Turkey  is a country where there is seemingly no end to oddities. As the majority of Turks (and foreign observers of Turkey) ponder how it is possible to shut down a ruling political party that has been more pro-European, reformist and economically successful than any other party in the history of the republic, the case of Fethullah Gulen adds another to many such oddities. Gulen has been prosecuted in his own country for alleged attempts to destroy the current state system and replace it with a government centered on religion. Yet Gulen is widely revered both home and abroad for his ideas and the work that inspired a world-wide civic movement focused on education and intercultural dialogue.

Nine-year-old Burak says his favourite subject is maths, he loves studying and writing in English, and when he grows up he wants to be a policeman.
Smiling 11-year olds Serra and Liyna, fellow pupils at the 5,000-pound-a-year Fatih College primary school in Istanbul, chime in similarly confident English that their favourite subject is science and they want to be doctors.

Assyrian Metropolitan Samuel Aktas was anxiously pacing back and forth when I first caught a glimpse of him. I was walking down the half-lit corridors of the  Deyr-ul Umur Monastery in Midyat, near  Mardin in the rural southeastern corner of Turkey. His anxiety owed, I would find out later, to the  tragic killing of an Italian priest in Trabzon, a city on the northeastern Black Sea coast, which had taken place just a day before, on February 6 of this year.Before meeting with Metropolitan Aktas and his assistant, a Mr. Gulten, I took the opportunity to learn more about the Deyr-ul Umur Monastery, one of the oldest monasteries of the Assyrian Christians.