Tag Archives: Country: Turkey

Catholic Culture: Halki seminary, opened by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1844 and closed by the Turkish government in 1971, remains closed despite calls by President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and others to reopen it.

EurasiasiaNet.org: The recent conviction of Turkish virtuoso pianist Fazil Say on charges of blasphemy is sending a troubling message to secular Turks that the Turkish government values religious expression only if it conforms to authorities’ views on religion.

Montreal Gazette: Specialists at Akdeniz University Hospital placed an embryo into Sert’s womb earlier this week in hopes she will become the first woman with a uterus transplant to give birth.

Religion Clause Blog: The court imposed a 10 month suspended sentence on Say, indicating that he would be imprisoned only if he commits a similar crime again within the next 5 years.

NY Times: A court here handed down a suspended 10-month jail term on Monday for Fazil Say, an internationally acclaimed Turkish pianist and composer convicted of insulting Islam and offending Muslims in postings on Twitter.

Catholic Culture: Turkish secularists have regularly voiced concerns about the prime minister’s support for Islam. Since Erdogan took power in 2002, 17,000 new mosques have been built in Turkey.

Hurriyet Daily News: EU Minister Egemen Bağış says Islam is a reality for the EU and Europeans won’t get anywhere by burying their heads in the sand

AsiaNews.it: The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I will attend Pope Francis’s inaugural Mass. The Ecumenical Patriarchate Press Office informed AsiaNews about the decision, noting that this is the first time such an event occurs since the Catholic-Orthodox split in 1054, an important sign for Christian unity.

Seattle Times: United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday joined the United States and Israel in rejecting statements by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who compared Zionism to fascism at a United Nations meeting aiming to promote dialogue between all faiths.

Christianity Today: Escalating violence in northern Syria is forcing Christians to flee their homeland and take refuge in nearby regions of Armenia and Turkey.

Catholic Culture: Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople has staked out his opposition to convert the Hagia Sophia into a mosque.

Church in Chains: Police in Turkey say they thwarted an assassination plot against Emre Karaali (pictured) on Tuesday 15 January when they arrested 14 suspects, two of whom had been part of his congregation for more than a year.

Religion Clause Blog: In 2011, Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a decree returning to minority religious groups hundreds of properties that have been seized since 1936

Religion Clause Blog: In Turkey, the Supreme Board of Radio and Television (RTUK), the national broadcasting regulator, has fined Turkish broadcaster CNBC-E the equivalent of $30,000 (US) for broadcasting an episode of The Simpsons found to be insulting to religious beliefs.

OnIslam.net: Turkey has lifted a decades-long ban on wearing hijab in Islamic schools, to the outcry of secularists who see the move as new evidence on government efforts to “Islamize” the country.

Bloomberg: Four Turkish women went on trial today for staging an unauthorized protest outside the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan against government plans to curb abortion, the Halkevleri activist group said.

Baptist Press: A cloud has been cast on the Turkish courtroom where proceedings began Sept. 3 against 19 suspects in the murder of three Christians in 2007.

Sacramento Bee (AP): A Turkish court issued an order on Wednesday allowing authorities in the country to block Internet access to the anti-Islam movie that has sparked violent protests across the Muslim world, an official said.

Catholic Culture: Archbishop Chrysostomos II said that 120 churches have become mosques, museums, or storage facilities and that Turkey is attempting to eliminate Christianity in the area.

Cyprus Mail: HE EUROPEAN Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has agreed to examine a legal challenge against Turkey for the north’s continued failure to repeal a law banning homosexuality.

World Net Daily: Russian intelligence has information that U.S. troops are in Turkey near the country’s border with Syria, a senior Syrian official told WND today.

Catholic Culture: The world’s oldest functioning Christian monastery faces a clouded future, after an appeals court in Turkey ruled that the building sits on land not owned by the monks.

BeliefNet.com: Turks are being prosecuted for publishing “tweets” on Twitter that are “insulting to Islam,” despite the Turkish constitution’s guarantees of religious freedom. Christians are increasingly marginalized. Bureaucrats routinely block the building of churches.

UPI: A proposed abortion bill to be submitted to Turkey’s cabinet seeks middle ground between a woman’s right to choose and a fetus’ right to life, officials said.

NY Daily News: British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his plans to make forced marriages a crime, and parents who coerce their children could face prison terms. British government provides advice and suport to approximately 600 forced marriage related cases every year – half of which are for families form Pakistan and the rest from India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Turkey.

Middle East Forum: Ostensibly dealing with a building, a recent report demonstrates how Turkey’s populace—once deemed the most secular and liberal in the Muslim world—is reverting to its Islamic heritage, complete with animosity for the infidel West and dreams of Islam’s glory days of jihad and conquest.

AP: A Turkish court has formally charged an internationally known Turkish pianist and composer with insulting Islamic religious values in comments he made on Twitter.

GMANetwork: Thousands of devout Muslims prayed outside Turkey’s historic Hagia Sophia museum on Saturday to protest a 1934 law that bars religious services at the former church and mosque.

AP: Turkey’s health minister said Tuesday that the government wants to reduce the number of abortions, days after the prime minister likened the practice to murder.

The Atlantic: The schools, part of a network of hundreds around the world, aim to create a “golden generation” of educated Muslims by emphasizing science and technology, but some regional governments are worried.

Catholic Culture: Catholics in Turkey are seeking the return of 200 properties that were seized by the Turkish government.

Washington Times: Turkey’s top imam blasted the Saudi grand mufti’s call to “destroy all the churches” in the Gulf region, saying that the announcement is in total contradiction to the peaceful teachings of the Muslim religion.

Religion Clause Blog: Reuters reports that Turkey’s ruling AK Party on Friday pushed a controversial school reform bill through Parliament that critics say furthers an Islamic agenda and lowers education standards.

Reuters: Thousands of Turkish opposition supporters demonstrated in the capital Ankara on Tuesday against a government attempt . . . to promote Islamic schooling.

Religion Clause Blog: Today the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom released and transmitted to the President its 2012 Annual Report (full text)(appendices) reviewing religious freedom abuses in 25 countries around the world.

Armenian Weekly: We must commend Acting Patriarch Aram Ateshian and the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul for making the bold move of suing the Turkish government for the return of historically significant Armenian properties.

Religion Clause Blog: A Turkish military court last week handed down an important decision on the rights of conscientious objectors.

News from The Associated Press: The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians said Monday that Turkey’s new constitution should grant equal rights to minorities in the country and safeguard religious freedoms.

Education News: The often-charged debate about the origin of life pitting the science community against doctrinal conservatives is not just a U.S. phenomenon but one the Muslim world is increasingly engaged in, a visiting professor said Thursday evening at Trinity University.

Religion Clause: Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a resolution urging the Secretary of State to pressure Turkey on issues of religious freedom. House Resolution 306, adopted by voice vote on Dec. 13, is summarized by the Congressional Research Service. The resolution . . .

FT.com: Iran has criticised Turkey’s secular system of government as an unsuitable example for countries in the Arab spring, in the latest sign of growing tension between the two regional powers.

Religion Clause: VP Biden Meets In Turkey With Ecumenical Patriarch.

Hurriyet Daily News: After a visit to jailed deputies in Silivri Prison, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the Republican People’s Party, says the judicial system in Turkey is ‘under the control of the political authority, and the prison in Silivri is a ‘concentration camp’

Todays Zaman: The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has found the Turkish government guilty of failing to carry out an effective investigation in the case of a transgender woman who was harassed by a police officer.

The Volokh Conspiracy: So held the European Court of Human Rights in Altuğ Taner Akçam v. Turkey (Oct. 25, 2011), a case brought by a professor who had been subject to prosecutions (brought by individuals) under the law based on his work on the Armenian genocide. An excerpt from the court’s reasoning . . .

Eugene Volokh reports at The Volokh Conspiracy.

Reuters: Tunisia’s new political order will show that Islam and democracy can co-exist just as they have in Turkey, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.

Religion Clause: The New York Times reports that on Saturday, Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a decree returning to minority religious groups hundreds of properties that have been seized since 1936.

EuropeNews: In Germany, where Holocaust denial is punishable by up to five years in prison, Stuttgart University recently capitulated to pressure from resident Turkish Muslims and canceled an event entitled, “Persecution, Expulsion and Annihilation of Christians in the Ottoman Empire 1912-1922.”

Times.am: “Ambassador Ricciardone’s demonstrably false assertion betrays a callous disregard for Ottoman Turkey’s wholesale destruction of Christian churches, and for the fate of the millions of Christian faithful, who worshipped in their homeland within these holy sites until their genocidal annihilation,” said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA

WSJ.com: In its early phases, Mr. Akyol says, Islam was a religion “driven by merchants and their rational, vibrant and cosmopolitan mindset.” But ultimately “the more powerful classes of the Orient—the landlords, the soldiers and the peasants—became dominant, and a less rational and more static mindset began to shape the religion. The more trade declined, the more the Muslim mind stagnated.” Applying this historical lesson today, Mr. Akyol claims that “socioeconomic progress in Muslim societies” may change Islam itself—leading to progress in “religious attitudes, ideas, and even doctrines.”

FoxNews.com: A tomb believed to be that of St. Philip the Apostle was unearthed during excavations in the ancient Turkish city of Hierapolis.

A rather heated exchange at YouTube over the issue of Islamic immigration and integration in Europe.

BuenosAiresHerald.com: Erdogan is expected to pave the ways for the Turkish institutions to welcome “European values and standards,” said in a statement presidents of the European Community and European Consul , Jose Manuel Durao Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy.

AP: Turkey’s government has defended a new regulation that will filter the Internet and restrict access to websites that show pornography, bomb-making and violent content.

UPI: A Turkish family consultant says legalizing polygamy would protect women who are already involved in what are in effect polygamous marriages.

BBC: A former Turkish judge who says he was prosecuted for his views on the fate of Armenians and Kurds has been granted asylum in the Netherlands.

John Eibner at the Middle East Forum: The soft power of the modern papacy, with its appeals for religious liberty, can exercise a positive influence on Turkey and the rest of the Islamic world. But Islamic powers can see, as did Stalin, an absence of papal military divisions in the current clash of civilizations. Unless the thoroughly secularized nations of what was once Christendom provide firmer backbone, the Vatican will have little choice but to bend with the breeze.

AP: Turkey has launched a project to conserve an ancient Armenian cathedral and church in what is seen as a gesture of reconciliation toward its neighbor.

AP: Journalist Ahmet Sik was preparing a book about the alleged infiltration of Islamists into the Turkish police, a sensitive theme in a nation divided over the role of religion. Now he is in jail, suspected of links to what authorities say is a secularist plot to topple the government . . .

EU-Info-Thek (translation by Google): Currently, according to a recently published GfK survey in favor, half of the Turkish population to their country joining the EU. When, in October 2005, the EU decided to open negotiations with Turkey, there were almost 75 percent. In the meantime, the Turks have become visibly skeptical. This is particularly evident in the cities, where accession to the EU of less than 50 percent are considered positive.

AP on Yahoo: The court ordered police to seize all draft documents and copies of investigative journalist Ahmet Sik’s book, which reportedly focuses on the influence of an Islamic group within the police force.

AP: “A Turkish court ordered five military officers and two civilians jailed Monday in a probe into the 2007 killing of three Christians, including a German national, over allegations that the attack was part of an alleged plot to topple the government.”

Baptist Press: Though the horrific murders of three employees of a Bible publishing firm in Malatya, Turkey, in 2007 have not been replicated, a report by the Turkish Association of Protestant Churches contends that harassment continues to be a daily problem for Protestant Christians and churches in the country.

Religion Clause Blog: Forum 18 reported yesterday on the continuing problems faced by minority religious communities in Turkey in establishing and maintaining formally recognized places of worship

Catholic Herald: “Briefly, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recip Erdogan, has put his weight behind attempts to crush a small Christian community and to seize an important part of its assets. Though there are now only a few thousand Syro-Orthodox Christians left, they are still in occupation of one of the oldest monasteries anywhere in the world.”

CBN (includes video): “They are trying to stop Turks in this country, citizens in this country from having the freedom to choose Christ,” he said. “Even though legally they have this freedom, they are trying to use my case as a precedent for others to say you don’t have this personal choice. This is definitely the goal of why they’ve opened this case against me.”

Deutsche Welle: “The reprimanding of a teacher for advocating evolution has prompted a political row in Turkey, as teachers and academics worry that the Islamic-rooted government is trying to undermine science education.”

Euractiv: “Nearly 187,000 women in Turkey, a candidate country for EU membership, are in polygamous marriages despite the practice being illegal in the country, a report has revealed.”

Haaretz: “Guests at an Istanbul film premiere were among the first victims of new curbs on alcohol that have raised secularist fears Islamic strictures may be encroaching on everyday life.”

Hurriyet Daily News: “A decision at Sunday’s Grand Alevi Congress will lead to mass lawsuits against compulsory religious education in Turkey and Alevi congresses being held abroad, the heads of leading Alevi organizations have said.”

Hurriyet Daily News: “State Minister Faruk Çelik on Friday said Turkey is a democratic, secular country and its position, as it continues to work toward EU membership, is very clear and not open to any controversies.”

Associated Press: “Turkey promised to speed up its judicial system on Wednesday after a new EU-inspired law forced the government to free alleged Islamic militants accused of torturing and killing dozens, as well as suspected rapists, murderers and mobsters whose trials have lasted for years.”

Boston.com (AP): “Police have detained 10 people suspected of links to the al-Qaida terror network and accused of preparing to stage an attack before New Year’s Eve, the state-run Anatolia news agency said Thursday.”

Hurriyet Daily News: “Turkey is unable to train enough religious clerics and to solve the problem religious education should be assigned to the Religious Affairs Directorate, according to a consultant in the governmental department.”