Reza the Iranian Agent


On Saturday we had a prayer event at the church. The turnout wasn't what we had hoped, but we did have one unusual guest. An Iranian man came walking into the church long before the meeting had started. I greeted him and we tried to introduce ourselves. He barely spoke Turkish or English, so understanding each other wasn't easy. He said he had walked several miles to get to the church. And he obviously hadn't bathed in a while. We gave him some food and some water and milk, for which he seemed grateful.


There happened to be an Iranian believer in the church building at time, so I was able to introduce them and they conversed for a while and she translated for me into Turkish. Reza had apparently been in Turkey once before and our friend had met him then. He had been sent back to Iran, his application for refugee status denied. Instead of staying in Iran, however, he apparently found a way to get a new passport and got back into the country to try his luck again.


He was interested in meeting other Iranians and I put him in phone contact with a leader from a local Iranian congregation here in Ankara. That congregation gave him directions to their meeting place and Reza was supposed to go on Sunday to meet with them. When Reza gave the phone back to me the pastor also warned me about the man, saying that he should have stayed in Iran since he wasn't in any danger (he isn't a Christian) and he didn't have any plans or opportunities for himself in Turkey. He warned me that the man would probably keep asking for handouts until we said no...


He apparently didn't have anywhere to stay so we gave him a small donation to cover dinner and one night in a very cheap hotel (about 15 dollars). He did continue to ask, but we had given him enough to get through the night and he had instructions for getting to the Iranian congregation the next day so we prayed for him and sent him on his way when it was time for all of us to go home.


Since the Iranian church doesn't meet until the afternoon, Reza came first to our church in the morning to try to ask for more money from people... But later that day we came across some information about him...


It appears that Reza may not be a lonely Iranian looking for refugee status. There is good reason to believe that he is employed by the Iranian government, sent to Turkey to investigate the Iranian Christians who are migrating here. The Iranian congregation used to meet at our building, which may explain why he came to us first. According to what we heard recently, the Turkish police sent him back to Iran when they discovered who he was, but he came back with a new government issued passport and a new name.


I called the Iranian pastor to tell him this and he said, "Well, I thought that might be the case... but we don't worry too much about those things... even agents can get saved."

Comments

The Stylite Reader said…
Maybe next time you can treat him to one of those special Turkish haircuts!!
-Jonathan
August 3, 2008 at 5:12 AM
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