Clinton hails Turkey for move to return properties to non-Muslim Minorities

TODAY’S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL
14/9/2011

The Turkish government’s decision to return properties that were confiscated from non-Muslim minorities in 1936 and to lift a ban on wearing headscarves at university campuses have drawn enthusiastic praise from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“We have also seen Turkey take serious steps to improve the climate for religious tolerance. The Turkish government issued a decree in August that invited non-Muslims to reclaim churches and synagogues that were confiscated 75 years ago. I applaud Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan’s very important commitment to doing so,” Clinton said on Tuesday while presenting the State Department’s 13th Annual Report on International Religious Freedom.

“Turkey also now allows women to wear headscarves at universities, which means female students no longer have to choose between their religion and their education,” Clinton noted.

According to a decree published in Turkey’s Official Gazette in late August, property taken away from minority religious foundations under a 1936 declaration will be returned to them.

Both Turkey’s non-Muslim citizens and the European Union applauded the move, while Brussels underlined that it will closely monitor the implementation of the legislation.

The headscarf ban on university campuses has been in place since 1997. The ban has affected university students as well as women working in the public sector. Women with headscarves are currently not allowed to enter military facilities, including hospitals and recreational areas under the control of the Turkish military. While many of Turkey’s universities announced late last year their decision to allow the headscarf both on their campuses and in their classrooms, there were some university administrations that argued entering university campuses with a headscarf was against the directives of the Higher Education Board (YÖK).

Although titled as an annual report, the State Department report covered practices between July and December 2010.

“The constitution protects religious freedom, and, in practice, the government generally enforced these protections; however, some constitutional provisions regarding the integrity and existence of the secular state restricts these rights,” the report said of Turkey.

According to the report, the Turkish government generally respected religious freedom in practice and during the reporting period, the government took steps to improve religious freedom.

“Notably the government permitted religious services to be held annually in historic Christian sites that had been turned into state museums after decades of disuse. The government continued to impose limitations on Muslim and other religious groups, including restrictions placed on Muslim religious expression in government offices and state-run institutions, including universities, for the stated reason of preserving the ‘secular state.’ The government has yet to reopen Greek Orthodox Halki seminary after 40 years of closure,” it said.

“Authorities continued their broad ban on wearing Muslim religious headscarves in government offices as well as public schools, although the ban was relaxed in universities and ignored in some workplaces. Members of some religious groups said they were effectively blocked from careers in state institutions because of their faith. Some religious groups also faced difficulties regarding freedom of worship, registration with the government, property ownership and the training of their followers and clergy. Although religious speech and persuasion was legal, some Muslims, Christians and Bahais faced restrictions and occasional harassment for alleged proselytizing or providing religious instruction to children.”

The report, meanwhile, highlighted that a variety of newspapers and television shows continued to feature “anti-Christian and anti-Jewish messages and anti-Semitic literature was common in bookstores.”

A movie, “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine,” in which an action hero avenges the death of Turkish activists in Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship, was given as an example of such productions carrying anti-Jewish messages.

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