Turkey’s political elite is obsessed with joining the European Union. But senior players in the EU – in a rare moment of clarity amid their delusional fantasies of a federal Europe – are reluctant to let in a country which is increasingly hard to distinguish from the rest of the Islamic world. Here’s a tip for Turkish campaigners for EU membership: if you want to win over Herman Van Rompuy, best not set up your headquarters in a building confiscated from your country’s oppressed Orthodox Christian minority.

This how the Un:dhimmi website reports the controversy:

Unbelievable but true: the headquarters of the Secretariat for the entry of Turkey into the European Union is a building confiscated from the Orthodox Christian community in the 90s. The building is located in Istanbul, in the well-known area of Ortakoy, under the first bridge over the Bosphorus.

Before the seizure, the building was used as a primary school for children of the minority Orthodox in Ortakoy. Here once lived a thriving Orthodox community, now non-existent because of past purges against minorities, executed by the “secular” Turkish State.

And some background:

Turkey is often portrayed as a “secular” modern Muslim state. This was indeed the founding vision of the Republic’s “Father”, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, when he created the republic out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s.

However, since late 2002, when Erdoğan’s AK Party came to power, a creeping Islamisation of Turkey has been embarked upon – and the small Christian community has been subjected to increasing harassment and persecution (a social norm in Muslim countries – ask any Christian in Egypt or Pakistan, for example).

And it’s not just the government. A recent survey of Turks revealed:

More than half of Turks oppose non-Muslim religious meetings

59 percent of those surveyed said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to hold open meetings where they can discuss their ideas.

54 percent said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to publish literature that describes their faith.

49 percent of those surveyed said they would either “absolutely” or “most likely” not support a political party that accepted people from another religion.

The theory that these prejudices will melt away once Turkey is admitted to the EU strikes me as quite fatuous. Ask yourself: has the protective generosity of the welfare state made Islamic immigrants to Britain any more accommodating to our liberal traditions?

Tags: european union, Ortakoy, Turkey