Religion at heart of debate over Turkey’s EU bid

By Ayla Jean Yackley

ISTANBUL, Sept 23 (Reuters) – The chime of St. Anthony’s church bells
mingles with the mosque’s call to prayer in the heart of old Istanbul,
but it is a mere echo of the medley of religions that once prospered
in Turkey’s greatest city.

“There are many churches, but few Christians left to fill them. We are
all but dead and gone,” said an elderly man after finishing his
prayers in the neo-Gothic Franciscan church.

Nominally 99 percent Muslim, this nation of 70 million is also home to
tiny communities of Christians, Jews and others.

Freedom of religion is enshrined in the constitution. The fiercely
secular Turkish Republic, born from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in
1923, was founded on a pro-Western path and rejects the religious rule
governing some Muslim countries.

Yet religion is at the crux of the debate over whether a Muslim EU
candidate belongs in mainly Christian Europe.

While Islam is not an official barrier to EU entry, breaches of
religious freedom will likely be included in the European Commission’s
Oct. 6 progress report on Turkey’s reform efforts.

“The EU is looking at religious rights. Steps have been taken, but
there is not enough progress,” said one EU diplomat.

At the turn of the last century, Istanbul’s non-Muslims outnumbered
Muslims in the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire.

In the upheaval of World War One and the ensuing War of Independence,
hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed and a million people
deported in a population exchange with Greece.

Others have fled only recently. Syriac Orthodox, who speak a form of
Aramaic, the language of Christ, abandoned their homeland in
southeastern Turkey in the 1990s amid separatist violence. A handful
have moved back but observers say they have little incentive to return
to the poor, deeply Muslim region.

“If Turkey is to join the EU, it ought to see (religious minorities)
as a cultural treasure,” said Andrew Palmer at SOAS in London. “The
government should be saying ‘Turkey is proud to have the Syriac
community in its midst, and we are doing everything to keep them there
and this ancient culture alive’.”

Syriacs and others do not have the official minority status of
Armenians, Jews and Greek Orthodox. For all, ownership rights are
unclear, making even simple repairs to buildings difficult.

Less than 3,000 Greeks remain, but the ecumenical patriarch is still
based here. The patriarchate sees the re-opening of the Halki
seminary, shut in the 1970s, as vital to its future.

Evangelical Christians, mostly converts from Islam, complain of
harassment by police who raid homes where they gather to study the
Bible. Some have been detained for proselytising.

ISLAM ALSO RESTRICTED

Experts estimate just four percent of Turks are Islamic radicals, but
keeping fundamentalism at bay means some religious expression among
Muslims must be controlled, secularists argue.

Devout women in the Islamic-style headscarf cannot attend university,
preventing many from entering professional life.

The state strictly regulates worship at the country’s 75,000
mosques. Imams are trained by the state, and the weekly sermon is
scripted at the religious affairs directorate in Ankara.

The staunchly secular military regularly purges officers, without
redress, who are suspected of Islamist leanings.

Rights groups say non-Sunni Muslims face official bias. Up to a fifth
of Turks are Alevi, a sect with loose ties to Shi’ism in which men and
women worship together and prayer includes dance and poetry.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s remark last year that “Alevism is not
a religion” has fed the claim of discrimination.

EU diplomats, while disappointed over a lack of dramatic progress,
acknowledge maintaining Turkey’s own brand of secularism as it expands
rights is a delicate balancing act.

09/23/04 04:52 ET