Ankara, Turkey - Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül was quoted on Tuesday as saying a hotly debated Greek Orthodox seminary near Istanbul would not reopen because the leader of the Greek Orthodox community had rejected Ankara's conditions.
The Halki Seminary on Heybeliada Island was closed in 1971 under a law requiring state supervision of university-level religious education. The reopening of the seminary is viewed by the European Union, which Turkey aims to join, as a litmus test of Turkey's commitment to the freedom of its religious minorities.
Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartolomeos says the failure to reopen the seminary threatens the survival of Turkey's dwindling Orthodox Christian population.
"Allowing the seminary to provide religious education conflicts with the Turkish Constitution and the principle of secularism," mass-circulation Hürriyet daily quoted Gül as saying in response to criticism from Athens.
Hürriyet said Gül had told Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis last week that Turkey had offered the patriarch a compromise solution whereby the seminary would reopen as a faculty of Istanbul University, but Bartolomeos had refused.
Gül also rejected Greek criticism that religious minorities in Turkey faced obstacles, saying all were free to practice their religious beliefs in Turkey.
In an interview with Reuters earlier this year, Gül had said that Ankara was in talks with the patriarch and was seeking a solution.
Turkey, whose population is overwhelmingly Muslim but which has a secular political system, fears any easing of the curbs on religious education could be exploited by Islamist groups.
"We cannot make any exceptions to any religious groups," one senior Turkish diplomat told Reuters recently when asked about the seminary.