Turk PM defends plan to help non-Muslim minorities

ANKARA, Sep 26 (Reuters) Turkey's prime minister today defended plans to ease property restrictions on non-Muslim minorities, a key demand of the European Union, and dismissed nationalist fears they threaten the secular republic.

Opposition parties, looking to elections due next year, have suggested the plans could boost the power and influence of the Orthodox Christian patriarch, based in Istanbul, leading to the creation of a ''mini-Vatican'' in Muslim Turkey's biggest city.

''There is criticism of a trend towards setting up a Vatican-style structure at the patriarchate,'' Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told lawmakers from his ruling centre-right AK Party, which has Islamist roots.

''Will the Muslim Turkish state abandon its unitary structure and allow the formation of such an entity? How can such a thing be?'' he said, shrugging off the suggestion.

''Let nobody try to scare people with empty phantoms.'' Turkish nationalists have long accused Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual head of the world's Orthodox Christians, of trying to undermine national unity by setting up a mini-state along Vatican lines.

Western diplomats dismiss such fears as groundless and say they betray a lack of understanding of Orthodox Christianity, which lacks a Pope-like leader and is composed of self-governing churches. The patriarch is simply ''first among equals''.

CHANGE THE MENTALITY Mr Erdogan said efforts to make it easier for non-Muslim minorities, including Orthodox Christians, to purchase property or to have confiscated properties restored to them were fully in line with both Turkey's historic commitments and its EU bid.

Parliament, where the AK Party has a big majority, is now debating the 'religious foundations' law which will ease the property restrictions, though EU diplomats say the current draft does not go far enough.

Mr Erdogan also denied EU suggestions that his government has lost its appetite for joining the bloc, but declined to say whether it would scrap a controversial article of the penal code used against writers, journalists and academics accused of insulting state institutions and national identity.

The EU wants article 301 changed or dropped, saying it restricts freedom of expression.

''It is not enough just to change laws to entrench human rights and freedoms. You also need to change the mentality....

We must be patient,'' Mr Erdogan said.

Turkey, which began EU entry talks last year, expects the European Commission to criticise its rights record, including over article 301, in an annual progress report due on November. 8.

The European Parliament is expected on Wednesday to adopt its own critical, though non-binding, progress report on Turkey.

REUTERS BDP RK2045