

Aykan Erdemir, a member of Turkey’s parliament, will travel to Diyarbakir Church in mid-June. To prepare for his visit, he looked up the church’s website but his parliamentary office computer blocked the church website with a message that it contained ‘pornographic’ content. Checking the websites of other Turkish Protestant churches Erdemir and his colleagues found they also were blocked. Diyarbakir Church is not under a national ban (occasionally websites are banned). The block only affected computers in the parliament and was quickly removed after Erdemir complained. Erdemir said the episode is a symptom of deep-rooted governmental antagonism toward Christians (especially Protestants) and of Turkey’s increasing intolerance towards minorities. He believes law enforcement authorities consider Christianity to be one of the country’s greatest threats and that military training has reinforced an attitude of marginalisation. ‘They really don’t see Turkish Christians as citizens of this country,’ he said.
Crosswinds Prayer Trust was founded in 1994, at Nailsea, near Bristol in the South-west of England by Canon John Simons. Its aim is to mobilise, inform, connect and equip people in Christian Prayer...
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