Turkey Urged To Allow Greater Religious Freedom

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians says Turkey’s new constitution should grant greater religious freedom to the country’s minority groups.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I met Monday with members of a parliamentary subcommittee seeking an all-party consensus for a new constitution, which will replace the one ratified in 1982 while the country was under military rule.

Mostly Muslim Turkey has small Christian and Jewish communities.

Bartholomew told reporters he favors a constitution that promotes equal rights and religious freedoms, including the reopening of a Greek Orthodox seminary that trained generations of patriarchs.

Bartholomew, who is based in Istanbul, is the spiritual leader of hundreds of millions of Orthodox Christians worldwide.