Turkey at odds with faithful - The Boston Globe

"Observant Muslims and Christian minorities feel the effects, to different degrees and in different ways, from limits on religious life."

"For Muslims, the government trains, hires, and fires imams. For the tiny Christian and Jewish minorities, the government has used a web of regulations to close and confiscate places of worship, and doesn't allow individuals or institutions to inherit property.

To the Turkish government and many non observant Turks, appeals for religious freedom strike at the defining principle of the modern Turkish state, the "secularism" imposed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the nation's first president, who forced Turks to abandon many of their traditions as part of a campaign to Westernize the country."

"For the approximately 99 percent of Turks who are Muslim, all aspects of religious expression are regulated by the Diyanet, the religious affairs ministry. Sermons are supposed to be written by imams higher up in the ministry bureaucracy, although some mosques have bucked the rule lately."

"For Turkey's religious minorities -- including about 68,000 Armenian Orthodox, 20,000 Catholics, 23,000 Jews, and 3,000 Greek Orthodox -- the laws are far more restrictive. Many of the minorities see them as part of a Turkish history of trying to drive them out that includes the Armenian genocide and waves of expulsion of Greek Orthodox Christians."
Turkey at odds with faithful - The Boston Globe