Slain German higlights Christian plight
By BENJAMIN HARVEY, Associated Press Writer Mon Apr 23, 3:03 PM ET
MALATYA, Turkey - The story of a quiet and deeply religious German missionary ended with the sound of dirt being scattered over his coffin in eastern Turkey, his violent death a sign of the plight of Christians in this Muslim country.
Tilmann Geske lived 10 of his 46 years in Turkey, a member of the country's small Christian community. He and two Turkish Christians were killed last week, their hands and feet bound and their throats slit, at a Christian publishing house that distributes Bibles. Five young men were detained and charged with murder; they allegedly said they killed to protect Islam.
Speaking after her husband's funeral Friday, his wife Susanne described a shy hardworking man who had invited people into his home for Bible study, taught English and German, and helped send Turkish children to school overseas. The couple lived with their three young children in the gritty town of Malatya, members of a tiny Christian community numbering less than 20.
In Turkey, Christians and other non-Muslims make up less than 1 percent of the population and are often viewed with suspicion. Susan Geske said her husband was sensitive to his Muslim neighbors and was not one to push his faith on others.
"He didn't have the idea of tossing out Bibles," she said. "If you knew Tilmann, he was never like that. He was very shy, he would never do that."
"This was his dream — not to be just a Christian worker, but to be a part of the world," Susanne Geske said. "He wanted to work like the Turks, not just to be a foreigner who gets money from abroad. He wanted to show that you can be both a Christian and a normal worker."
Susanne and Tilmann Geske met at a church in Lindau, Germany, when he was working mornings as a pastor at a Protestant church and afternoons as a forklift operator, and she was looking for a job. They first came to Turkey in 1992 on their honeymoon.
The next year they returned, spending three weeks in Turkey's undeveloped east, the setting for fighting between Kurdish guerrillas and Turkish government forces. The Geskes were undeterred, and a few years later decided to settle permanently in Adana, near the Mediterranean coast. They learned to speak Turkish and raised their two girls and a boy there: Michal Janina, 13, Lukas, 10 and Miriam, 8.
Susanne Geske said she planned to stay in Turkey with her children despite her husband's murder: "I feel this is my place."
The deep-seated suspicion of Christian influence was evident at the morgue Friday, where a separate family drama played out.
In a cold drizzle, a man leaned on a cane fingering Islamic prayer beads. Hatem Aydin, 56, was the older brother of one of the two slain Turkish Christians, and he had come 22 hours by bus to pick up his brother's body.
Aydin wanted to get his brother Necati's body before the man's wife did, and quickly bury it in an Islamic ceremony, but the morgue wouldn't let him. Hatem Aydin said his family hadn't spoken to Necati in years, the split driven by the younger brother's decision to convert to Christianity after marrying a Turkish Christian.
"First he told us, 'I'm reading the Bible,' and we were OK with that," Hatem Aydin said. "But after he got married, he starting bringing Christian books, then CDs, and after that we didn't talk to him anymore."
Hatem Aydin, a tailor, said he would not go to his brother's Christian funeral and turned back for the long ride home.
At Tilmann Geske's funeral in an overgrown Armenian cemetery, the Turkish pastor said the slain man's family had forgiven the suspected killers.
Throughout most of the ceremony, only the smallest girl, Miriam, broke down in tears. But as the coffin was lowered with ropes into the grave, the family collapsed into a tight little circle, their sobs drowning out the sound of the dirt and rocks being shoveled onto the grave.
Slain German higlights Christian plight
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