Turkey

The head of the Eastern Orthodox Church said Christians are treated like second-class citizens in Turkey, the land where the equivalent of the Orthodox Church’s “Vatican” lies.

His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians in the world, said in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview broadcast this week that Turkey’s leaders, including the prime minister, have been unresponsive to concrete concerns he raised about religious inequality in the country.

Authorities have seized church properties, closed Orthodox churches, monasteries and schools, causing Orthodox leaders and parishioners to fear that the Turkish government wants to force the oldest church in the world out of the country. more >>

Correction appended

ISTANBUL (Compass Direct News) – In a decision many hope will lead to greater religious freedom in Turkey, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that a Turkish court ruling barring a church from starting a foundation violated the congregation’s right to freedom of association.

Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a Turkish attorney and legal advisor for the litigants, said the decision earlier this year was the first time the ECHR has held that religious organizations have a right to exist in Turkey. Other issues the court addressed dealt with organizations’ rights to own property, he said. more >>

ISTANBUL (Compass Direct News) – In response to a Swiss vote banning the construction of new mosque minarets, a group of Muslims this month went into a church building in eastern Turkey and threatened to kill a priest unless he tore down its bell tower, according to an advocacy group.

Three Muslims on Dec. 4 entered the Meryem Ana Church, a Syriac Orthodox church in Diyarbakir, and confronted the Rev. Yusuf Akbulut. They told him that unless the bell tower was destroyed in one week, they would kill him.

“If Switzerland is demolishing our minarets, we will demolish your bell towers too,” one of the men told Akbulut. more >>

SILIVRI, Turkey (Compass Direct News) – After three prosecution witnesses testified yesterday that they didn’t even know two Christians on trial for “insulting Turkishness and Islam,” a defense lawyer called the trial a “scandal.”

Speaking after yesterday’s hearing in the drawn-out trial, defense attorney Haydar Polat said the case’s initial acceptance by a state prosecutor in northwestern Turkey was based only on a written accusation from the local gendarmerie headquarters unaccompanied by any documentation.

“It’s a scandal,” Polat said. “It was a plot, a planned one, but a very unsuccessful plot, as there is no evidence.” more >>

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan promised democratic reforms Saturday during a rare meeting with the religious minority leaders of his country.

"It is now for us essential to embrace all 71.5 million of this nation's people in respect and love," he said after a lunch meeting with Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and leaders of the small Armenian, Jewish, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic communities.

"Are there shortcomings in implementation? There are,” Erdogan added, according to CNN Turk. “We will overcome these together in this struggle. I believe this democratic initiative will change many things in this country.” more >>