Finland Lutheran Church Turkey

Finnish Lutheran Church sells high market office space to Turkish government in Helsinki…….


 

Oh, and they’re spinning the sale to the highly anti-democratic Islamo-regime ”as having been settled a year before present day realities”.

 

Followers of what happens inside Turkey, meaning astute followers, know fully well that the leadership under the AKP could only lead in one direction. Tyranny. You can’t spin that ”all of a sudden Turkey has gone anti-democratic”, and be taken seriously. Just exactly where has the Lutheran Church Board been over the past decade?

 

Old offices of the Church Board were sold to the Turkish state

By Juhani Huttunen

Property sold to Turkey is part of a larger entity with a total value of over EUR 30 million.

 

The former office building of the Church Administration in Katajanokka has been transferred to the Turkish state. The Turkish Embassy will be transferring to this property at Satamakatu 9.

 

The transaction was made in December 2016. The property purchase price was EUR 8.2 million. The property is one of the four sites that the Church Board has been selling since 2013. The total cost of these deals is 39.4 million euros.

 

Technically, the Church Board sold the Satamakatu office to Lapis Rakennus Oy, which then sold the property to the Turkish state. The church government was involved in the transaction process. The Church Board moved to new premises in Eteläranta in 2014.

 

[…]

 

The human rights situation in Turkey speaks

 

The human rights situation in Turkey during the 2014 Recep Tayyip Erdogan election cycle has attracted wide international attention. Last October, attention was drawn to the news that a Turkish journalist Ayla Albayrak from Wall Street Journal had received a prison sentence from “spreading terrorism propaganda” in Turkey. Upon receiving the judgment, Albayrak was in New York.

 

Even before the rise of Erdoğan as president of the country, Human Rights Watch had reported serious violations of freedom of speech in Turkey for several years. In 2016, after a failed military coup, according to Human Rights Watch, at least 241 people died.

 

“The situation in Turkey was different than now”

 

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland published ethical guidelines for investment activity in 1999. Is the information about the current state of human rights of the Turkish State affected by the Church’s real estate transactions in the light of the Church’s use of social interventions for human rights?

 

This is commented on by the church caretaker Leena Rantanen of the Church Department’s finance department.

 

– This property is part of a larger four-story unit whose sales operations started in the fall of 2013. This property was sold to Lapis Rakkenus Oy in December 2016, property deals were arranged for over a year. Lapis Rakennus Oy sold the property to the Turkish state, Rantanen says.

 

“The situation in Turkey was different when the deal was being arranged,” she says.

 

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