Good luck. A Constitution incorporating or at least favorable toward Sharia provisions requiring second-class status for non-Muslims is much more likely in today’s Turkey. “Turkish minorities: We want a constitution that embraces us all,” by AlÄ° Aslan Kılıç in Today’s Zaman, April 16 (thanks to AINA):
A parliamentary commission has received the representatives of some minority groups, including Catholics and Romas, to hear their suggestions for the new constitution currently being drafted. The representatives said their biggest problem is a lack of acknowledgment.
With the parliamentary Constitutional Reconciliation Commission, which has been assigned the task of drafting the text of a new constitution for Turkey, hearing from various segments of Turkish society, representatives from Turkey”s Council of Catholic Bishops, the Ãœlkü Ocakları Education and Culture Foundation — Ãœlkü Ocakları is a youth organization of the far-right political front — the Human Rights Association (Ä°HD) and the Roma Association were received by the commission on Monday so they could make suggestions regarding the new constitution.
Expressing his contentment after the meeting, Monsignor Ruggero Franceschini, the president of the Council of Catholic Bishops, said it was sincere and friendly. Franceschini said they talked about the biggest problems minorities in Turkey face: “All of us expressed our views as to how to resolve the problems of all religious groups. Our biggest problem is the issue of receiving acknowledgment. Other Catholic churches carry out their services with the help of associations; but we, Roman Catholics, cannot even repair our churches. We can’t properly administer our properties. I am an Italian, and I think that historical churches are the richness of all humanity, not only of the people belonging to that church.”
Syriac Catholic church leader Chor Episcopus Yusuf SaÄŸ noted that the fact that they were invited by the commission to contribute to the new constitution’s formation process is proof of how pro-liberty the new constitution will be. He added: “We hope the new constitution will highlight freedoms. We want a constitution that accepts and embraces everyone like a mother. We don’t have expectations different from those of Muslim Turks. As Syriacs that have been living on this land for 4,500 years, we expect to receive the same rights as Muslim Turks.”…