There is an interesting article in the L.A. Times about the Pope’s visit. According to the article, Turkey doesn’t recognize the Roman Catholic Church… non-Muslim minorities complain of systemic discrimination, harassment and violence against them.

The Roman Catholic Church…functions largely attached to foreign embassies; its priests do not wear their collars in public.

Most Christians in Turkey are of the Armenian, Greek and other Orthodox denominations, and although most of these are recognized in the Turkish Constitution as minority communities, they face severe restrictions on property ownership and cannot build places of worship or run seminaries to train their clerics. Such hardships make it almost impossible for Christians to sustain and expand their communities, advocates say.

Turkey has come under repeated criticism from Western human rights organizations and the Vatican for its failure to promote religious freedom. Turkey is an Islamic but secular country; in reality, this means that all religious activity, including mosques and imams, is controlled by the government.

“Obviously, more needs to be done to promote religious freedom for all denominations,” Ali Bardakoglu, president of Turkey’s powerful Religious Affairs Directorate, said in an interview. But he defended the government’s treatment of minorities, contending that Christians and other non-Muslims do not face serious problems…”It is unfortunate that there are circles within Western society that attempt to blacken the name of our religion and are infected with Islamophobia,” he said. “The role of the Vatican and the pope should be to help fight stereotypes. Rather than open debate, they should be seeking to heal wounds.”

The pope is scheduled to visit St. Sophia, built in the 6th century as a Byzantine church and converted to a mosque in the 15th century by the Ottomans. The mere rumor that the pope might say a prayer at the site has led to a bit of hysteria. Islamic newspaper Milli Gazete, in a front-page commentary last week, lashed out at the government for permitting the “Crusaders” to plan to bless the former church in a brazen attempt to “revive Byzantium.”

Such frictions notwithstanding, Turkey, compared with many Muslim countries, is relatively hospitable to non-Muslims. But its failure to make more progress on freedom-of-religion issues has been an important stumbling block in its years-long campaign to join the European Union. It is EU pressure that has nudged Ankara along in easing some of the restrictions on minorities; for example, a Protestant group in Istanbul has for the first time been allowed to open a church.

“The EU reforms give people a sense of hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” said Greek Orthodox Father Alexander Karloutsos. “It’s been very dark here.”

There is a laundry-list of requirements for countries wishing to join the EU. Usually, they must make changes in their laws in conformity with EU laws. Perhaps the EU really doesn’t care much about religious freedom in Turkey, at least the Christian kind. After all, there are not a whole lot of Christians there now. Ironically, some European governments seem to be bending over backwards to accommodate Islam. Yet, it’s big news when a Protestant group is allowed to open a church in Istanbul.

There is a wave of articles reporting that while Turks self identifying as Muslim have increased in recent years, but only a few of them have mentioned that the number of Turks who would like to see Sharia law has actually decreased by something like 40-50%.

I’m dissapointed. I thought the Pope would stick to his guns. I wanted him to grill Turkey about it’s failure to take responsibility for the Armenian Genocide. Furthermore, since he’s German, I had hoped would ask why millions of Germany’s Turkish “geistarbieten” refuse to assimilate into German culture (many can’t even speak German!).

I don’t think Turkey has done enough to warrant entrance into the EU, and it’s a shame the Pope couldn’t have opened a true dialouge about why this is so. His apology isn’t conciliatory, it’s weak and hypocritical.

you cannot be serious comparing the difficulties of adapting to cirillic alphabet with those of a muslim country. THE muslim country. It’s not even Bosnia or Albania (of which nobody ever speaks about integrating), it’s the country against Europeans have been fighting since time immemorial.

Don’t underestimate the consternation Cyrillic will cause in Europe. Oddly, paradoxically, the Greek alphabet “fits”, but Cyrillic does not seem to “fit” Europe for some. I love the way Niels Bünemann defends an EU policy from 1994 (you can almost imagine… “But zis vas zee polisy!”)

http://www.euractiv.com/fr/euro/bulgarie-euro-evro/article-159597 ..
” The country has expressed concern over the differences between Bulgaria’s Cyrillic and the EU’s Latin alphabets, in response to renewed European Central Bank (ECB) demands that “Ëœeuro’ be spelled and pronounced with a “Ëœu’ and not a “Ëœv’ as Bulgarians wish (“Ëœevro’).

In attempts to resolve the issue before Bulgaria joins the EU next year, State Administration Minister Nikolay Vassilev is meeting EU council officials in Brussels on 10 November, there to argue that EU regulations already acknowledge the differences between the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, and that the word “Ëœevro’ is already an official part of the Bulgarian language.

ECB spokesman Niels Bünemann told EurActiv: “As regards the rules on the spelling of the euro, the relevant decisions were made by the European Council in December 1995 and later by the EC Council in Council Regulation No. 974/98 on the introduction of the euro. The European Council decided that ‘the name given to the European currency shall be euro’, that ‘the name … must be the same in all the official languages of the European Union, taking into account the existence of different alphabets’. ”

And then…

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/08/news/eu.php …

“SOFIA When Saints Cyril and Methodius gave the Slavic world its first written script, their mission was to draw the Slavs under the influence of Constantinople and away from Rome. A thousand or so years later, Cyrillic is heading west – this time to a united Europe.

With Bulgaria scheduled to enter the European Union along with Romania on Jan. 1, Cyrillic is becoming the bloc’s third official alphabet, after Latin and Greek; by the end of the decade, if Bulgaria succeeds in joining the euro zone, it may even appear on euro banknotes…”

But meanwhile, on the Western Linguistic Front…
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1606 …

... Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru …

Cypress also seems to be a problem that the Europeans are using as a sticking point.

If Europe is to expand, then we should invade Istanbul and let god-forsaken Anatolia to the Turks.
I’ve been reading a lot in here about how good and noble the Turkish race is, how civilized they are when compared to those freakish Arabs, but all positive things in its History (Ataturk) were inroads of Western thinking by Western institutions (i.e. freemasonry); and I have serious doubts about the normal Anatolian Turkish countryside being assimilable to us.

I understand that integrating Turkey into Western ways would be a wonderful development, but let’s face it, Europe is mentally not up to the challenge. America may still be confident on the superiority of liberal democracy and all that, but Europe’s official discourse is 100% pure relativism. There’s no way we could win the battle of ideas with those strong-minded turks.

invading Istanbul was meant as a joke.

And Turks being strong-minded, or at least stronger-minded than today’s Europeans is, well, a fact, but a cultural and sociological fact, not of course racial. Europeans were stronger-minded at WW1. Things have just changed, Europe’s gone soft while Turkey hasn’t to the same extent.
I think it’s obvious I meant it so, why are people so keen to shout “racism” everytime? It’s not a problem of PC, sheesh, just plain common sense and reading comprehension. Chill out.

And I don’t say Ataturks revolution is Turkey’s “defining characteristic”. Is there such a thing in any nation? But of course it’s the starting point of today’s Turkish state, and one of the few things the West finds admirable in its history.

I would be fully supportive of a Pan-Turkic state. I doubt you could call the Mongols or the Manchurians Turkic by any stretch of the meaning, but anyway, a strong central-asian state would check some of Russia’s influence, which is always a good thing.
Just tell me what’s the point of letting them in today’s multi-culti EU.

Mongolians and Manchurians might be a stretch, but I’m not the first person to group them with the Turks. Their languages share some linguistic characteristics, and “Turkic-Mongol” describes various people in history. That they have separated themselves in modern times doesn’t mean they have no [recent] common descent. I think the odds are good that the Seljuks and “Blue” Turks looked a lot more like their Mongolian brothers prior to their intermarriage into Persian Central Asia and Byzantine Anatolia.

Anyway, I feel pretty confident that using adjectives to describe any race on the whole is rascist, whether it’s a compliment or an insult. And “strong-minded” is vague enough that it can mean whatever you want. In one context, you might mean they have clear goals and don’t hesitate to meet those goals. In another, you might mean they are stubborn and hesitant to listen to reason. I’m not calling you a rascist – I’m saying you made rascist comments.

I’m far from PC myself. I just like to see accuracy in speech.

Europe has “gone soft?” Turkey hasn’t? You seem to have a good idea of what you mean by this, but it isn’t so self-evident as you think. I have no idea what you mean by that statement.

The Point of letting Turkey into the EU? Well, Turkey is at least partially in Europe and they want to be in the EU. They seem willing to make some changes to their economy and domestic policies, or they wouldn’t be trying to join. If they joined the Euro zone, it would make Europe that much stronger, giving them a direct connection to the Middle-East, which… well, I think that would be a great thing.

I’m more interested in why you think Turkey Should NOT be in the EU.

yeah, I’m making comparisons of whole countries (not races). Why shouldn’t I? I say Turks have more confidence on their nation and culture than most europeans, are less relativistic and have a greater conscience of national interest. You would never see Turks negotiation which separatist terrorists like Spain is doing right now.

“In one context, you might mean they have clear goals and don’t hesitate to meet those goals. In another, you might mean they are stubborn and hesitant to listen to reason.”
I guess it’s kind of both things. If you deny that a nation can have any characteristic, distinct to others, above the individual level, well, that’s a deep epystemological problem which we’re not gonna solve here.

Look, what we have to have in mind is what the EU is supposed to be, as an organization. It’s the European Union, not the “liberal democracy (or aspiring) union, nor the “greater euro-asiatic free trade zone”, nor “let’s-influence-the-middle-east-so-they-civilize-a-bit) union”.

Would Turkey really be loyal to the EU, to Europe as a whole? Will they become Europe? That’s the question. I, and as far as I know a majority of people in Europe don’t believe so. The French, which are one of the most vocal opponents of it, are being silenced by its political class which is rumored to be getting money from the Turkish government. So go tell. EU politics are so abjectly corrupt anything Brussels tries to make forward is unlikely to be honest or clean. Not a single thing.