Six Held Over Plot To Attack Turk Christian Leader

A church leader in southeast Turkey said on Wednesday police had detained six people for plotting to attack him.

A church leader in southeast Turkey said on Wednesday police had detained six people for plotting to attack him, just weeks after three people had their throats slit at a Christian publisher in the region.

Ahmet Guvener, the leader of a Protestant Christian church in the province of Diyarbakir, told reporters the six had been detained after he had complained of being threatened, both to his face and by mail.

Local police could not immediately confirm Guvener's statement.

Christian groups sometimes complain of harassment and discrimination in Turkey, which is overwhelmingly Muslim but has a secular system of government and is trying to improve minority rights as it negotiates membership of the European Union.

Some Turks view Christian missionaries as a threat to national identity and security.

In mid-April, attackers slit the throats of three people, including a German, at a Bible publishing house in Malatya, also in southeast Turkey. The attackers, said by Turkish media to be militant Islamists, have been arrested and are facing trial.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and other officials condemned the attack as a stain on Turkey's image as a tolerant society.

Turks were also shocked earlier in the year by the fatal shooting of a Christian Armenian-Turkish editor, Hrant Dink, outside his office in Istanbul by an ultra-nationalist.