In 2001, the political climate throughout Turkey changed after the National Security Council made statements implying that Evangelical Christians posed a threat to national security. A campaign began in the media, as leading commentators and politicians railed against missionaries who “bribed” young people to abandon Islam.

Entering this poisonous atmosphere were a group of impressionistic teens who joined a group of “faithful believers” in Malatya known as a tarikat. “Tarikat membership is highly respected here; it’s like a fraternity membership,” notes Darlene Bocek, the pastor’s wife, in a letter she sent out about the killings. “In fact, it is said that no one can get into public office without membership in a tarikat.”

Two of the assassins from the tarikat feigned interest in Christianity to gain the trust of Aydin and Geske, and even attended an Easter service some weeks before their crime.

The autopsy report has not been released, but various reports describe anywhere from 16 to 156 knife wounds as gruesome confirmation of their torture. The Turkish Daily News quoted Dr. Murat Uğraş, a spokesman for the Turgut Özal Medical center. He described the hospital surgeons' fruitless efforts to save Yüksel, the only one barely clinging to life when he arrived at the hospital.

“He had innumerable scores of knife wounds,” Dr. Ugras said. “It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him," he said. “His fingers were repeatedly sliced to the bone lengthwise. His buttocks, his testicles, his rectum, his lower and middle back had dozens of cuts. There was a very long and open cut on his neck from ear to ear.”

When Aydin’s wife arrived at the morgue to identify her husband, the attending official urged her not to remove the sheet covering his body from the neck down. “You don’t want to remember him that way,” she was told.

Despite Aydin’s sufferings, his face had a beautiful expression -- frozen at his passing -- as if he beheld heaven’s open embrace.

In a culture marked by an endless cycle of revenge killing, German missionary Tilmann Geske’s wife, Susanne, shocked many Turkish commentators when she offered the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ to the perpetrators. In one of her first statements to the press she quoted Jesus on the cross, saying to surprised reporters, “Oh God, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Pastor Bocek affirms this attitude. “Overall, the reaction in our church is forgiveness,” he says. “There really is not fear, but a little more caution in the way we bring people to church. We already feel we are ready for whatever comes. We continue to evangelize, do our Bible studies, and have prayer.”

He sees evidence that God is already turning this horrible offense around for good. “Over the last 10 days, we’ve had four commitments to follow Christ,” he notes. Even a Jewish man in Jerusalem received word of the Turkish martyrs, contacted Pastor Bocek, and gave his life to Christ.  “They didn’t die in vain,” he says. “God is really going to use this event. We all sense that something is coming.”

© 2007 ASSIST News Service, used with permission