Trump Warns Erdogan Not to Wipe Out Syrian Christians. Will Turks Defy America?

As Christianity is growing again in Northern Syria, Turkey is poised to wipe out minorities in Iraq and Syria, right under the nose of the U.S. Army.

By Johannes de Jong Published on December 14, 2018

Last night I got another terrible call. This time from Iraq — from Sinjar to be precise. Sinjar, the homeland of the Yazidis. Yes, the same Yazidis who suffered a genocide under ISIS. A totally innocent, unarmed religious minority that has only just started rebuilding their homeland. America’s NATO “ally” Turkey targeted them with airstrikes last night.

This time the civilians were lucky. The Turks missed. Nobody died there. But other Turkish pilots hit their targets. They bombed the Makhmour refugee camp in Iraq, bravely killing four women. Among them, a 73-year-old mother, her daughter, and 14-year-old granddaughter died, for the crime … of being Kurds.

Turkey Seeking to Exterminate Ethnic and Religious Minorities, U.S. Allies

This is what Turkish President Erdogan thinks makes him great: bombing minorities and killing girls and grannies. Why? Because they’re not yet under Turkish Islamist control.

Turkey paid bounties to mercenaries linked to al Qaeda for hunting down Christian Kurds.

Meanwhile Turkey is threatening to invade North-East Syria. That would mean direct defiance of President Trump. He called the Turkish leader and warned him not to endanger U.S. forces or attack American allies. The local Syrian Democratic Forces, which include Christian militias, and which protect Christian churches, did most of the fighting against ISIS. So U.S. soldiers didn’t have to.

The Christians of North-East Syria are rightly afraid of Turkey and its jihadist proxies. Sanherib Barsoum, an Assyrian Christian leader, has warned the world. He said that Turkish aggression would result in the ethnic cleansing of Christians from a region that now has freedom of religion and full rights for women. This is the region where Kurds, Arabs and Syriac-Assyrians share control and where their Syrian Democratic Forces cooperate with the U.S. 

Bounties Paid for Killing Evangelical Christians

Who’s in the greatest danger? Evangelical Christians, who have joined new churches planted for converts from Islam. (Such converts face the death penalty in most of the Middle East, except for the Kurdish regions of Syria.) See the video appeal below from one of those churches, recorded in January when the Turks last attacked Syrian Christians.
 

 

Barsoum pointed to the savage assault on churches in Afrin during the last Turkish invasion of Syria. “Turkey and the FSA [Free Syrian Army] destroyed those churches and forced the people to flee.” Turkey paid bounties to mercenaries linked to al Qaeda for hunting down Christian Kurds.

The Church Is Growing in Syria. Turkey Wants to Kill It.

In the Federation of Northern Syria, new Christians are safe. For now. My good friend Bassam visited one of their churches in Kobane. He reports that the building is already too small for all the souls flocking to Christ. Bassam told me:

I was struggling to control my emotions and hold back tears. I couldn’t believe that I was on Syrian soil attending a legal church service for Kurdish converts to Christianity. This miracle in the heart of the Middle East is possible thanks to the freedom in The Federation to convert and be Christian in all openness. We all know what the Turkish jihadists will do to them (if they are allowed to) and these new Christians do fear that day.

If Turkey defies Donald Trump, and if Trump does not stop Erdogan, these churches will burn; these Christians will die.

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An Assyrian Christian from Tal Nasri said: “If Erdogan is allowed to attack this place, no Christian will remain here.” One Turkish newspaper claims that Turkey plans to occupy 40 kilometers into Syria. That would mean the end of Christianity in North-East Syria, where it has existed since the Apostles. Every Christian Syrian settlement would fall to the Turks.

Turkey has exposed its plan. To eradicate Christianity, and any other worldview apart from Islamist sharia.

Only the U.S. Army, still guarding the allies who helped it conquer ISIS, stands in the way. Will American Christians insist that President Trump hold firm?

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