Turkish police have detained 10 people in connection with the killing of three people, including a German, at a Bible publishing house in the mainly Muslim country, authorities said yesterday.
The three were found on Wednesday with their throats slit at the Zirve publishing house in Malatya, 650km east of Ankara.
The killings appeared to be the latest attack on minorities in Turkey following the killings of a Roman Catholic priest from Italy last year and an Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink in January.
Voicing shock across the country at the latest attack on Turkey's small Christian minority, a headline in the Milliyet daily said: "The nightmare continues."
Malatya Governor Halil Ibrahim Dasoz told reporters the number of people in custody had risen to 10 and that all were from the same age group. He gave no further details.
NOTES FOUND
The first five suspects, detained at the crime scene on Wednesday, were 19 and 20-year-old students who lived in the same hostel run by an Islamic foundation, newspapers reported. They said the youths carried notes in their pockets saying: "We are brothers. We are going to our death."
They reportedly told police they carried out the killing for the "homeland."
Turkish Christians voiced distress over the killings, saying distrust of Christianity was being stirred up in Turkey where there are just 100,000 Christians in a population of 74 million.
"It was a disgusting, savage incident. I link it to comments made by party leaders ... feeding people with comments like `there are missionaries everywhere,'" Pastor Behnan Konutgan said by telephone from Malatya where he was visiting relatives of the victims.
He dined with the victims just two weeks ago.
The Anatolia news agency identified the victims as 46-year-old Tilman Ekkehart Geske, a German citizen, and Turkish citizens Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, who were reportedly employees of the publishing house.
Newspapers described Aydin as the head of the tiny Christian community in Malatya.
Yuksel was buried according to Muslim rites yesterday in a village near Elazig in eastern Turkey.
ELECTION TENSIONS
The killings came as political tensions rise between Turkey's powerful secular elite, including army generals and judges, and the religious-minded AK Party government over next month's presidential elections.
A wave of nationalism has swept the secular but predominantly Sunni Muslim country over the past year. For many nationalists, missionaries are enemies of Turkey working to undermine its political and religious institutions. Hardline Islamists have also targeted Christian missionaries in Turkey, which is seeking EU membership.
Joost Lagendijk of the European Parliament's Turkey delegation, visiting the nearby southeastern city of Diyarbakir, said the killings would send a negative message to Europe and that there was paranoia about missionaries in Turkey.
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