TURKEY’S CHRISTIAN MINORITY DECRIES PREJUDICE
By Selcuk Gokoluk

Reuters
09/26/05 12:52 ET

ANTAKYA, Turkey, Sept 26 (Reuters) – At a conference aimed at
showcasing religious tolerance in this EU candidate nation, leaders
of Turkey’s tiny Christian community said on Monday they face constant
prejudice from the Muslim majority.

Turkey is more than 99 percent Muslim and its Christians are mainly
descendants of Greeks and Armenians who stayed after the fall of the
multi-ethnic, multi-confessional Ottoman Empire in the 1920s.

Ankara is under pressure from the European Union to bolster the
freedoms of its non-Muslim citizens as it prepares for the historic
launch of EU membership talks next week.

Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based titular head of the world’s
300 million Orthodox Christians, said his church still suffered
from petty restrictions rooted in the distrust and hostility of the
Turkish authorities.

“We have difficulty understanding the mentality which sees our rituals
as a show of force and our visits (around Turkey) as missionary
activity,” the Patriarch told delegates attending the “Meeting of
Civilisations” conference.

Turkish nationalists have long viewed the patriarchate as a tool
of ancient foe Greece, even though Bartholomew himself is a Turkish
citizen. He addressed the conference in Turkish.

“We are upset by the efforts of those who try to make politics out
of the patriarchate and our community … Our patriarchate is only a
religious institution and is interested only in its religious duties,”
Bartholomew said.

He complained he had not been allowed to perform religious rituals in
the past two years at the church of Saint Nicholas — the prototype
for Santa Claus — in the Mediterranean town of Demre on his feast-day
on December 6.

The church is a museum, but in the previous 20 years Bartholomew said
he had been able to conduct rituals there.

SUSPICIONS

The spiritual leader of Turkey’s small Armenian community, Patriarch
Mesrob II, echoed Bartholomew’s criticisms.

“Unfortunately our being different from the majority is not always
seen as an asset,” he said, adding his church too had to combat
wrongful ideas and prejudices against it.

Both Bartholomew and Mesrob appealed for greater understanding and
empathy from their Turkish fellow-citizens.

Officially, Turkey is strictly secular but Islam is closely tied
up with the national identity — the flag bears the Islamic star
and crescent moon, for example — and many feel non-Muslims are not
real Turks.

In a sign of how sensitive religion can be, one Turkish lawmaker has
condemned the Antakya conference as an attempt to distract attention
from the “exploitations and massacres conducted by the United States
and Israel in our region”.

“Our Muslim nation’s patience and awareness is being tested by these
meetings, dialogues, conferences and parks of religion,” Mehmet Silay,
who represents the Antakya region, said in a statement issued before
the conference began.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling Justice and Development
Party (AKP) has Islamist roots, told the 700 delegates the world’s
Muslims had also faced increased prejudice and discrimination since
the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

“Islamphobia is a crime against humanity, just like anti-Semitism,”
said Erdogan, a practising Muslim.

Located near the Syrian border, the town of Antakya — known as
Antioch in ancient times — was chosen as the venue for the week-long
conference because of its rich religious heritage.

The area contains Turkey’s oldest mosque and is also the place where
Jesus’s followers were first called Christians. Antakya is still home
to small Christian and Jewish communities.