Bishops call Erdogan to order on eve of Merkel visit to Turkey

The German Bishops’ Conference called on the Government of the increasingly despotic Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to heed religious freedom in Turkey, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. The call was issued on 22 April, the eve of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s trip to southeastern Turkey to meet Syrian refugees, as part of her campaign to win support for an EU agreement with Ankara. The deal gives Turks visa-free access to the EU and accelerated accession talks, if Turkey adheres to an exchange arrangement aimed at deterring refugees from crossing the Mediterranean to Greece. The German bishops said the Government must see to it “that the few Christians left in Turkey are able to practise their faith and that the possibility of doing so is not further restricted”, after it seized the Armenian Giaragos church, as well as a Protestant, a Chaldean, a Syrian-Catholic, an Armenian-Catholic and a Syrian-Orthodox church in Diyarbakir, eastern Turkey.