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Armenian patriarch: Turkish EU bid critical for Muslim-Christian...

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  • Armenian patriarch: Turkish EU bid critical for Muslim-Christian...

    The Associated Press
    September 30, 2005, Friday, BC cycle

    Armenian patriarch says Turkish EU bid critical for Muslim-Christian
    understanding

    By LOUIS MEIXLER, Associated Press Writer

    ANKARA, Turkey


    The head of the Armenian church in Turkey warned European leaders
    that postponing Turkey's bid for EU membership could undermine
    efforts to bring together the Muslim East and the Christian West.

    Turkey has worked hard to implement criteria required by the European
    Union and has "been steered toward real change on the democratic
    road," the leader of the largest non-Muslim group in Turkey,
    Patriarch Mesrob II of the Armenian church, wrote in a letter
    released Friday.

    "However, because of oppositionist and suspicious attitudes directed
    toward Turkey, it seems as though it is being forced to take backward
    steps and turn in on itself," he wrote.

    The Istanbul-based spiritual leader of the world's 200 million
    Orthodox Christians also released a statement in support of Turkey's
    bid to join the 25-nation European Union amid growing frustration
    over delays in membership talks.

    Turkish nationalists planned a rally in Ankara on Sunday, the same
    day EU foreign ministers were to hold an emergency meeting in
    Luxembourg aimed at overcoming Austrian objections to starting entry
    talks with the poor, predominantly Muslim nation.

    Austria's insistence that Turkey be offered the option of a lesser
    partnership with the EU have thrown plans to begin formal entry
    negotiations on Monday into disarray.

    Turkey has threatened not to attend the talks unless it is satisfied
    the EU will offer nothing less than full membership.

    Minorities in Turkey have strongly supported the country's EU bid in
    the hopes it will lead to greater democratic reforms and freedoms.
    Turkey already has enacted sweeping changes aimed at gaining EU
    membership, such as abolishing the death penalty and passing laws
    that improve democracy.

    Mesrob urged EU leaders not to postpone Turkey's quest for
    membership. There are fears that if the EU bid collapses, nationalism
    in Turkey will rise.

    "Such undesired developments will be a blow not only to Turkey and
    Europe but to reconciliation between East and West," he wrote in the
    letter, which was sent to EU foreign ministers ahead of their Sunday
    meeting.

    Armenian Christians, numbering 70,000, belong to the remnants of a
    community largely destroyed by deportations and massacres at the time
    of World War I.

    Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of Orthodox
    Christianity, said in his statement that "Turkey definitely has the
    right to be part of this union."

    The patriarchate dates back to the Orthodox Greek Byzantine Empire,
    which ruled the region from Constantinople, now called Istanbul.

    European opposition to Turkey's membership bid is increasingly
    leading Turks to question their decades-long dream of being the only
    predominantly Muslim country to enter the union.

    "Some circles in the EU are anxious to anger and humiliate Turkey as
    much as possible so that the indignant Turkish nation simply forces
    its government to scrap the EU dream," chief columnist Ilnur Cevik
    wrote in The New Anatolian.

    Columnist Hasan Cemal was more blunt.

    "There is no end to the dynamite being thrown" on the EU path, he
    wrote in the Milliyet newspaper. "They think that Turkish public
    opinion is a stone of patience. It isn't."
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