This just off the RSS feed from the BBC: Turkish Christian priest abducted

A priest from Turkey’s Syriac Christian community has been kidnapped in the country’s south-east, officials say.

Edip Daniel Savci’s car was reportedly found abandoned near Midyat town in Mardin province on Wednesday.

A local clergyman had received a phone call demanding a ransom for his release, the Anatolia news agency said.

Attacks on Turkey’s Christian minority have increased recently. A Catholic priest was shot dead last year and three Protestants were killed in April.

Five men accused of the attack on the Protestant missionaries went on trial in the town of Malatya last week.

Turkish police are working to secure the release of the missing priest, security officials said.

Turkey’s Syriac Christian community numbers an estimated 25,000 people and is based mainly in Mardin, in the largely Kurdish south-east, and in Istanbul.

Syriac Christians are one of the faith’s oldest denominations and are found in modern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Touchstone had a great article about the Suriani in March 2006. It is a small community that has mostly fled the Middle East due to persecution.

This follows on the vandalism that occured at the Halki Chapel of the Transfiguration which is part of the Theological School of Halki (closed by the Turks so that no Orthodox clergy might be trained). See: Halki’s Chapel of the Transfiguration left in ruins from Asia News.

Forest guards began demolition work on the chapel without warning, Only the immediate protest of the prior of Haliki and Metropolitan Meliton avoided its total destruction. A Church in Kadikoy, ancient Calcedonia is also targeted by vandals…

Those Turks – such great democrats, such an open and free society, protectors of the rights of all minorities, and wonderful American allies who fight against participate in terrorism.