Turkey's Islamist-led Government is reconsidering its attitude to the country's Christian minorities, beginning with the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, according to senior Ankara officials, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.

"Perhaps this is an issue on which we should develop a new view and not consider it taboo," the Foreign Minister, Ali Babacan, told Turkey's Zaman daily last week. "What matters in the long term is the position of Turkey and Istanbul in the world - Turkey's power. What makes Turkey stronger or weaker should be very carefully calculated." The minister was reacting to earlier comments by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a press conference with the Greek Prime Minister, Konstantinos Karamanlis, which appeared to indicate a more moderate policy towards the Istanbul-based Patriarchate, whose leader, Bartholomew I, is honorary primate of the 300 million Orthodox Christians.

Meanwhile, a foreign policy spokesman for Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, Egemen Bagis, confirmed that a "new perspective" was emerging in the wake of growing Western pressure on Turkey, which hopes to join the European Union by 2015.

"The Patriarchate has been present in these lands throughout the centuries," Mr Bagis told the same newspaper. "There is a need to look at the past and make an analysis of the periods during which the Patriarchate positively or negatively contributed." 

The president of Turkey's Catholic bishops' conference, Bishop Luigi Padovese, said he counted on forthcoming celebrations of the 2,000th anniversary of St Paul's birth in the southern town of Tarsus to "help strengthen the Church's legal position". 

"As the apostle of Christian unity, St Paul would want Christians in Turkey to be more conscious of their identity," the Italian-born bishop said. "I think the Turkish Government is well disposed towards us. But we must know what they really think about human rights."

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