Ankara (AsiaNews) – The Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomeos I, accompanied by representatives of Turkey’s Greek Orthodox minority, visited the newly-elected Turkish President Abdulah Gül to congratulate him for his election.
In view of important constitutional reforms submitted to referendum on October 21, Bartholomeos raised several issues that have negatively affected the Patriarchate in Turkey, like the historical recognition of the Patriarchate’s ecumenical nature, the return of buildings, monasteries and churches unjustly seized by the Religious Foundations Directorate and the re-opening of the Halki Theological School, shut down in 1971.
“We want all our citizens to live in harmony and prosperity. Minorities in Turkey enrich the country. Reforms will follow normal procedures, step by step. It is my duty to inform the appropriate institutions and I shall closely follow developments to solve the problems,” said President Gül after he listened carefully to the ecumenical patriarch’s plea.
“Everyone welcomed us warmly and with kindness. They listened to what we had to say carefully and promised to do everything possible to meet our needs,” said the ecumenical patriarch when he left the presidential palace.
Patriarchate sources noted though that similar pledges were made four yeas ago, in 2007, by Prime Minister Erdoğan. Now it is hoped that the circumstances might be more favourable.
The patriarch also visited Parliamentary Speaker Köksal Toptan and opposition leader Deniz Baikal. The latter expressed misgivings about the religious leader’s requests, suggesting that they might stoke Islamic fundamentalism.
The scheduled meeting between Bartholomeos and Prime Minister Erdoğan was instead postponed because of the deteriorating situation along the border with Iraq and the terrorist actions of the PKK. (NT).
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Sunday, October 7, 2007
ISSRPL Blog Finally Active
Dear ISSRPL 2007 Fellows,
After quite a long time, we have finally established a blog of our own. We have all been very busy lately, so a silence in the e-mail communication between us - that had taken place to some extent, immediately after the summer school, but stopped as our day-to-day obligations took over - was somehow not surprising. We all have our daily duties, obligations and other things that occupy us, so it seems very hard to maintain regular communication with people living on the other side of the globe.
Nonetheless, in order to make the communication channel more visible and "tangible", we have - as promised at the school's last night in Yenisehir Palas - put some efforts and finally created this blog domain for our common use. As you will recall, the entire idea of that last night was related exactly to problems of our continuous communication, once we all leave Istanbul and go back to our lives in countries where we live. Well, this blog is an attempt to spur more communication between the Fellows, offering a place where the discussion we started in Istanbul can continue for as long as we like. So, consider this blog to be our "virtual" Istanbul, our virtual Academy for exchange of thoughts, ideas and news. However, this does't mean that the blog is exclusively reserved for "serious" stuff - quite contrary, all of the news, thoughts, poems, stories, jokes from the Fellows are more than welcome.
This is the Fellows' site. But, also this does not mean that our dear lecturers and teachers cannot consider it as their own space as well. We invite all of them to join us in this modest web endeavour, to give us their thoughts, news and other things they consider to be relevant for our common experience. We also invite them to offer their new ideas to us, their new essays, books and analyses on all of the matters we talked about in Turkey, so we could continue our discussion.
The main body of this blog will be reserved for the Fellows' contribution, be it short greetings, some news or entire essays and articles you wrote recently. On the right side of the blog you will find the archive of all of the posts, as well as some of the Fellow photos and other relevant stuff. We also invite all of you to post your photos at the section provided.
Let us hope that this blog will become a useful mechanism for nurturing our spirit of discussion, as well as our friendship. (The password for posting is available at Selma Sevkli and Eldar Sarajlic, so please contact these Fellows if you want to post something -or simply send your articles/essays to avoid technical difficulties and we'll publish them for you
selmasevkli@gmail.com, eldarsaraj@hotmail.com)
After quite a long time, we have finally established a blog of our own. We have all been very busy lately, so a silence in the e-mail communication between us - that had taken place to some extent, immediately after the summer school, but stopped as our day-to-day obligations took over - was somehow not surprising. We all have our daily duties, obligations and other things that occupy us, so it seems very hard to maintain regular communication with people living on the other side of the globe.
Nonetheless, in order to make the communication channel more visible and "tangible", we have - as promised at the school's last night in Yenisehir Palas - put some efforts and finally created this blog domain for our common use. As you will recall, the entire idea of that last night was related exactly to problems of our continuous communication, once we all leave Istanbul and go back to our lives in countries where we live. Well, this blog is an attempt to spur more communication between the Fellows, offering a place where the discussion we started in Istanbul can continue for as long as we like. So, consider this blog to be our "virtual" Istanbul, our virtual Academy for exchange of thoughts, ideas and news. However, this does't mean that the blog is exclusively reserved for "serious" stuff - quite contrary, all of the news, thoughts, poems, stories, jokes from the Fellows are more than welcome.
This is the Fellows' site. But, also this does not mean that our dear lecturers and teachers cannot consider it as their own space as well. We invite all of them to join us in this modest web endeavour, to give us their thoughts, news and other things they consider to be relevant for our common experience. We also invite them to offer their new ideas to us, their new essays, books and analyses on all of the matters we talked about in Turkey, so we could continue our discussion.
The main body of this blog will be reserved for the Fellows' contribution, be it short greetings, some news or entire essays and articles you wrote recently. On the right side of the blog you will find the archive of all of the posts, as well as some of the Fellow photos and other relevant stuff. We also invite all of you to post your photos at the section provided.
Let us hope that this blog will become a useful mechanism for nurturing our spirit of discussion, as well as our friendship. (The password for posting is available at Selma Sevkli and Eldar Sarajlic, so please contact these Fellows if you want to post something -or simply send your articles/essays to avoid technical difficulties and we'll publish them for you
selmasevkli@gmail.com, eldarsaraj@hotmail.com)
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