Mavi Zambak

An ecumenical ceremony in the city where the Apostle to the Gentiles was born, but where officially there are neither Christians nor churches. The only church is a museum where religious celebrations are permitted. Turkey's bishops have published their pastoral letter for the bimillennial of Saint Paul, "teacher and foundation of unity".

He's just the latest of a number of young people involved in actions against representatives of the Christian minority. He denies being part of any terrorist organisation, but his is one of a series of actions - sometimes public - against the Christian minority.

Bomb blast is blamed on the PKK which has not however claimed responsibility. A new chapter of violence opens between Kurdish separatists and the Turkish military as the political stalemate continues.

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.

According to eye witnesses the priest was wounded by an “unknown hooligan”, never seen before in the Bayrakli Church, in Smirne, where the attack took place. His condition is reported to be reserved.

According to eyewitnesses, the assailant had attended Bayrakli parish, Izmir for over three years. The attack took place after the capuchin’s last in a series of refusals to baptise him: he still wasn’t ready. Msgr. Franceschini to AsiaNews: “They will claim that he is mad, but if so then the number of madmen has considerably increased, and they only attack religious and Christian foreigners”.

The ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew I, after years of insistence, was finally given the possibility to celebrate mass inside of what is, according to the State, only a museum. A saint which is unknown in Turkey, but is origin of Santa Claus.

In the region where the abduction took place relations between Christians and Muslims are good, but it is on the border with Iraq. A community still speaking the language of Jesus still calls it home. The Turkish government was working for the return of those locals who had left it.

In the eye of the storm article 301of the Constitution, which condemns every “offence” against the Turkish nation. Writers, intellectuals and students are persecuted because of it. The also EU asks for greater religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities.

Turkey, Iraq and the United States agree to take action to defeat PKK terrorism. An armed clash might be avoided but the rights of Turkey’s Kurdish minority remain an open issue.

The authorities caught between public pressure for a war on terrorism and the US who want to avoid a Turkish cross border raid on Iraq at all costs. Erdogan seems bent on a joint intervention with Washington and Baghdad to stop the PKK.

All doubts were removed by the public outrage over the US Congress vote on the Armenian Genocide and frustration at increased terrorist attacks.