It is the most recent of many attacks in Turkey on Christians and this attack comes two days before Holy Father's visit to Turkish occupied Cyprus, which the Turkish government invaded in 1974.
Related links, Tornielli, here,
In 2007, a Roman Catholic priest in the western city of Izmir, Adriano Franchini, was stabbed and slightly wounded in the stomach by a 19-year-old man after Sunday Mass. The man was arrested.
The same year, a group of men entered a Bible-publishing house in the central Anatolian city of Malatya and killed three Christians, including a German national. The five alleged killers are now standing trial for murder.
The killings – in which the victims were tied up and had their throats slit – drew international condemnation and added to Western concerns about whether Turkey can protect its religious minorities.
In 2006, amid widespread anger in Islamic countries over the publication in European newspapers of caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, a 16-year-old boy shot dead a Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro, as he prayed in his church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon. The boy was convicted of murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
In a 2006 telephone interview with The Associated Press, following another knife attack that injured another priest, Padovese expressed concern over the safety of Catholics priests in Turkey.
"The climate has changed," he said. "It is the Catholic priests that are being targeted."
Background on the Turkish Invasion of 1974, here.
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