Work WE Support

The Turkish Bible was first translated and published by Muslim scholars in the 17th century. By the 1960’s when OM first started to work in Turkey, the translation was considered archaic and hard to understand, particularly by younger generations.

In the 1970’s a group of Christian workers in Turkey came together to explore the possibility of an up-to-date translation. A translation team was formed and after many years of hard work, both Testaments were completed in 2001 and paved the way for church expansion and mature church leaders.

We feel ourselves privileged to have lived through these exciting years in Turkey, praying that believers would become ‘lovers of God’s Word’.

Meanwhile, after Communism fell in 1989, we found ourselves making trips into Bulgaria and discovering the unique and miraculous work God was doing amongst the 1 million Turkish speakers who live in that country. Hearing of the numbers of Turkish speakers in Bulgaria who were responding to the Gospel, the translation team in Turkey initiated a printing and publishing of the Turkish New Testament in Cyrillic script. Some years later we were able to help fund a German Christian worker in Bulgaria translate and print the New Testament into simplified local Turkish dialect.

NOW this has led to an ongoing project to translate an easy to read Turkish New Testament for the 9 million Turks presently living in Europe. Turkish is the mother and heart language they speak at home, but because they receive education in a host language, this translation will enable them to read and understand. George serves as team manager for this translation group and the New Testament should be completed by the end of 2021-22.

Turk to Turk exists to envision, train and facilitate Turkic Believers to take the Gospel cross culturally to their near “cousins” along the Silk Road, planting churches that plant churches.

The Silk Road reaches from Macedonia all the way into China. It’s home to 150 million Turkic people. New believer growth has been booming along the Silk Road.

OPENING DOORS OF FAITH IN:

• Kosovo
• Crimea
• Romania
• Northern Greece
• Macedonia
• Iran
• The Altai mountain groups
• The Caucasus Turkic tribes
• NW China 

In 1362, and as an extension to the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish armies began to invade the Balkans. Bulgaria, followed by Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, Romania, Albania and Northern Greece were just some of the countries taken over by the Turks in the following centuries.

By the 17th century the Ottoman Empire was in decline. Turkey, as a nation withdrew, but many Turkish citizens and others who had embraced Islam and Turkish as a language, were left behind.

Today, official figures put the numbers of Balkan Turks as anything from 700,00 – 1 million. Apart from Bulgaria where, in the years following the collapse of Communism, God did an amazing work amongst a Turkish people group called the Millet, most of these Balkan Turks remain unreached.

Keys to Involvement

Global Nomads with its main hub in the Turkish area of Bulgaria is poised to facilitate multiple outreaches to unreached Turkic peoples in the Caucauses, NW China and the Siberian Arctic, not forgetting the 100’s of thousands of Turks in the Balkans, grandchildren of the sprawling Ottoman Empire. 

We are pirvileged to work alongside Global Nomads as they expand the vision.