Terrorist attack had Church as Primary Target
In early 2025, an 18-year-old man was arrested in Eskişehir, Turkey, after carrying out a stabbing attack that injured five people in a local café. According to Turkish media outlet T24, the suspect had initially planned a terrorist attack on a nearby church but changed his target at the last minute, opting instead to attack civilians in a coffeehouse.
While T24 clearly reported that the local church was the original intended target, this information was notably absent in several Western media reports. For example, the BBC, which covered the incident based on T24’s reporting, omitted the detail that the church had been the primary target of the planned attack.
Instead, some media outlets framed the stabbing as having occurred near a mosque, which could suggest an anti-Muslim motive.
Sources: BBC; T24 (1); T24 (2); T24 (3); T24 (4); CBC News