Murdered Christians in Turkey Await Justice

In recent years, Turkey has been shaken by the murders of a number of prominent non-Muslims.

Some of their court cases received more attention than others, but lawyers suspect they might all be related. One such case was the murder of Catholic priest Andrea Santoro, who was killed in 2006 by a 16-year-old ultranationalist in his church in the Black Sea province of Trabzon. The Santoro case was completed with lightning speed.Then came the murder of Hrant Dink, the editor-in-chief of the İstanbul-based Turkish-Armenian Agos weekly.

The hitman was again an ultranationalist teenager. The court sentenced one suspect to life while acquitting all suspects of organized crime charges in the January 2007 murder. The high-profile case is expected to go to the Supreme Court of Appeals. After that, in April 2007, three Protestant missionaries were brutally murdered, bound to chairs, tortured and stabbed at the Zirve Publishing House in the eastern province of Malatya before their throats were slit. The publishing house printed Bibles and Christian literature.

In 2010, Catholic bishop Luigi Padovese, who led Father Santoro’s funeral service in 2007, was also brutally killed by his driver and bodyguard in the Mediterranean port of İskenderun in southern Turkey. The hearing of the case will be on Feb. 22, but the case has a low profile.

Ercan Eriş, the lawyer for the Roman Catholic Apostolic Vicariate of Anatolia, said the family of Bishop Padovese is not willing to pursue the case, just like the family of Father Santoro.

“I observe the hearings of the case on behalf of the church. We tried so hard to obtain formal permission from the family to represent them in order to pursue the case, but they are not interested in that. Therefore, the case is in the hands of the public prosecutor,” he said.

Eriş also said the reason behind the family’s unwillingness is totally based on the theological teaching of “forgiveness.” “Based on my previous experience, I can say their decision is related to their beliefs because in several other cases of attacks against churches and religious leaders, priests and churches have never filed official complaints,” he added.

However, things might change in the course of the case if new evidence emerges, just like in the case of the Malatya missionaries.

When Dink was killed five years ago, almost no one realized there might have been some links between the Dink, Santoro and Malatya murders except human rights lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz, who said this was the beginning of a pattern.

“We later found out about the Cage plan and learned how those involved in the Ergenekon gang had planned and carried out their attacks and their campaigns of intimidation against non-Muslims.

Cage plan emerges

The Cage Operation Action Plan, a suspected Naval Forces Command plan which targeted Turkey’s non-Muslim communities, was retrieved in 2009 from a CD seized in the office of retired Maj. Levent Bektaş, a suspect in the Ergenekon case, an alleged terrorist organization that tried to overthrow the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.

The CD exposed the group’s plans to assassinate prominent Turkish citizens who were non-Muslims and place the blame for the killings on the AK Party. The plan called the killings of Dink, Father Santoro and the three Christians in Malatya an “operation.” An anti-democratic group within the Naval Forces Command aimed to foment chaos in society with those killings, and therefore open the way for a coup d’état.

In April 2010, an indictment regarding the Cage Operation Action Plan was added to the case file on the 2007 Malatya murders. Now, there is a third indictment being prepared for the high-profile Malatya murders case.

When it comes to the question of whether or not the Santoro and Padovese killings can be further illuminated, Cengiz said there is no pressure put on anyone to dig deeper into those files.

“I do not know if any deep state elements were involved in Padovese’s murder, but as far as I can see, no one is putting pressure on anyone to see if there are any connections like this. The Vatican is not doing anything to make sure this case is handled in a serious manner,” he said.

However, Eriş said the Code on Criminal Procedure (CMK) does not allow the Vatican to be a plaintiff in cases which are handled in Turkish courts.

He points out the Santoro case was closed too soon, before all facts related to the murder were revealed, and the Cage plan was found much later than Santoro’s killing. Still, any prosecutor can pursue the case again, in light of the new evidence.

“The investigation process has not been delicately handled for the Padovese case, either,” Eriş said.
The Feb. 22 hearing of the case will be the first one after a group of experts decided that suspect Murat Altun, a convert to Catholicism, was of a person of full age and capacity. Altun had sought to be declared insane, visiting several doctors. Altun also claimed the bishop was homosexual, which is why he was motivated to murder him. Eriş said Altun’s claims were an attempt to manipulate public opinion.

“I have no doubt he will continue to use the same tactic at the new hearing to try to save himself,” he said.

Missionary work falsely presented

However, there are many issues which need to be clarified in the Padovese case, Eriş said. One example is that Altun was called on the day of the murder from a telephone number that had not been used before. Another is that a large sum of money was transferred to Altun’s bank account.

“In addition, Altun was going to accompany Padovese to a planned meeting with the pope in Cyprus, but this visit was cancelled. After the cancellation, Altun said he was planning to kill the pope. All of that was never investigated further,” he said. According to Eriş, as long as there is false propaganda that “missionaries are going to divide Turkey,” the country is going to be a difficult place for Christians to live.

Even though missionary activities are legal in Turkey, some government institutions criminalize missionary work, and this is being taught as one of the biggest national threats to society in schools, in the military corps and through some civil society organizations.

Archbishop Ruggero Franceschini of İzmir told AsiaNews in Italy before Padovese’s funeral in Milan that the murder was planned and studied in detail by subversive groups, who want to keep Turkey away from Europe.

There were also some hate-crime assaults on religious leaders in Turkey that took place around the time of the Santoro, Dink and Malatya missionary murders. In July 2006, another Catholic cleric, French national Pierre Brunissen, survived after being stabbed by a man described as mentally disturbed in Samsun, another Black Sea port city. In December 2007, a young man stabbed and injured Father Adriano Franchini, a 65-year-old Italian, after attending Sunday mass at a church in the western city of İzmir.