The slayings of three Christians in this eastern town highlight Turkey's uneasy relationship with its minorities, and Christians expressed fear Thursday that growing nationalism and intolerance could lead to more violence against them.Police detained five more suspects Thursday in the attack at a Christian publishing house that distributes Bibles. Some reportedly said they carried out the killings to protect Islam.
The three victims - a German man and two Turks who converted to Christianity - were found with their hands and legs tied and their throats slit. The victims had bruises on their faces and cuts on their wrists from the ropes that bound them.
The attack Wednesday added to concerns in Europe about whether the predominantly Muslim country - which is bidding for European Union membership - can protect its religious minorities.
Christian leaders said they worried that nationalists were stoking hostilities against non-Turks and non-Muslims by exploiting growing uncertainty over Turkey's place in the world.
The uncertainty - and growing suspicion against foreigners - has been driven by the faltering EU bid, a resilient Kurdish separatist movement and by increasingly vocal Islamists who see themselves - and Turkey - as locked in battle with a hostile Christian West.
"Our lives are in danger because of this mind-set," the Rev. Ihsan Ozbek, pastor of the Kurtulus Church in Ankara, told a news conference in Malatya. He said there was a "witch hunt" under way against Christians and other minorities.
Nationalists, who have long dominated public debate in Turkey, have also begun to call for Turkey to withdraw its EU bid and make its own way in the world.
Some young men indoctrinated with a vision of Turkish greatness - and with a view of the West as intent on keeping the Islamic world weak - view non-Muslims with suspicion.
"The problem is our education and our media," Mustafa Efe, head of Mujde FM, or Miracle FM, a Christian broadcasting station, said after traveling to Malatya to meet Protestant pastors.
"They always say Christianity is dangerous because Christians are trying to break up Turkey."
Christians make up just a fraction of 1 percent of Turkey's population of 71 million.
"There is this general atmosphere of fear - that Turkey will be segmented," said Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a human rights lawyer who represented one of the slain Christians, Necati Aydin, 26, in an earlier court case.
Aydin was charged with insulting Islam and spent a month in jail after he was found distributing Bibles in the Aegean city of Izmir.
Hurriyet newspaper quoted one unidentified suspect as saying: "We didn't do this for ourselves, but for our religion. Our religion is being destroyed. Let this be a lesson to enemies of our religion."
Besides the five suspects detained Thursday, four others were taken into custody at the publishing house Wednesday, as well as a fifth who underwent surgery for head injuries after he apparently tried to escape the crime scene by jumping from a fourth-story window. All were in their late teens or early 20s.
Since last year, Turkish youths have killed a Roman Catholic priest while he prayed in a church in Trabzon, threatened other priests and killed a prominent Armenian Christian editor in Istanbul.
The latest violence comes ahead of presidential elections next month, a contest that highlights fears among Turkey's secular establishment that a candidate from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted party, or even Erdogan himself, could win the job and strengthen Islamic influence on the government.
Erdogan has rejected the label of "Islamist," citing his commitment to Turkey's effort to join the EU.
Christians and other minorities have watched Turkey's struggling EU bid with alarm. Many worry the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, who when he was still a cardinal spoke against Turkey's bid for membership, would only contribute to their problems.
Italian Premier Romano Prodi told the ANSA news agency that while the attack "certainly does not help" Turkey's EU bid, "tragedies like this should not influence" the decision as there are "political guidelines that are looking at long-term prospects."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat Party - which opposes Turkey's bid - said the attacks showed the country's shortcomings in protecting religious freedoms.
The German man, identified as 46-year-old Tilman Ekkehart Geske, had been living in Malatya since 2003.
His family wanted to bury him there, and his German wife Susanna, speaking Turkish, told ATV television she would stay and raise her children in the gritty textile and agriculture city famous for its apricots.
A large Turkish flag hung from a window of the students' residence where five of the suspects lived. The curtains were drawn and the door was locked.
Ozbek, the pastor from Ankara, said most Christians were committed to life in Turkey.
"We'll stay where we are. We are Turkish citizens," he said. "We have nowhere else to go."
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