Cherishing religious minorities in Turkey

Last week, I was part of a small delegation headed by Egemen Bağış, Turkey's chief negotiator to the EU, on a two-day tour to Austria, whose public is the most opposed to Turkey among all EU member states. The question of the treatment of religious minorities in Turkey has often come up in dialogues and question-answer sessions at a number of meetings held at colleges and business forums.

Bağış was candid, honest and plain in his answers, not shying away from admitting the problems that minorities have been encountering in Turkey. He said the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is the candidate best suited to solve minorities' outstanding issues. The track record of voting trends of minorities confirms they overwhelmingly voted for the AK Party because they believe this government is sincere in its efforts to address their problems. Simple mathematics point out that the government is not doing this simply to increase their vote tally, as it runs the risk of alienating a far greater number of Turkish voters and gives an opening for the opposition to exploit and capitalize on this sensitive issue.

Turkey's point man for EU relations, Bağış, whose constituency covers some of these religious minorities, underlines that the prime motive in improving relations with minorities is because they are citizens of the republic as well and deserve all the rights and freedoms the Constitution grants them. “We are not doing it to please or appease our EU critics,” he stated in an address to a select group of Austrian intellectuals at the University of Vienna on Thursday.

The complete overhaul of freedoms and rights and the total democratization initiative this government has shouldered recently serve the best interest of every citizen in this country, be they Kurd, Turk or Circassian in ethnicity or Muslim, Jew or Christian in religion. We have similar examples in our roots, as Ottoman Turks allowed a complete freedom of religion to all sects of Christianity at a time when Europe was busy prosecuting and persecuting Protestants under immense pressure from the Catholic Vatican.

Bağış was also instrumental in setting up a rare meeting of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with Turkey's religious minority leaders last month. Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew and leaders of the small Armenian, Jewish, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic communities had lunch with the Turkish prime minister and senior ministers on Büyükada, an island near mainland İstanbul.

We learned from participants that Erdoğan stressed at the meeting that the government is against both ethnic and religious nationalism, underlining that they have kept equal distance from every ethnic and religious group in society. “Aren't there deficiencies regarding implementation? Yes, there are. We will overcome these [deficiencies] with a struggle to be carried out all together, and I believe that this democratic initiative will change a lot of things in our country,” Erdoğan said.

A couple of questions directed to Bağış last week in Austria focused on the Greek Orthodox seminary on Heybeliada. The seminary was shut down by the government in 1971 during a period of tension with Greece over Cyprus and a crackdown on religious education that also included Islamist schools. Bağış said his government is “looking for a way to open the school and studying the case from a legal perspective.”

The treatment of Turkey's religious minorities constitutes one of the key stumbling blocks to Turkey's EU aspirations. Though the government has not yet fully addressed the concerns of religious minorities or solved the problems of the majority Turks and Kurds, the message of sincerity that Mr. Bağış tried to convey was very well received by the Austrian audience. Judging from the nods and utterance of “yeahs” in the audience, I noticed they were appreciative and cognizant of the government's endeavor amid stiff resistance from the opposition parties in Turkey.

So I beg of you not to discount the simple lunch of the Turkish prime minister with minority religious leaders. I assure you it has found good ears and triggered a profound interest in Austria as well as in other EU countries and, along the way, made Mr. Bağiş's job a little easier.