When forces loyal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan quashed a bloody military coup attempt on July 15, hard-line Muslim Sunnis used the event to target Turkey's Christian community, the London Express reports.
The pro-government Muslim protesters attacked at least two churches that night. In Malatya, a sprawling city in Anatolia, once the heartland of Christianity in the East, they targeted a Protestant church.
Gangs chanting "Allahu akbar" smashed the church's glass frontage. "We were the only targets," church pastor Tim Stone said.
In the Black Sea city of Trabzon, mobs attacked the Santa Maria church, smashing windows and using hammers to break down its door.
The attacks were not new for both cities. In 2007, three Christian employees of a publishing house for Bibles in Malatya were tortured, their hands and feet tied and their throats cut by five Muslim assailants, according to the Express.
A year earlier Father Andrea Santoro, a 61-year-old Roman Catholic priest, was murdered inside the Santa Maria church—shot from behind while kneeling in prayer. Witnesses heard the teen gunman shouting "Allahu Akbar" after the shooting.
"There's is an atmosphere in Turkey right now that anyone who isn't Sunni is a threat to the stability of the nation," said Yuce Kabakci, a pastor in Istanbul.
"Even the educated classes here don't associate personally with Jews or Christians. It's more than suspicion. It's a case of 'let's get rid of anyone who isn't Sunni,'" the pastor added.
In one of the mosques, the imam delivered a sermon warning that Turks should not befriend Jewish people or Christians because they serve the West, he said.
Though Turkey is nominally considered a secular republic, he said there is little doubt that the government and Turkey's 117,000 Sunni imams work together.
"The reality is that Turkey is neither a democracy nor a secular republic," Kabakci explained. "There is no division between government affairs and religious affairs."
He accused the Turkish government of fuelling the apparent hate drive against Christians and other non-Muslims in Turkey.
"There's no doubt that the government uses the mosques to get its message across to its grassroots supporters," Kabakci said.
Turkey once had a population of two million Christians, but now only 120,000 are left, fewer than the Christian population in Iran, according to the Express.
Ihsan Ozbek, chairman of the association of Protestant churches, said prospects are bleak for Christians in Turkey. "Things got better in 2008, but that was when Turkey thought it would join the EU. Now intolerance is growing once more," he said.
"Turkey is like Iran in 1975," said one Iranian in Istanbul. "I'm sure we will see it become an Islamic Republic very soon. "But Erdogan is clever. He will survive."
