TURKEY MOVES TO IMPROVE RIGHTS OF NON-MUSLIM MINORITIES

Agence France Presse — English
November 9, 2006 Thursday 5:48 PM GMT

The Turkish parliament passed Thursday a law to improve the property
rights of the country’s tiny Christian and Jewish communities, a key
European Union demand, and faced criticism that the bill falls short
of expectations.

The legislation, which needs the president’s approval to take effect,
paves the way for mainly Greek, Armenian and Jewish foundations to
recover properties seized by the state since 1974 under a controversial
court ruling.

Community representatives have slammed the bill for failing to provide
a remedy for the return of or compensation for properties the state
had since sold to third parties, warning that Turkey risks hefty
compensation cases at the European Court of Human Rights.

They have also denounced a provision that limits the period for
applications for the return of properties to 18 months.

In a report on Ankara’s progress towards membership, the European
Commission said Wednesday that "non-Muslim religious communities have
no access to legal personality and continue to face restricted property
rights," even though freedom of worship is "generally respected"
in the country.

The bill, an overhaul of the Foundations Law, loosens the tight state
control over all foundations and broadens their rights on property
and administration.

In another move to address EU criticism, it allows foundations to
operate abroad and receive foreign funds, but only on the condition
that international activities are mentioned in their statutes,
a restriction which, critics say, effectively excludes non-Muslim
institutions.

The bill, on parliament’s agenda since September, faced harsh
objections by the main opposition, which accused the government of
compromising Turkey’s interests under EU pressure.

Non-Muslims in Turkey are mostly Greeks and Armenians, often viewed
with suspicion because of deep mistrust towards Greece, a historical
rival, and Armenia, which accuses Ottoman Turks of having committed
genocide against its ancestors during World War I.

In September, legislators also broadened the rights of minority
schools, but scrapped a proposal that would have allowed them to enrol
foreign students, in a move to avoid laying ground for the reopening
of a Greek Orthodox theology school, another EU demand.

The 1971 closure of the century-old seminary, on the island of Halki
off Istanbul, deprived the Eastern Orthodox Church, seated in Istanbul
since Byzantine times when the city was called Constantinople, of a
facility to train clergy.

The issue of Christian minority rights is also likely to figure high on
the agenda of Pope Benedict XVI when he visits Turkey in late November.