Ecumenical News International
Daily News Service
05 October 2005

Noting Christians’ pressures, churches plead Turkey’s cause with EU
ENI-05-0753

By Jonathan Luxmoore
Warsaw, 5 October (ENI)–The head of one of Turkey’s largest
churches has appealed on behalf of local Christians for the
country’s admission to the European Union, after promised
membership negotiations came close to cancellation amid disputes
between EU governments.

“Turkey’s aspiration to join the EU is an opportunity for
East-West reconciliation,” the Armenian Apostolic Patriarch of
Constantinople, Mesrob II, said in a letter to EU ministers and
parliamentarians. “Pressures in recent days from various circles
to postpone the Turkish membership process cause us concern.”

Still, improved rights for Turkey’s 100 000 Christians have been
cited as a precondition for the country’s EU admission, talks on
which were promised last December after a 40-year Turkish drive.

The patriarch’s letter was published on 1 October by the
English-language Turkish Daily News in the run-up to the
projected 3 October opening of accession talks, which were
initially blocked by Austria at the EU’s weekend meeting in
Luxembourg.

Speaking “in the name of Armenians, Christians of other
confessions and Jews” living in Turkey, the patriarch said a
decision on Turkish membership would mark “an important turning
point in world politics”.

“We pray for a successful, peaceful integration process, and that
Armenians, who form the largest Christian community here, will
find their proper place,” said Patriarch Mesrob, whose church
dates from the early fourth century and has around 70 000 members
in Turkey, where more than 98 per cent of the 70 million citizens
are Sunni Muslims.

Most denominations continue to complain of discrimination,
including the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, which has been
refused permission to reopen its theological seminary, forcibly
closed in 1971. The Orthodox church has also been stopped from
making essential repairs to its 72 Istanbul churches.

Turkish membership of the EU was also supported by Roman Catholic
Bishop Luigi Padovese, the apostolic vicar of Anatolia, who said
Turkey had been a Christian centre for centuries.

“Our Christian roots are precisely in Turkey – this is where
Saints Paul and Luke were born, where a large proportion of the
New Testament came into being, where seven of the first councils
of the still-undivided church were held, and where the Creed we
recite on Sundays gained its shape,” Padovese told Poland’s
Catholic news agency, KAI, on 3 October.

The Commission of EU Catholic Bishops’ Conferences declared
support for Turkish membership in November 2004, adding that it
saw “no religious obstacle” to the presence of a predominantly
Muslim country. However, it cautioned that Turkey had so far
failed to meet the EU’s criteria for accession, including respect
for religious freedom and the legal status of churches, the
rights of women and non-Muslim minorities. [452 words]

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