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church says it has sued Turkey for allegedly preventing worship at religious
sites in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north of the divided island.
Church lawyer Simos Angelides said Monday the lawsuit with the European
Court of Human Rights concerns 520 churches, monasteries, chapels and
cemeteries. He said the court's past rulings hold Turkey responsible for the
north because it maintains 35,000 occupation troops there.
Angelides said Orthodox Christian faithful cannot worship at those sites
because they are either derelict or have been converted to mosques, army
barracks, stables or nightclubs.
He said Turkey committed "ethnic and religious cleansing" on Cyprus in 1974
when it invaded after a coup by supporters of union with Greece.
Just one more reason why the EU needs to consider Turkey becoming a member.
--
Fr Gregory
- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm http://www.facebook.com/vasjpan2
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]
Beautifully stated, Vasos, and precisely the opinion of the Patriarch
of Istanbul
The Patriarch is deluding himself. First, it's unlikely that Europe
would welcome Turkey (since the Germans and French are opposed). And
secondly, merely entering the EU won't change the Turks. They just
don't have the European outlook and mentality.
I thought you were the one claiming they were really muslim Greeks.
Look at the Albanian Archbishop believing the muslim Albanians will
all become Orthodox. And the Greeks in Greece believing the Albanian
illegals are really Greek anyway.
>*+-don't have the European outlook and mentality.
>
>I thought you were the one claiming they were really muslim Greeks.
>Look at the Albanian Archbishop believing the muslim Albanians will
>all become Orthodox. And the Greeks in Greece believing the Albanian
>illegals are really Greek anyway.
>
With the caveat that the genetic pool in *any* country is mixed, most
of the population of present-day Turkey is derived from the indigenous
peoples of Anatolia, and not from the Turkic invaders who came from
central Asia. This same indigenous population had earlier been
Hellenized by Alexander the Great and his successors.
Christianization did not change the cultural orientation of the
Hellenized Anatolians, but Islamization did.
And what effect do you think those "Hellenized Anatolians" aka
profigi, have on mainland Greece after the population exchanges? Did
the "cultural orientation" of Greece markedly change. In areas such
as Macedonia where the majority settlements occurred, were there
"cultural orientation" major shifts?
Those "Hellenized Anatolians," the ones that remained Christians up to
modern times, were just as culturally Greek as the Greeks of Greece
proper. It's true that some of them, from the interior of Asia Minor,
used Turkish as a first language, but as you know, under the Ottoman
system, it was religion and not language that was the determinant of
ethnicity. Anybody who was expelled from Turkey under the population
exchanges was by definition culturally Greek.
I've visited many of the areas in Macedonia where the refugees
settled. (The giveaway is that many of the towns have the prefix "Nea"
or "Neo" -- e.g. Nea Kallikrateia, Nea Moudania, Nea Potidea, Neos
Marmaras, etc.) (And the biggie for the Asia Minor Greek Protestants
-- Katerini.) By and large, these are in coastal areas that weren't
previously occupied by either Macedonian Slavs or Turks. So the
refugees didn't directly displace other ethnicities.
So the short answer to your question is "no." Thanks for playing.