ABTTF President: “Our country should take as an example the policy of tolerance of our motherland towards the non-Muslim minorities within its borders, especially the Greek Orthodox minority, and draw lessons from it. Our country, which is far from fulfilling even the minimum standards on religious tolerance and the right to worship, aims to officially eliminate the religious autonomy guaranteed by the treaties to the Turkish community in Western Thrace by ignoring even the bilateral and international agreements to which it is a party, as in the last draft law presented to the Parliament in July 2022.’’
Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew conducted the ninth mass held on 15 August 2022 at the Sümela Monastery in the Maçka district of Trabzon in Türkiye.
In the ceremony, where the ‘‘Day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary’’ was celebrated in the Christian world and lasted for about three hours, prayers and hymns were recited by the clergy.
In his speech at the ceremony, Bartholomew thanked everyone for their sensitivity and effort to protect the Sümela Monastery in accordance with its spirit and history and added the following: ‘‘Let’s get to know each other better, love people, and count different cultures. Let these lands be an example and the surrounding countries should be inspired’’.
“Patriarch Bartholomew stated that those from different cultures and religions should be treated with respect and tolerance in the ceremony he conducted in Sümela Monastery and said that these beautiful practices in our motherland should inspire the surrounding countries. We fully agree with him. First of all, our country should take as an example the policy of tolerance of our motherland towards the non-Muslim minorities within its borders, especially the Greek Orthodox minority, and draw lessons for itself from this in the context of the Turkish community in Western Thrace, whose rights it has seized for years. Although there is no Greek Orthodox community in the region of the historical Sümela Monastery, it has been allowed to hold services since 2010, while there is not a single mosque open for worship in Thessaloniki, the second largest city of our country where thousands of Muslims live, and the historical mosques remaining from the Ottoman Empire are not even allowed to offer Eid prayers by the authorities. Our country, which is far from fulfilling even the minimum standards on religious tolerance and the right to worship, aims to officially eliminate the religious autonomy guaranteed by the treaties to the Turkish community in Western Thrace by ignoring even the bilateral and international agreements to which it is a party, as in the last draft law presented to the Parliament in July 2022”, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
*Image: https://haber.aa.com.tr/
