Turkey's Latest Religious Conundrum

For all of its faults, and like anyplace else, it has its share, Turkey remains a somewhat hopeful model for the Islamic world because of its commitment to secular governance.  As the country continues to try to join the EU, one of the problems it faces are "religious liberties" issues brought on by Turkey's methods of keeping the religious zealots on all sides in line.  A Greek Orthodox seminary is now at the heart of the fight.

From The Turkish Daily News:

  (Turkish) Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül was quoted on Tuesday as saying a hotly debated Greek Orthodox seminary near Istanbul would not reopen because the leader of the Greek Orthodox community had rejected Ankara's conditions.

  The Halki Seminary on Heybeliada Island was closed in 1971 under a law requiring state supervision of university-level religious education. The reopening of the seminary is viewed by the European Union, which Turkey aims to join, as a litmus test of Turkey's commitment to the freedom of its religious minorities.

  Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartolomeos says the failure to reopen the seminary threatens the survival of Turkey's dwindling Orthodox Christian population.

  "Allowing the seminary to provide religious education conflicts with the Turkish Constitution and the principle of secularism," mass-circulation Hürriyet daily quoted Gül as saying in response to criticism from Athens.

(snip)

  Turkey, whose population is overwhelmingly Muslim but which has a secular political system, fears any easing of the curbs on religious education could be exploited by Islamist groups.

Comments

[G Comney]

Orthodox church has much apology to make in Western World:
protocommunist massacres by Palamite Zealotes under Hesychast
hyperventilatory halucinations, Cantacuzene taxation driving farmers
to embrace Turks, Komyakoviac Obshchina giving birth to soviet
communism as reactionary casuistry opposing Napoleon's
defeudalization, Cosmus Aitalius being patron originator of of modern
genocide as seen by the massacre of Turks in Crete by Venizelos. Is
all masochistic because reject Original Sin. THeir hypnotic incantations are designed to turn listeners into terrorists. Russian churches have Islamic Minarets for such reasonings.