Amid the cacophony of police sirens, low-flying helicopters and rifle fire, there was another sound during the attempt to overthrow president Recep Tayyip Erdogan: The wailing of Turkey’s imams.
From the nations’s 85,000 mosques, their amplified voices were heard calling upon the faithful to take to the streets and defy the plotters. The people listened.
Some bravely stood in front of tanks as they defended the democratically elected president. Around 240 from both sides died and 1,400 were injured.
For others the night presented different opportunities as hardline Muslim Sunnis, whipped up to a frenzy, targeted Turkey’s Christian community.
In Matalya, a sprawling city in Anatolia, once the heartland of Christianity in the East, they targeted a Protestant church.
The word church is a grand term for the small, modern shopfront nestled in the city’s minority Alevi district. – READ MORE
