by Gregory C. Benoit
When Fatma was just 13 years old, her older brother was imprisoned for his political and religious views. While he was suffering grievous torture, Fatma and her relatives were forced to hide their beliefs from authorities, neighbors, even schoolmates for fear of persecution.
Ali’s uncle was arrested and tortured in ways too gruesome to recount. The people of his town fled from the government forces, hiding in sewers for seven days.
Gulsha’s husband was an engineer. One day, when he went to work, the police met him there and arrested him for his religious beliefs. He disappeared for four months, during which time he was tortured daily. He finally escaped one day when his tormentors thought he was dead; they threw his unconscious body outside the prison and left him there. Ebru’s two younger brothers were not so fortunate; they were beaten to death in prison.
Nuray’s husband was arrested, but she escaped with her two children, aged 5 and 7. The three of them spent six days riding in the back of a truck with no food, just a bucket of drinking water and another bucket for a toilet.
These people are Kurdish refugees. They are part of an ethnic group which exists largely in an area known as Kurdistan along the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Northern Syria, a group which has not assimilated into any of those national cultures. In the past 20 years, Kurds have suffered under oppression and terrorism; oppression from a Turkish government bent on destroying the Kurdish resistance group known as PKK, and terrorism in reprisals from the PKK.
In 1989 over 5,000 Kurds arrived in England in the space of one month. Many others never made it, and one hears tales of those thrown overboard to drown or robbed and abandoned in foreign lands.
The full stories that these people have to tell of torture and murder would be unsuitable for these pages. But there is a hopeful ending to the story, still unfolding, and that is the part of the tale that is rarely told.
Paving the Way
Our story actually begins back in the mid-60s with a young American couple, Roger and Yvonne Malstead. The Malsteads were working in Turkey as missionaries but were asked to leave for conducting "Christian propaganda." They returned to the United States having accomplished one significant thing—mastery of the Turkish language—and this skill would prove valuable in ways they never foresaw.
Twenty years later the Malsteads decided to try again and returned to Turkey, only to be cast out again for preaching the gospel. This time they moved to England and began taking legal steps to get their names removed from Turkey’s "black list," in hopes of returning once more. Before they could complete this process, however, the great wave of refugees swept over England, and instead of going to Turkey, the Malsteads found that Turkey had come to them.
"Suddenly our facility with the Turkish language proved priceless. We began visiting the refugees in refugee shelters and church halls, helping them as translators and such." It immediately grew into more than that, as Roger and Yvonne helped the families get settled into life in England—going shopping, finding apartments, getting doctor appointments. "We really had to recognize that God was calling us to minister to these people in deeper ways. It seemed natural; they needed God’s word, and we spoke Turkish. So we began inviting them to Bible study." Within three years, 20 refugees asked to be baptized.
The Ministry Today
Today Roger and Yvonne are just two of eight people involved in the ministry known as Çare Community Fellowship. The focus of the Fellowship is to help the Kurdish people move from being refugees to being a Christian community of English citizens.
"Our goal," Roger explains, "is to establish a Turkish-led assembly in the London area. There are over 100,000 Kurdish refugees here, so there ought to be at least one!" The Fellowship rents a church building for Sunday afternoon meetings with lots of singing and a sermon, all in Turkish.
The adults tend to be most comfortable with their native tongue, but their children are quickly assimilating English—both language and culture. Beth Grove, an Emmaus alumna, works with others leading a Sunday school program in English for the younger generation.
On Wednesday nights they meet for a pot-luck supper and breaking of bread, done in Turkish style. "Turkish mosques are for men only," Roger explains, "and these men needed a setting for worship in which they felt comfortable. So we began to speak about the breaking of bread as a sort of men’s worship service to which we also invited women. This fits well into their cultural background, and both men and women have felt more at home."
The Fellowship also runs a local community center which caters to the Kurdish community. Beth explains that "people have come to know that we’re available to them for whatever help they may need, whether it’s filling out forms in English or finding legal aid or just talking." One Kurdish woman came to the center asking for help in getting an abortion, but Yvonne refused. "Yvonne spent a lot of time with her, encouraging her to keep the baby, and finally she did give birth. She and her daughter now come to church with us, and she will say, ‘I’m so glad you talked me out of having an abortion; my daughter is the joy of my life!’ "
Each summer the Fellowship gets funding together to send the Kurdish youngsters to Christian camps, and as a result many have come to the Lord. In addition, the Fellowship hosts a week-long camp on the coast for believers. The one-week camp," Beth explains, "is a very important part of our ministry with the Kurds. They are hungry for friendship and relationship, and we’ve become their closest friends; they have learned that they can trust us. We want to be people that they can trust and rely on, and spending a week together builds that trust."
Trust and Discipleship
Building trust and friendship is really the central focus of the Çare Fellowship. The refugees are people who have been rejected by their own homeland, only to come to a new land and feel rejected by the people there. "We make ourselves available to them and they are eager to make friends. They love it when British people are willing to enter their communities because it so rarely happens."
Beth works full-time with the Fellowship discipling the girls and young women. "Many of these women have deep pain from past tortures or rapes. Others just feel isolated and rejected both by their native land and by their new countrymen. The women on our team have worked hard to build trust; the Kurdish women have come to realize that we can be trusted with their secrets, and this has made a powerful impact.
"Our main job is just to spend vast amounts of time with the Kurds, to be their friends. We try to embrace not just their culture but them as well. I believe that God has brought these people to this city just so that they will hear the truth. This is a huge unreached group and they’ve come right to our doorstep! It is a wonderful opportunity for God’s people."
The names of refugees used in this article are pseudonyms.