/ world today news/ New details have emerged about the attack on the St. Mary Draperis Catholic Church in Istanbul, which was founded in 1584 and is one of the oldest Catholic churches in the city. According to the Turkish newspaper Hurriet, law enforcement agencies have released photos of two people detained in this case. During the investigation, it turned out that the attackers worked as cooks in a Chinese restaurant in the Bahcelievler district.
One is said to be a citizen of Russia and the other is a citizen of Tajikistan. The detainees tried to change their appearance, one of them shaved his beard. In addition, an abandoned car of the suspected terrorists was found with Polish plates, from which the plates had been removed.
There are many mysteries in this story. Immediately after the terrorist attack, the IS group (an organization banned in Russia) claimed responsibility for it. The motivation was its leader’s call to “kill Jews and Christians everywhere.”
However, the only person killed in the attack was a Turkish citizen, a Muslim at that. 52-year-old Tunjer Jihan, according to his relatives, suffered from a mental disorder. He had visited St. Mary Drapers Church a few months ago.
They knew him in the church; the parish priests called Jihan “a good man”. In addition, Hurriet writes, “questions have arisen about the departure from typical ISIS methods.”
The last time the terrorist group attacked in Turkey was in 2017. During the New Year celebrations in one of the nightclubs in Istanbul, a gunman fired 180 bullets at the visitors. 39 people died, both Turks and citizens of other countries.
In the case of St. Mary Draperies Church, only one person was injured. As Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said, the weapons of the attackers were defective, which allowed to avoid additional casualties.
But it would be strange for ISIS fighters, who have so far carefully prepared for attacks, to be so careless in the case of an attack on a church in Istanbul.
The main question: why was the Catholic Church targeted by terrorists? There have been attacks on Christians in Turkey before, but they looked different. In January 2006, Protestant church priest Kamil Kyroglu was beaten unconscious by a gang of young men who shouted “Give up Jesus or we’ll kill you now!”
A month later, Italian Catholic missionary Father Andrea Santoro was shot dead by a 16-year-old boy in the city of Trasbon, allegedly in retaliation for Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.
Four years later, the Anatolian bishop Luigi Padovese was murdered by his driver and longtime aide Murat Altun, who stabbed him several times and then beheaded him.
However, there were no attacks against churches. Moreover, while many Western outlets, including Catholic ones, reported on the attack at St. Mary Draperis Church, Turkish Christians “regularly complain of harassment and marginalization, especially by ultranationalists who see Christians as agents of the West, allied with the Kurdish separatists”, in recent years the situation in Turkey has not been so intolerant towards Christians.
The current terrorist attack, notes the portal Christian Today, causes not only anxiety but also confusion, as Christians, like many Turkish citizens, “are confused by details that defy simple explanations.”
According to the CEO of Turkey’s evangelical radio station Petra Media Group, Soner Tufan, the terrorists “killed one person, they could have killed more, but we can’t understand why, one or many, from their point of view it doesn’t matter. “
In turn, the president of the Association of Protestant Churches in Turkey, Ali Kalkandelen, believes that the attack may have been a “political message”. And for whom?
The Church of St. Mary Draperisou has been run by Franciscan monks for many centuries; a week before the attack, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Turkey.
Consul General of Poland Witold Lesniak was present at the mass when the Turkish citizen was shot. Italy and Poland can hardly be called flagships of the West; if the terrorists wanted to make a loud statement, they would attack the Americans or the Israelis, which would find “understanding” among certain circles in the Middle East and beyond.
It is, on the one hand. On the other hand, Italy and Poland can be called countries that have an image of Catholics. In this case, an attack on a church run by Italian monks during a service attended by a Polish diplomat makes sense in terms of discrediting the Turkish authorities and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan among Catholics in particular and Christians in general.
To some extent this happened. Many Christian publications describing the attack recalled previous persecutions and killings of clerics, while also highlighting Erdogan’s “pro-Islamist” course.
But at the same time, in Turkey itself, politicians from both the ruling party and the opposition did not use the terrorist attack to attack each other.
The president himself personally called the priest of the Church of the Holy Virgin Draperis Anton Bulai. Speeches by a number of Turkish politicians emphasized that Turkish Christians are an integral part of the country.
Perhaps in time it will become known what exactly is behind such a strange terrorist attack on a Catholic church in Istanbul. So far, there are more questions than answers.
Translation: SM
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