Keep an Eye on Turkey (continued)

Protesters in Istanbul marched Wednesday with placards reading “Let’s defend living together,” after the killing of three evangelicals in the east.

This is sad news, indeed. Three evangelical Christians associated with a publishing house in eastern Turkey were found murdered, after being bound and tortured. The publishing firm printed Bibles and religious material. I have to believe that the perpetrators of this heinous crime--as well as the assassination in recent months of an Armenian writer and Roman Catholic priest last year--are radical fringe elements in Turkish society; representative of neither Turkish secularism or Islamism. I will be interested to gauge the extent of public and official revulsion/repudiation of the crime.

Mustafa Akyol, here, asks some hard questions of his fellow Turks and their "Christophobia." He concludes:

As a more short-term solution to Christophobia, we Turks need to begin to stand against it more vigorously. Our all-mighty state shows no lack of determination in punishing insults (and sometimes even criticisms!) against “Turkishness” and its perceived sacred pillars. It should also start punishing those who spread hatred against the Christian — or Jewish, Armenian, Kurdish, etc. — citizens. That hatred not only ends in horrible bloodsheds, but also puts shame on us Turks more effectively than any insult could do.