Violence and intimidation against Christian communities are continuing in Turkey. An attack on the church in Mersin was reported by the Asianews wire service on 14 March. According to what was reported by the friars of the parish to journalists during a press conference, “this action forms part of a violent campaign aimed at driving Christians out of the country”. “We have presented said Father Hanri Leylek a document on the attack on the church in which it is maintained that the youths came not to rob but to create terror, and in which the police are asked to investigate the reasons for the increase of these attacks on the Church and places of Christian worship. They are not gestures of solitary madmen, but acts of an organization that wants to terrorise the faithful in order to drive them away from the Church. Here there are worried families and children who have not gone to school for two days. The aim is to intimidate those who are different, but Christians are not different; they don’t come from abroad; they too are Turks”. With the city, on the other hand, “there is no problem: here there’s love between Christians and Muslims: we’ve had so many expressions of solidarity on the occasion of the killing of Father Andrea and the other episodes in which we have been the victims; the police too, if they are called, are prompt in responding; they arrive in 3 or 4 minutes. The fact is that Christians are not a body extraneous to the population, they aren’t people who have come from abroad, they are sons and daughters of this land and all work for the good of the nation, which is their own good. Our church too was built 150 years ago”.
