Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan’s movement for religious freedom took a step backwards Thursday. The nation’s high court overturned a law passed by the Parliament earlier this year that allowed women to wear headscarves in universities.

The decision is bad news for Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party. The same court will also be ruling on a separate lawsuit later this year that threatens to ban the AK Party and 71 of its leaders from politics.

Ankara University professor Baskin Oran told Reuters the ruling “means that the court has already decided on the shutdown of the AK party, which the court should ban because of the head-scarf issue.”

The AK Party is accused of being too “Islamist” by its enemies—the judiciary, the military, and the academy. They believe Erdogan has a secret agenda to start an “Iranian revolution” like movement.

However, AK Party officials believe the ban on headscarves limits religious expression and denies some women the right to education. Esra Ozbecetek dropped out of university when she was 19 because she was not allowed to wear her headscarf to class. “I’m crushed and feel hopeless. I really don’t feel equal to anybody else in this country anymore,” she said.

Though some in America are hailing this ruling as positive for pluralism in Turkey, the potential dissolution of the AK Party is a blow to one of Turkish Christian’s top supporters. The AKP’s support for religious freedom is not only for Muslims, but also for Christians, Kurds, Armenians, and Syriac Orthodox minorities.

The April 2006 killing of three Christians in Malatya, Turkey brought the quick scorn of Erdogan who condemned the violence and pledged harsh prosecution. On the other hand, secularist—and nationalist—members of the military have been accused of involvement in the killings.

Turkish Christians are close to losing an unconventional but important ally. The Constitutional Court in Ankara is threatening to close the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in the name of secularism. Many consider the party Islamist, but the party leaders claim to advocate for religious liberty, offering political protection to minority groups such as Christians, Armenians, and Syriac Orthodox Church.

The AK Party, which gained power in 2002 on a progressive, pro-market, pro-EU platform, is accused of violating Turkey’s longstanding tradition of separating the secular state from Islamic policy. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, whose wife covers her head as a sign of Muslim piety, has been indicted along with other AK Party officials. They could be banned from politics if the Constitutional Court rules against them and shuts the party down.

Secularist leaders in the government and Constitutional Court, mostly appointed by a previous secularist President, are concerned about the AK Party leading an Islamic Revolution similar to Iran’s in 1979. Boğaziçi University politics student Uğurcan Aksoy told WoW, “They are not working for the whole people anymore.” He believes the AK Party has a hidden agenda and is corrupt: “They have managed to suppress the army (with their Parliamentary majority), which is a very effective institution in Turkey.”

Aksoy is not alone in his beliefs. But the AK Party argues that it is trying to lift restrictions on religious practice and give people freedom to follow Islam, not subtly force conversion. They said the recent headscarf debate at Turkish universities was about allowing Muslim women to practice personal piety, not forcing them to wear headscarves.

On legal grounds, Gazi University Professor Mümtaz’er Türköne said Wednesday, “the indictment completely destroys the system of checks and balances between legislation, enforcement and the judiciary.” The AK Party will seek a constitutional amendment in Parliament to make it more difficult to close a political party. This amendment is the AK Party’s best chance to stay in power.

Religious liberty and secularism are at tension in Turkey, but many argue Turkey’s secularist worldview is a safety net. The Turkish state is safe from rising Islamism because the country has a vibrant new middle class that benefits from capitalism, democracy and globalization.

Is wearing the Muslim head scarf a symbol of political rebellion or an exercise of free religious expression? The question is dividing Turkey, a country long held as proof that a Muslim country can have a secular democracy.

Since the 1980s, Turkey has banned the traditional Muslim head scarf from universities and public buildings. Now the Turkish Parliament decides whether or not to lift the ban on scarves in universities. The bill’s supporters decry the status quo as a violation of religious expression, but the bill’s detractors worry that it means a move towards Islamist control of Turkey’s government.

Zeyno Baran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told WoW that it comes down to the motivations of those who push the bill: “Do you believe that they are about democratization and freedom, or are they about taking Turkey in a different direction?”

Baran said wearing the headscarf is an exercise of religion for many, “but no one can deny that the headscarf has become a political symbol.” Detractors argue that for the western mind, the headscarf symbolizes women’s secondary status and Islamist politics. Anthony Randazzo, a New York City student who spent a year working with Turkish college students, told WoW some of the women he knew covered their hair for modesty’s sake. Others “don’t really care about Islam but feel that it’s part of their heritage, so as activists they wear head scarves,” he said.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is leading the fight to lift the ban, has acknowledged that the headscarf is a political symbol. Once a staunch Islamist, Erdogan went to jail for sedition but then claimed to change. Skeptics say now Erdogan is showing his true Islamic colors, but Erdogan maintains that the bill is not an Islamist ploy but an issue of democracy and religious freedom.

Baran notes that Islamists have a different definition of freedom: “The freedom is mostly freedom for practicing Muslims – so freedom to wear the head scarf.” Baran said there is a quiet, growing social discrimination against those who don’t embrace the headscarf and other strict Islamic rules.

Turkey is applying to join the European Union at a time when the world fears Islamist extremism. Baran says the bill’s detractors ask, “What kind of a signal does it also send in terms of where Turkey is headed?”

Coptic Christians in Egypt were targeted in a series of attacks throughout the country last week, according to Reuters. More than a dozen shops were burned in addition to one church front. In a note of irony, Reuters reporter Aziz El-Kaissouni claims, “Christians account for up to 10 percent of the population of Egypt and relations between them and the Muslim majority are usually harmonious.” But the fact is that Christians in Egypt are considered sub-citizens in their own country and live in a state of constant fear from violence inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist Islamic groups, and an official government policy of indifference towards acts of religious-inspired (Muslim) terror.

Elsewhere in the Middle East this weekend, a Roman Catholic friar, Fr. Adriano Franchini, was stabbed in Izmir, Turkey, AsiaNews reports. Christians in Turkey are on edge ever since the brutal slaying of Fr. Andrea Santoro while he was conducting services in his church in Trabzon last year. The Armenian Evangelical Christian editor of a Turkish newspaper, Hrant Dink, was assassinated on the streets of Istanbul a few months later, followed by the torture and murder of three Protestant bible publishers in Malatya last April. Details have emerged in the ongoing trial of the accused suspects in the Malatya massacre that implicate local Turkish officials in the slayings.

The trial of five men accused of torturing and murdering three Protestant missionaries earlier this year is underway in Turkey, the BBC reports. The three Christians–Tilmann Geske, Necati Aydin, and Ugur Yuksel–were tortured for three hours by a gang of up to 10 Muslim men in the offices of Zirve Bible Publishing in Malatya. The murderers video recorded the grisly murders on their cell phones. An open letter from the Protestant Church of Smyrna describes in graphic detail the horrific event.

The defendants claim they were provoked by the victims because their activities were “undermining Islam.” Several media outlets, including the Turkish Daily News, note that prosecutors in the case intend to put the victims themselves on trial, with a majority of the case files dedicated to their ministry work. These case files also identify the work of other Christian workers in the area. That same paper reported immediately after the murders that one high-ranking Justice Ministry official declared, “Missionary work is even more dangerous than terrorism and unfortunately is not considered a crime in Turkey.”

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Most people do not dispute the fact that hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed by Turkish forces in the early part of the twentieth century, through a process of deportations, bombings, and executions. What we make of this fact, however, has been elevated to the forefront of the American political agenda, as a result of Wednesday’s declaration by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that these deaths are properly labeled genocide.

The politics here are hairy. Some Republicans suspect the Democrat-controlled committee of pushing the resolution in an effort to sabotage the cooperation Turkey has shown the U.S. in Iraq. Bush’s people, meanwhile, are working overtime to stop the full House from voting in favor of the resolution, for the same reason, that it will undermine Turkey’s support for U.S. policies in the Middle East. The Turks, of course, are incensed, while the Armenians are celebrating.

A reading of the debate reveals considerable historical detail offered by those who label these deaths genocide, and elaborate argumentation by those who do not. There are plausible reasons to conclude that Turkish actions weren’t technically genocide, or to conclude that while they amount to genocide, only harm will come from the House’s resolution.

What I’m most interested in is this: where will Christians — especially the white evangelicals who tend to support President Bush — come down on this issue? My prediction: resounding silence, despite the religious theme (Muslims slaughtering Christians).

In part this will be due to ignorance (not confined to the Christian community, by any means) of history and indifference toward world affairs. There’s also a small element of complexity — there are some interesting arguments against calling the slaughter genocide, and Turkey has a fleet of lobbyists and public affairs specialists arguing its case to U.S. congressmen and journalists.

But the primary reason for silence, I’ll posit, is an unhealthy Christian allegiance to a political party and a president. This plays out, as a practical matter, in reasoning that runs something like this: President Bush says this will threaten our troops. The Democrats passed it. Must be bad.

And lest anyone assert that I’m unfairly representing President Bush’s viewpoint, let’s be clear: regardless of one’s conclusions about whether Turkish violence amounts to genocide, any fair reading of President Bush’s public statements on this matter place him squarely in the realpolitik camp, i.e., the truth about what the Turks did is less important than the current geopolitical interests of the U.S. And to be doubly fair to President Bush, I’ll further state that this is probably very wise political and military strategy.

Christians, however, aren’t called to be geopolitical strategists, are we? It seems to me that we ought not care whether the Foreign Affairs Committee’s resolution makes political sense (it probably doesn’t), or whether it is motivated less by a desire to see justice done than a desire to reward the Armenian-American lobby (which is probably the case). What we ought to ask, quite simply, is: What is the truth?

Did the Turks slaughter one and a half million Armenians because of their ethnicity and religion? What is the truth? We ought to ask this without reference to our political or even patriotic leanings, but as followers of Christ alone. And then we ought to speak the truth, regardless of the consequences. Telling the truth has always carried costs. It seems to me that we Christians, however, have no other choice — not even silence.

This week, libraries nationwide are celebrating Banned Books Week. The American Library Association names And Tango Makes Three - a children’s book about a same-sex penguin couple who hatch their own baby penguin - the book challenged most often in 2006. But how did the Bible, a historically banned book, fare over the past 12 months?

November, 2006: British Christians accused campus authorities of driving their beliefs underground. They cited examples dating back to October 2005, when Edinburgh University banned the Bible from residence halls because it was “discriminatory” and unwelcoming to students of other faiths.

December, 2006: A British airline banned Bibles for airline personnel flying to Saudi Arabia, afraid of upsetting Muslims with non-Islamic religious material. A stewardess challenged the ban.

January, 2007: In Burnaby, Canada, the school board banned Gideon International’s distribution of free Bibles to elementary school students. School trustee Ron Burton told CBC news, “I think people see the school system as a haven where there is no religion, there is no politics.”

April, 2007: In Turkey, Muslims murdered three employees of a Bible publishing house, binding their hands and feet and slitting their throats. Protesters had targeted the publishing house and threatened its employees before the attack, one of “a string of attacks on Turkey’s Christian community,” according to the Associated Press.

August 22, 2007: A federal appeals court upheld a Bible ban in Annapolis, Maryland, and Gideon International can no longer distribute free Bibles to fifth-graders in South Iron Elementary School.