Andrew Brunson, the American pastor who has been imprisoned in Turkey for nearly a year on dubious terrorism charges, is now facing new charges: ‘gathering state secrets for espionage, attempting to overthrow the Turkish parliament and government, and to change the constitutional order.’
The Turkish government has seized control of six church buildings in the country’s Diyarbakir region.
In April, Turkey detained an American evangelist and ordered him held for a month with a view to his deportation.
Four Muslim men detained by police for attacking a church building in the Black Sea region of Turkey last week shouted jihadist slogans after they were released from custody.
The Malatya Administrative Court ruled last week that the Turkish government was negligent in its duty to protect three Christians who were tortured and killed in 2007 and ordered it to pay one million lira ($333,980) in compensation for their families.
Theoretically, Turkey allows non-Muslims to be exempted from compulsory religious education if their religion is on record with the state. But parents have complained that some schools have refused to allow their children to be exempted.
One of the oldest churches in Turkey reopened this month.
According to AINA, a worship service was recently held in the 160-year-old Mardin Protestant Church after extensive restorations as the building had been left in ruins for 60 years.
Twelve Armenians who were baptized last month in Istanbul were among the many former Muslims who are now openly embracing Christ after their ancestors were forced to follow Islam during the Armenian and Assyrian genocides that killed millions of Christians one century ago.
An electrical fire in Istanbul’s Bible Correspondence School on Dec. 7 is thought to have been from an arson attack after security cameras caught a man leaving the building just after the fire started, according to Barnabas Aid.
A lawyer in Diyarbakir estimated that land grabs have targeted thousands of Christians and Yazidis in southeastern Turkey, according to Al-Monitor.
A Turkish legislator is demanding an investigation into why the website of a Turkish church was classified as pornography and blocked online from Turkey’s Grand National Assembly, according to Morning Star News.
Under a new Turkish law, five confessed Christian killers slated to be released on bail will instead remain under house arrest, according to Morning Star News.
Two wolves who infiltrated a Turkish congregation were among more than a dozen suspects arrested as police foiled a plot to assassinate the pastor.
A prosecutor probing a possible link between the assassination of a Christian newspaper editor and the Malatya murders of Turkish Christians was abruptly transferred last week to another court.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended that the Secretary of State name Pakistan as a Country of Particular Concern in its 2012 Annual Report.
Protestants in the eastern Turkish province of Van have finally succeeded in opening a house church after seven years of struggling with local bureaucracies, yet they are still concerned by the hostile rhetoric coming from their local officials.
After a lengthy legal battle, a Turkish judge acquitted two Christians of insulting Turkey and its people by spreading Christianity, but not without imposing a heavy fine for another unrelated charge.