Turkey will Convert Armenian Church into Cultural Center
12/30/2020 Turkey (International Christian Concern) – Agos reports that Turkey has decided to turn Konya’s Holy Trinity Armenian Church into a cultural center. Turkey has finished restoring it to a cost of 3.5 million TL but it is not clear when the church will reopen in its new capacity.
The 1915 genocide nearly eliminated the Armenian Christian population from Turkey. Since then, Turkey has taken control over most of the abandoned churches and other Armenian cultural sites. Turkey does not acknowledge the genocide, and has not made any attempts to restore these churches back to their original Christian community. Instead, Turkey either converts these churches into mosques or restores their buildings into faith tourism sites. When pursuing the later option, Turkey uses it as an example to the international arena about how they care for religious freedom. However, it is a point which confuses religious freedom with faith
Hrant Dink Murder Case Continues
12/20/2020 Turkey (International Christian Concern) – The attorney for Hrant Dink’s family, Hakan Bakırcıoğlu, appeared to express frustration following Thursday’s court case at Istanbul’s 14th Heavy Penal Court. He stated that the court gave insufficient time for statements of the defense.
This was the 113th hearing in a lawsuit filed against public officials regarding the assassination of Agos Newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink in 2007. Dink was an Armenian who spoke out regarding the genocide. It is widely believed that his assassination was done with the knowledge and implicit approval of Turkish authorities. Since then, there have been multiple court proceedings in an attempt to gain justice following his murder. The nature of how these proceedings have progressed seem to give credence to the idea that there was some type of government knowledge or possibly involvement of Dink’s assassination before the event occurred.