"COMMENTARY: What are the roots of Turkey's attitude to religious freedom?
By Canon Ian Sherwood, Anglican Chaplain in Istanbul
The complexity of Turkish attitudes to religious freedom is rarely understood and addressed, even by observers who live in the country, argues Canon Ian Sherwood, an Irish priest who has been Anglican Chaplain in Istanbul since 1989 http://www.anglicanistanbul.com, in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. 'One has to keep reiterating that minorities are Turkish by modern citizenship but often are made to feel foreign, even if their customs and deeper ethnic identities predate the majority culture by many centuries.' The deep-rooted problems of non-Islamic religious minorities are 'principally an innate social attitude that rests very much deeper than anything that could be usefully addressed by European regulation.' He comments that observers find it difficult to understand 'the injustices experienced by minority religious groups.' These 'seem to be particular to Turkey, as Turkey struggles to face west with an Islamic and eastern inheritance.'"
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