Ecumenical Greek Orthodox Patriarch Vartholomaios I, spiritual leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, is seen at Mustafa Kemal University in Antakya, southern Turkey, yesterday, during the first Hatay ‘Meeting of Civilizations.’

By Selcuk Gokoluk - Reuters

ANTAKYA - At a conference aimed at showcasing religious tolerance in this EU candidate nation, leaders of Turkey’s tiny Christian community said yesterday they face constant prejudice from the Muslim majority.

Turkey is more than 99 percent Muslim and its Christians are mainly descendants of Greeks and Armenians who stayed after the fall of the multiethnic, multi-confessional Ottoman Empire in the 1920s.

Ankara is under EU pressure to bolster the freedoms of its non-Muslim citizens as it prepares for the historic launch of EU membership talks next week.

Patriarch Vartholomaios, the Istanbul-based titular head of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, said his Church still suffered from petty restrictions rooted in the distrust and hostility of the Turkish authorities.

“We have difficulty understanding the mentality which sees our rituals as a show of force and our visits (around Turkey) as missionary activity,” the patriarch told delegates attending the “Meeting of Civilizations” conference.

Turkish nationalists have long viewed the Patriarchate as a tool of ancient foe Greece, even though Vartholomaios himself is a Turkish citizen. He addressed the conference in Turkish.

“We are upset by the efforts of those who try to make politics out of the Patriarchate and our community... Our Patriarchate is only a religious institution and is interested only in its religious duties,” Vartholomaios said.

He complained that he had not been allowed to perform religious rituals in the past two years at the Church of Saint Nicholas — the prototype for Santa Claus — in the Mediterranean town of Demre on his feastday on December 6. The church is a museum, but in the previous 20 years Vartholomaios said he had been able to conduct rituals there.

The spiritual leader of Turkey’s small Armenian community, Patriarch Mesrob II, echoed Vartholomaios’s criticisms.

“Unfortunately, our being different from the majority is not always seen as an asset,” he said, adding that his church too had to combat wrongful ideas and prejudices against it.

Both Vartholomaios and Mesrob appealed for greater understanding and empathy from their Turkish fellow citizens.

Officially, Turkey is strictly secular but Islam is closely tied up with the national identity — the flag bears the Islamic star and crescent moon, for example — and many feel non-Muslims are not real Turks.

In a sign of how sensitive religion can be, one Turkish lawmaker has condemned the Antakya conference as an attempt to distract attention from the “exploitations and massacres conducted by the United States and Israel in our region.”

“Our Muslim nation’s patience and awareness is being tested by these meetings, dialogues, conferences and parks of religion,” Mehmet Silay, who represents the Antakya region, said in a statement issued before the conference began.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has Islamist roots, told the 700 delegates the world’s Muslims had also faced increased prejudice and discrimination since the 9/11 attacks on the US.

“Islamphobia is a crime against humanity, just like anti-Semitism,” said Erdogan, a practising Muslim.