Turkey may give property rights to

[tecumseh]

The Turkish Parliament on Thursday (November 9th) adopted an EU-required law aimed at improving the property rights of the country's non-Muslim religious minorities. The "religious foundations law", which needs to be approved by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to enter into force, will allow the mainly Greek, Armenian and Jewish foundations to regain properties confiscated by the state in 1974.

While freedom of worship was "generally respected" in Turkey, "non-Muslim religious communities have no access to legal personality and continue to face restricted property rights," the EC report said. "They encountered problems in the management of their foundations and in recovering property by judicial means."

http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtm...1/10/feature-01 (http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2006/11/10/feature-01)

[AlwaysAnarchy]

This is good news! I support giving everyone rights and freedoms and outlawing all forms of discrimination!!! :)

[Enragé]

whoa what the hell

i thought turkey was secular as can be, with atatürk basicly wiping out islamists etc.

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2006 05:35 pm
This is good news! I support giving everyone rights and freedoms and outlawing all forms of discrimination!!! :)
So you, as a leftist, support the spreading of property rights yet don't see an inherent contradiction?

[apathy maybe]

The issue is not property rights, but rather discrimination. The Turkish state is discriminating on the basis of religion, not all religions, just some.

As leftists we should oppose such stupid discrimination, it would be different if all religions were forbidden to own property.

I think that this lends support to my argument that the state does have the right to take away property rights, even if it is a "bourgeois" state.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2006 03:27 pm
whoa what the hell

i thought turkey was secular as can be, with atatürk basicly wiping out islamists etc.
Nope. It's often held up as secular in bourgeois public opinion. But basically that means the generals give orders to the mullahs and not vice versa. It doesn't mean church-state separation.

[AlwaysAnarchy]

No it's true dude: check it out:


Originally posted by BBC+--> (BBC)1928 - Turkey becomes secular: clause retaining Islam as state religion removed from constitution. [/b]


Wikipedia

Turkey is a democratic, secular, constitutional republic whose political system was established in 1923 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It is a founding member of the United Nations,[1] the OIC,[2] the OECD[3] and the OSCE,[4] a member state of the Council of Europe since 1949[5] and of the NATO since 1952,[6] and is currently in accession negotiations with the European Union, being an associate member since 1964.[7].