Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In a world torn by religious conflict and beset by religious tension, it is worth reminding ourselves that a spiritual belief is one of the greatest and deepest needs of humankind. This is a fact that sometimes gets lost in a humanist, secular world which itself has bred its share of similar conflict and tension. Not all paths lead to God. Not all faiths and religions are the same, and that fact can be the source of discord and dispute amongst peoples. But we must always remember that each person on the face of this earth is a creation of God, who treasures each and every one of us, despite our failings and ungodliness.

The modern Republic of Turkey is a democratic and secular nation that has done much to achieve religious harmony amongst its peoples and deserves our commendation. Over 90 years ago, because of a humanistic conflict, Turkey became home to the graves of many thousands of young Australian soldiers who fought and died on Turkish soil at Gallipoli. Today all Australians would join me in expressing their appreciation for the help and hospitality that the Turkish government and people give to the Australians who visit the Gallipoli peninsula each year. Despite the inauspicious start to our relationship, today there is a warm, strong bond of mutual respect and friendship between our two democratic nations.

The law of Turkey establishes that country as a secular state and provides for freedom of belief, freedom of worship and the private dissemination of religious ideas. However, other laws regarding the integrity and existence of the secular state constrain these rights. In noting this, I again acknowledge the steps that Turkey has taken toward ensuring religious harmony. In keeping with these efforts, and in the knowledge that a secular state does not need to be an irreligious state, I respectfully urge the Turkish parliament to pass laws that will enable minority groups, including Christian organisations, to reclaim property that has been expropriated from them in the past. In particular, I ask that Turkish Christian foundations be allowed to acquire legal ownership of properties that were once registered under the names of, for example, saints and archangels during periods when foundations could not own property in their own name. Such gestures by the Turkish authorities would be warmly appreciated here in Australia, where we have extended the right of freedom of worship and the building of mosques to those settlers of Turkish origin.

It would also be noted with appreciation if, likewise, the Turkish authorities would allow the Halke seminary to reopen, which I understand was closed in 1971, when all private institutions of higher learning were nationalised. I respectfully seek that the Armenian Apostolic Seminary in Istanbul be reopened and that other Christian denominations, such as the Syriac Orthodox Church, be allowed to operate seminaries of their own. I understand that currently religious communities other than Sunni Muslims cannot legally train new clergy in the country for eventual leadership. Hopefully, this may change. Educated Turkish clergy providing leadership to their churches instead of coreligionists from abroad would be an asset to Turkish national identity and to the Turkish nation in the modern world of closer economic cooperation.

Finally, I would like to respectfully encourage the good people of Turkey—a very large nation that plays a unique and geostrategic role as the bridge between Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East—to persevere in their efforts, together with the United Nations and its Secretary-General, the United Nations’s committees and the EU, to achieve more people-to-people contact and reconciliation and to reach a just and lasting peaceful settlement to the Cyprus dispute. We in Australia have been greatly blessed by both Turkish and Greek Cypriots, about 19,500 in number, who have come to our land as settlers and share our community in peace. I understand that the Cypriot community in Australia is the second largest outside Cypress, after the United Kingdom.

Here in Australia both Christians and Muslims from Cypress and Turkey are free to worship, to build their churches and mosques, to exercise their free will under democratically formed law, to educate their children in religious schools of their choosing and to associate together as they choose within the one island territory and state that is Australia. I would urge both Turkey and Greece to help the birth of a new democratic Cypriot state, encompassing the whole island, where all the people of Cypress can enjoy the same conditions in friendship and prosperity and without fear of the future. I commend this motion to the House.

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