularism and democracy from attacks.
Many people, be they non-religious, Christian or Muslim, hope that
Turkey’s political leaders might put a stop to this short-sightedness
and help instead the Turkish nation show Europe and the world Turkey’s
real face, one that believes in freedom, democracy and truth.
Only this way can the vicious cycle of prejudice and suspicion between
European countries and Turkey be broken, thus allowing the former to
open their doors to the latter.
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