How Dijle found the love she craved

Dijle Kurada, a Muslim who came to Christ in Britain, before returning to her native Turkey. Photo: UBS/Dag Smemo (TUR05DJ-40.JPG)

TURKEY — Dijle Kurada, 24, comes from a Muslim family. Her mother and her father, a businessman, were both firm believers. But they divorced when she was seven, and she lived with her father, growing up with half-brothers and -sisters from his previous marriage.

The fractured relationships in her early life were a crucial factor in the path she took later.

“Because I was away from my mum, I always wanted to get closer to God,” she says. “My father always wanted me to study Islam and with no-one close to me except him, I felt like a foreigner in that family and I just worshipped Allah.” Nevertheless, the feeling of emptiness and sadness persisted.

Secondary school opened her eyes to a wider world of ideas.

“I was reading psychological and philosophical books. I started to read about Buddhists and Christians and I realised that Islam wasn’t the only religion in the world.”

Made friends

When she left school, her father thought that with some training she would be an asset to his business. So she went to live in a small studio flat in north London. There, supposedly under the eye of an aunt, she pursued courses in English, management and computing. She also made friends with a group of Turkish young people and started going to clubs, drinking alcohol and smoking. Unknown to her family, she even got engaged to one of them.

“I wasn’t a nice girl any more!” she says. “I was going out and just trying to forget about everything in the world and just dance and drink and whatever.”

The frailty of her world hit her when she found her fiancé was cheating on her with another girl. Feeling let down, one Saturday night she decided to go and see her aunt. Getting off the bus near her aunt’s house, she found herself drawn towards a church. “It was as though there was somebody leading my steps. I didn’t even know what church it was!”

Disapproval

Unusually for a Saturday evening, the church was open and the minister was there. They talked and before she left he prayed for her and invited her to come to the service the following morning.

And in spite of her aunt’s disapproval, she began attending regularly and began to feel the love that she had always wanted.

“I felt as though I was a member of this family! They loved me and cared about me. I wasn’t a believer – I didn’t know anything about Jesus Christ! But I liked having tea and conversation with them!”

Wonder why

Later she was given a Turkish Bible and, at first, read it just to have something to say to her new friends. But she found it touched her deeply and began to read more.

“As a Muslim, I had been taught that Jesus didn’t die on the Cross but now I began to wonder why that should have happened… I realised if he hadn’t died on the Cross he wouldn’t have paid for my sin. When I realised that I just gave my heart to the Lord! There is a worship song I love that goes, ‘My Jesus, my Saviour, Lord there is none like you’: I was singing that again and again. I really felt the difference: I was flying. I realised, ‘I am Christian now: I have given my heart to the Lord.’”

Put in touch with a missionary couple, under their discipling she began to change her wayward lifestyle.

Disappointment

In other directions, though, her decision was more problematic. Her father stopped sending her money so her courses came to a halt and she had to leave her flat. Her aunt refused to put her up and although she stayed a few nights with friends, they, too, registered disappointment at her new-found beliefs.

“So I was on the street... I just had my two bags of clothes and stuff and no money, no house, no friends, no school, nothing!”

Fortunately, the missionary family showed her kindness by taking her in to live with them.

After her student visa lapsed, with their encouragement, she started an application for asylum in Britain. But in spite of this, she felt a stronger pull to go back to Turkey.

“I felt that if I loved my people, I had to tell them about Jesus. They needed to hear about this love and joy I felt. And while I was praying I had a word from God about going to a Bible school, to learn more and be able to evangelise.”

So she decided to leave Britain. The Turkish consulate in London warned her that her asylum application there would cause trouble at home, but in 2000 she carried it through.

“I wanted to come back to Turkey and God said, ‘Trust me,’” she says.

Travelling with temporary papers instead of a proper passport, on arrival in Turkey she was taken aside while a policeman at the airport investigated her case.

Passport

“He asked where my passport was and I told him it had been lost by the Home Office in the UK. Then he tried to turn on the computer but it didn’t turn on. This was God’s hand and I still laugh at it! Then he went to the other computer and that didn’t turn on either – though everything else was OK!

“So he gave me a funny look and then rang his boss – who shouted at him because it was so early in the morning! And then he got mad at me and said, ‘Take your papers and go!’ He didn’t even write my name down. So I just walked back into the country.”

While attending Bible School in Ephesus, she met her future husband, Yuksel, and in 2000 they were married and now have a daughter.

Yuksel shares her desire and gift for evangelism. He served in the role of pastor/preacher in a church in Istanbul and later helped to plant a church in Konya.

At the moment, she teaches Turkish and sells Avon and Tupperware products, and he works as a diamond exporter for a jewellery company while negotiating his way towards full-time Christian work. Meanwhile they attend the Emmanuel Church, an evangelical fellowship which meets in the building where the Bible Society in Turkey has its offices.

Reconciliation

Happily, their marriage and the birth of their daughter have been the occasion of a reconciliation between Dijle and her parents. Her mother came to their wedding and even accepted Christ as Saviour – for a few months. “Then she said, ‘That won’t work for me’. But there’s still time…”

And when their daughter was born her father came to see her.

“Now we call each other and talk once or twice a month,” she says. “He knows that we are Christian, that we believe in Jesus and go to church and he has no problem with it – as long as we don’t talk about it.” (WR399/14 - 01/02.06) [4 photos]