September 27, 2005
At a conference aimed at showcasing religious tolerance, leaders of Turkey's small Christian community said on Monday that they were faced constant prejudice from the Muslim majority. More than 99 per cent of Turkey's estimated 80 million inhabitants are Muslims, and the few 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 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 Civilizations" 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. Bartholomew added: "Our patriarchate is only a religious institution and is interested only in its religious duties."
