Gaziantep, June 8, 2015
Turkish authorities are more and more frequently encroaching on Christian educational institutions on the territory of Turkey. In the officials’ view, such schools do not have a right to promote Christian values, reports the Linga news portal.
Christian charitable organizations in Turkey have for the fifth year now been assisting refugees from Syria, providing them with accommodation and work; the refugees’ children also can afford to continue their education in specialized schools. Among such schools until recently were volunteer educational institutions belonging to the Association of Churches of Jerusalem in the city of Gaziantep. At the beginning of the next academic year, they were ready to accept hundreds of children aged between 8 and 12.
But last week an imam of a local mosque, who saw teachers of one Christian school distributing copies of the Bible to its students and their parents, hastened to inform the media representatives about it.
Firas Dib, spokesman of the Referance newspaper, published the information on “distribution of Christian literature” in Gaziantep schools, personally meeting with the paper’s editor-in-chief and representative of the head of the country’s ruling party. The latter have taken into account “a fact of violation of Muslim children’s rights.” Later on the same day, the city administration received special directives; it at once sent police officers who conducted a search in four Christian schools in the city and sealed them.
It should be noted that the fate of the Christian students as well as schools of other Christian organizations still remains unknown.
