“Because I was so ambitious to work and help and to do something, I said I wanted to join the suicide bombers team.”

This is a quote from Afran, who has an incredible story of how God has worked in his life. Afran is from Turkey, and is Kurdish. 

In our previous article about Kurdish ministry in Kazakhstan, we looked at the situation for Kurds in Central Asia. The Kurdish people group is one of the largest without their own nation. The native homeland of the Kurds is between southeastern Turkey and northern parts of Iraq and Syria.

Afran came from the Sasa people, a dialect of Kurdish, from Diyarbakir. Diyarbakir is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. 

When Afran was 16 he was very interested in Islam, diving into the Quran to try to understand the truth of it. 

Afran said, “I asked my uncle: “ok, we are Muslims, why only Muslims? Because we are born in a Muslim place. How do we know that Islam is right and not the other religions?” My Uncle said: “Well, there’s no answer to that. We are Muslims because our fathers were Muslims.” So, I said: “Ok, let’s say there is a 90% possibility that we are right, but if there is 10%, we are wrong, what will happen then when we are wrong?” He said: “Well then we will go to hell.”

Afran was shocked, that meant Muslims were living with uncertainty of whether they’d end up in heaven or hell. After several months Afran became an Atheist.

As an Atheist, Afran warmed to the ideas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which in Kurdish is the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK). This group is a nationalist organization that was created with the intention of demanding an independent country for the Kurdish people.

Beginning in 1984 the PKK launched an armed campaign against Turkey. The conflicts in Turkey between the Turkish government and Kurdish groups are still ongoing.

In this tense context Afran had a heart to serve his people group. He began as a journalist helping spread PKK messages, but soon felt the pull to join the PKK military force. Afran went to northern Iran for military training.

Afran said, “we also had history and politics lessons. They also have a library there. And for the first time in my life, I saw the New Testament at the library.” Afran read parts of the Bible for the first time while preparing to go and fight.

After a year and a half spent in Iran, Afran was sent to Iraq. There the army was split into teams. Afran was so eager to prove himself that he agreed to join the suicide bombers team. He was trained on using bombs, Kalishnikovs and other weapons.

There in Iraq, Afran had his second encounter with the Bible. The library where he was training had a full copy of the Bible. The PKK’s leader Abdullah Ocalan directed PKK members in his letters to take Jesus as a hero and a model. This led him to dive in again to scripture. He remembers being especially impacted by the Medes in the Bible, a people group the Kurds are believed to descend from.

Ocalan was captured in 1999 and sent to the Turkish government. From there the PKK started to back down from their goals of creating Kurdistan. 

Afran remembers: “There was this operation from Turkey, sometimes they would come in helicopters and tried to take our bases. One time we had this operation where three of us suicide bombers were put in a big storage container, so that if Turkey gets into it, we will bomb ourselves. And the entire hill would blow up. But they didn’t do that, it was only an air strike, so nobody came, and we didn’t have to bomb ourselves.”

The Peshmerga, another fighting force in Iraq, captured Afran and sent him back to Turkey. Afran was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his involvement with the PKK, designated a terrorist organization. After Turkey changed laws in an attempt to join the European Union, Afran’s sentence was reduced to one and a half years.

In prison he had a third encounter with God, there was a copy of the New Testament there and he read it again. Afran said, “After reading it, I thought: ‘If I get out of jail, I will go to church.’ I didn’t believe, but I thought: ‘Well, this might be the right way.’”

When he got out of prison, he returned to Diyabakir and went to a church to try and solve his questions. He went to a church and asked many questions. He came away unsatisfied with the answers he got, Afran thought, “They don’t know anything about Christianity, so I won’t have anything to do with Christians.”

“But during that week, I had this race inside,” Afran said. “The priest doesn’t know everything, but there must be people who do know. So I needed to go and search for them. It was disturbing me that much.”

He tried another church, just 30 feet from the first church he walked into. There two leaders welcomed him in and attempted to answer his questions. Afran remembers telling them his story and asking if he needed to leave, the brothers told him all were welcome. Afr said, “they told me everybody has sins, and we want you to come as well.”

Afran started to understand the Gospel and was given a Bible of his own. After serving in the Turkish military he came back to church and was moved that the two brothers remembered his name.

Afran was baptized in 2007, and he soon began leading youth group and the worship team at the church. He met his wife and was ordained as deacon in the church soon after. 

In 2013 Afran became the pastor of a church in Mardin, Afran said, “Every year we distribute eight to nine thousand New Testaments. We get the opportunity to share with people, one on one, or in a group and to give them the New Testament. All these people are from all over Turkey. We are throwing the seeds, but we don’t know where they will fall.”

Afran has a specific heart for the Kurdish people, he wrote a book about the Medes in the Bible for the Kurdish people who are interested. Afran said, “when they see Medes in the bible, they are very interested and they get it.”

It’s so incredible to see the power of the word of God and how the Lord pursued Afran.

Bible Mission is working to translate the Bible into Kurdish, you can help the mission of getting Bibles to this people group in their native language. Reach out to us here at biblemissionglobal.org for the next steps.

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Ephesians 2:6

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

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