Recent Commentaries:

10 July 2007
TURKEY: Dangerous consequences of intolerance of religious minorities

By Dr. Otmar Oehring, Head of the Human Rights Office of Missio <http://www.missio.de>

The Turkish government has long failed to tackle deep-rooted discrimination against religious minorities – by refusing to guarantee their position in law or to crack down on intolerance from officials, the media and in school curricula. This has left religious minorities dangerously exposed, argues Otmar Oehring of the German Catholic charity Missio http://www.missio.de/dcms/sites/missio2/missio-ueber-sich/leitthemen/menschenrechte/index.html. For, as Dr Oehring observes in this personal commentary for Forum 18 http://www.forum18.org, hostility to religious minorities is stoked by widespread xenophobia. Following the brutal murder of three Protestants in Malatya in April, attacks on and threats against religious minorities have only increased. Official "protection" for religious minority leaders and places of worship seems designed as much to control as to protect them.

28 June 2007
TURKEY: What chance for religious freedom in Turkey's elections?

By Dr. Otmar Oehring, Head of the Human Rights Office of Missio <http://www.missio.de>

Turkey is due to hold parliamentary elections on 22 July, which will have a crucial impact on the presidential election due in autumn. Both elections will strongly influence the chances of greater freedom of thought, conscience and belief, Otmar Oehring of the German Catholic charity Missio http://www.missio.de/dcms/sites/missio2/missio-ueber-sich/leitthemen/menschenrechte/index.html notes. Turkish religious minorities Forum 18 News Service has spoken to are highly concerned about the outcome of the elections. For, as Dr Oehring observes in this personal commentary for Forum 18 http://www.forum18.org, Turks who want to see genuine freedom of thought, conscience and religion have little expectation that either the parliamentary or presidential election will bring any improvement. No political party with any chance of gaining real power wants either to tackle the dangerous media intolerance of religious minorities or to take the dramatic changes necessary to usher in genuine religious freedom.

18 January 2007
TURKEY: Religious freedom via Strasbourg, not Ankara or Brussels?

By Dr. Otmar Oehring, Head of the Human Rights Office of Missio <http://www.missio.de>

There are now two major questions in the struggle for full religious freedom in Turkey, Otmar Oehring of the German Catholic charity Missio http://www.missio-aachen.de/menschen-kulturen/themen/menschenrechte notes. Firstly, will the controversial Foundations Law be adopted, and if so in what form? Secondly, will the Turkish authorities move towards full religious freedom after a recent momentous ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg? The ECHR did not accept the Turkish state's argumentation over the seizure of non-Muslim minorities' property, and even the Turkish judge at the Court had no objections to the ruling. In this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org, Dr Oehring suggests that, as Turkish accession negotiations with the European Union have gone quiet, the ECHR may now be the best route for Turkey's religious minorities to assert their rights.

16 February 2006
COMMENTARY: Turkmenistan's fictitious religious freedom

By a Turkmen Protestant

"Outsiders sometimes think that freedom of conscience exists in our country," writes a Turkmen Protestant, anonymous to avoid state persecution, in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. But the writer sees "constant specific violations of religious freedom" and "cannot see any improvement" in Turkmenistan's human rights. When religious believers "demand that officials follow the laws and the Constitution, these officials are in shock." "We have yet to meet an official who refused to act against religious believers, and chose instead to follow the laws and the Constitution." The writer pleads for the international community to act and "publicly and clearly tell our government to do what the Constitution proclaims and respect human rights," as this "would help it keep its promises." The writer states that "religious communities are not calling for any special privileges. We simply want the Constitution to be obeyed. Let us have the rights we are promised - we are going to use them anyway."

9 February 2006
COMMENTARY: A murder in Turkey, missionaries and Turkish-language books

By Canon Ian Sherwood, Anglican Chaplain in Istanbul

Since the murder of Italian Roman Catholic priest Fr Andrea Santoro, much discussion has taken place within Turkey as to why this happened. This mainly centred on the controversy over the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and on Fr Andrea's work helping Russian women caught up in organised prostitution. But some discussion focused on the presence of Christian literature, in Turkish, at the back of Fr Andrea's church, notes Canon Ian Sherwood, an Irish priest who has been Anglican Chaplain in Istanbul since 1989, in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. Even "liberal" voices see any attempt to express or commend Christianity in Turkish as suspiciously criminal, or at least intellectually unacceptable, and the liberty to distribute non-Islamic texts has been seen as unacceptable in Turkey for centuries. Canon Sherwood asks whether the time has now come to shed this misplaced suspicion and fear of a reasonable liberty.

19 January 2006
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, 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."

6 July 2005
COMMENTARY: Vietnam's new religion regulations don't help religious freedom

By Truong Tri Hien, a Christian lawyer who had to flee Vietnam in 2004

Recent government religious regulations provide no basis for religious freedom, Vietnamese Christian lawyer Truong Tri Hien argues in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. Even these contradictory and restrictive documents have been dismissed by oppressive local officials, he reports. Hien was Acting General Secretary of the Mennonite Church in Vietnam and fled his homeland in June 2004, after a warrant was issued to arrest him for "resisting a person performing his duty." The Vietnamese Justice Code states that this includes "threatening to make public information that will be unfavourable to the person doing their duty, or unfavourable to those close to the person doing their duty". Hien had been documenting religious freedom violations. Hien pleads for foreigners to judge the Vietnamese government by its continuing attacks on its own citizens' religious freedom, and to take action to force it to abide by international human rights standards.

26 May 2005
COMMENTARY: Religious freedom since 1905 – any progress in Russia?

By Irina Budkina, Editor of the <http://www.samstar.ru> Old Believer website

One hundred years ago, Tsar Nicholas II's decree on religious tolerance formally freed Russia's religious minorities from state restriction and persecution. Today, Russia's religious minorities can legitimately ask how much progress has been achieved since then, argues Irina Budkina, an Old Believer and editor of a website on Old Belief in Samara region http://www.samstar.ru, in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. (The Old Believer movement rejected changes in the 17th century Russian Orthodox Church.) Officials – particularly at provincial level - continue to defer to the Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate, and hand over historic Old Believer churches to the Moscow Patriarchate. Not just Old Believers, but members of other religious minorities in today's Russia believe some religious communities remain more equal than others.