Dear Darrel,

We appreciate your concern but the letter you have posted on your site is NOT written by anyone connected with any of the three brothers, though she is a believer in Turkey. It is full of inaccuracies and causing the widows much distress. They have requested it be removed whenever any of us (they were my coworkers) see it. I am printing below a letter written by another coworker who was asked to do so by the widows:

Dear Friends

In the aftermath of the tragic killings of three of our brothers in Malatya last week, I am sure many of us have been sending information for prayer back to friends and churches in our home countries, asking that they would stand beside the church in Turkey at this time. Please continue to do this.

It has become apparent however that some of the information being sent out is not altogether accurate, and has perhaps been picked up from hearsay or press reports. In particular I have become aware of a letter “from the Protestant Church in Smyrna” which describes in long and graphic detail the events of last week. While this has been dramatically and emotionally written, there are clear inaccuracies in the report, and the broadcasting of certain details is not healthy or helpful.

This letter included graphic details about the extent of the wounds on the bodies of the victims. I have been asked by one of the families to state that some of this information is clearly untrue and overstated. And to be honest, when those close to the victims come across such information reading it only causes further distress. These men gave their lives for the Lord; does it matter if there was one wound or one hundred?

Can we also be cautious about the terminology used in describing these people? We should not give them titles that they did not use themselves. Whenever the Turkish press uses certain labels or titles they are doing so with a certain degree of criticism, and I suggest that we should not imitate this. Tilmann’s wife was quoted in one press report as follows: "He wanted to work like the Turks, not just to be a foreigner who gets money from abroad. He wanted to show that you can be both a Christian and a normal worker."

I would like to ask that we be more sensitive in our communications,

in order not to cause further distress to families and others grieving
in order not to spread inaccurate information (don’t believe all you read in the press)
in order not to cause problems for or otherwise compromise anyone else living and working in Turkey.

In the light of this I would like to ask too that the letter referred to above is not sent out widely until it is revised and corrected.

Thanks Doug Jarvie