Stabbings of Catholic priests in ‘secular’ Turkey is rather common given the small population of priests there.
1) ISTANBUL, December 17, 2007 - A 19-year-old Muslim youth stabbed an Italian priest in the stomach yesterday after Sunday services outside a Catholic church in Turkey.
Father Adriano Franchini, 65, was hospitalized overnight in the Aegean city of Izmir, and hospital authorities expected to discharge him today, the Anatolia News Agency reported.
2) The attack comes amid a growing climate of violence against Turkey’s Christian minority population. In February 2006, Italian priest Andrea Santoro was killed while praying in his chapel in Trabzon by a 16-year-old. The attacker was reportedly motivated by anger over Danish cartoons of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad.
3) In April, two Turkish converts to Christianity and a German citizen were tortured and killed with knives by five young men at a Christian publishing house in Malatya, in southeastern Turkey. Although the confessed murderers were arrested at the scene and went on trial in late November, the two widowed plaintiffs have appealed to the Turkish judicial authorities to identify and prosecute the perpetrators behind the killers.
4) A Syrian Orthodox priest who was kidnapped in southeastern Turkey in late November managed to escape his captors – days later. Several of his captors have reportedly been arrested by Turkish authorities.