ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkish newspapers fretted on Tuesday that Turks who sacrificed sheep in public for a Muslim holiday had violated European Union health standards and set back the country's chances of joining the wealthy bloc.
"Here's the road to Europe," mourned the Milliyet daily over a photograph of Turks slaughtering animals alongside an Istanbul highway for the Eid al-Adha holiday. "The road connecting Turkey to Europe turns into lake of blood on the holiday's first day."
Turkey has an overwhemingly Muslim population of some 65 million, but a strictly secularist national code and political establishment that frown on public displays of religiosity.
It won candidacy to join the wealthy European bloc of nations in 1999, but faces a set of exacting legal and social reforms, and secularist Turks fear Europe will use any pretext to exclude a fast-growing Muslim country.
Past EU criticism of the way animals are slaughtered for the holiday fed those fears, leading the religious affairs ministry and municipalities to plead with Turks not to sacrifice their animals in public, partly for health reasons.
Those pleas went unheeded in much of the country, where people killed animals in streets, public parks and on roadsides, distributing meat to the poor and hides to charities.
Mainstream media reported that thousands of Turks had injured themselves practicing amateur butchery, and said the spectacle threw up obstacles in the country's already cluttered road toward Europe.
"Nobody cares about Europe. The EU's expectations, the rulings of the religious affairs ministry and the efforts of the municipalities couldn't stop the familiar sacrifice scenes," the Hurriyet daily said.
"This has nothing to do with modernity, Islam or the Turkish character, but there is still stubborn insistence on this error," the Sabah newspaper said.
Religious Turks, for their part, shrugged of the criticism and said no amount of Europhile whingeing would lead them to suppress their faith.
"How beautiful it is to believe," said the moderate Islamist newspaper Akit.
"Despite the current economis crisis...people did their religious duty. The scene was a serious slap in the face for the fanatics of modernity."
05:00 03-06-01
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