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Church in the World
9 February 2008
Turkey

Government hints at 'new view' of Christians


Turkey's Islamist-led Government is reconsidering its attitude to the country's Christian minorities, beginning with the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, according to senior Ankara officials, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.


"Perhaps this is an issue on which we should develop a new view and not consider it taboo," the Foreign Minister, Ali Babacan, told Turkey's Zaman daily last week. "What matters in the long term is the position of Turkey and Istanbul in the world - Turkey's power. What makes Turkey stronger or weaker should be very carefully calculated."

The minister was reacting to earlier comments by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a press conference with the Greek Prime Minister, Konstantinos Karamanlis, which appeared to indicate a more moderate policy towards the Istanbul-based Patriarchate, whose leader, Bartholomew I, is honorary primate of the 300 million Orthodox Christians.

Meanwhile, a foreign policy spokesman for Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, Egemen Bagis, confirmed that a "new perspective" was emerging in the wake of growing Western pressure on Turkey, which hopes to join the European Union by 2015.

"The Patriarchate has been present in these lands throughout the centuries," Mr Bagis told the same newspaper. "There is a need to look at the past and make an analysis of the periods during which the Patriarchate positively or negatively contributed."

The president of Turkey's Catholic bishops' conference, Bishop Luigi Padovese, said he counted on forthcoming celebrations of the 2,000th anniversary of St Paul's birth in the southern town of Tarsus to "help strengthen the Church's legal position".

"As the apostle of Christian unity, St Paul would want Christians in Turkey to be more conscious of their identity," the Italian-born bishop said. "I think the Turkish Government is well disposed towards us. But we must know what they really think about human rights."

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/articles/10996

Hmmmmm......

What else can I say?

Alice

Free Constantinople!

I don't believe much of anything that the Turkish goverment says.

ditto

ditto, ditto!

Turkey is so fearful of facing its history and is so immensely in denial of the history that existed on its land, that that it borders on insanity...and the insane cannot be trusted on anything they say...

True.

Ask the Armenians If they trust the Turkish goverment. Come to think of it how many Greeks died at the hands of the Turks? Didn't some one post something about a Greek saint who died at the hand of a Turk? (I would like her name again if anyone has the link.)

New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke.

During the four hundred plus years after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 A.D. most Orthodox countries were persecuted by the Moslem Turks, even up to the 1920�s.

http://www.geocities.com/umaximov/young.htm

http://www.dormitionbooks.com/livesofsaintscollections.html

http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/turkishs.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New-martyr

Yes, the bit that made me smile was this:

"The Patriarchate has been present in these lands throughout the centuries," Mr Bagis told the same newspaper. "There is a need to look at the past and make an analysis of the periods during which the Patriarchate positively or negatively contributed."

This made it sound as if the Turks were the original inhabitants of 'these lands' throughout the centuries and that the Patriarchate's presence and contribution had to be evaluated in that context. Will the need to look at the past and make an analysis extend to those occasions when Patriarchs were murdered?

I think the "new view" might be discrenable in the increasing acceptance by the Turkish people and the Turkish military of conservative, fundamentalist Islam, including its conservative Muslim head-of-state.

For the latest example, Turkey just legalized the wearing of head scarves by Islamic women on Saturday (9 February 2008). See http://www.pr-inside.com/turkish-lawmakers-lift-ban-on-islamic-r430918.htm

If the Patriarch were allowed to reopen his seminary, that would be new and newsworthy.

Instead, perhaps, what is old is what is new again in Turkey . . .

-- John

I hadn't thought of it that way. Good observation!

Turkey is hanging between two extremes - secularism and fundamentalist Islam.
It's like choosing which is worse - being killed by drowning or dehydration?

Let's pray that God takes the Muslim government and uses them to kill the beast of secularism, which has forbidden public expression of Faith (especially toward Christians and Jews; i.e. no clerical cossack or collars in public, no yarmulkes, etc) - then let's pray twice as hard that the Light of Christ penetrate their hearts and reveal the Gospel to them, through the intercession of the Mother of God and all the Saints.

Turkey previously had a ban on women wearing headscarves at University; resulting in women either forgoing higher education entirely, or moving to another country, such as the US, that has no headscarf ban in higher education. Headscarves are still not allowed to be worn in Turkish government offices.