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The Orthodox Christian News Service

 
CONSTANTINOPLE, Turkey Sep 26 (Associated Press)- Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened a conference bringing together Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders in southeastern Turkey with a speech Sunday calling for an alliance rather than a clash of civilizations.

The six-day conference in Hatay, near Syria, was being attended some 2,000 delegates, including Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, Turkey's chief rabbi, the Armenian patriarch of Turkey and Turkey's religious affairs minister.

Pope Benedict XVI was invited but did not attend, though the Vatican sent official representatives.

Erdogan sees Turkey, a secular country that is 99 percent Muslim, as playing a key role in interfaith dialogue.

He and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of predominantly Catholic Spain are planning to chair a U.N.-supported project titled "The Alliance of Civilizations," to foster further interreligious dialogue.

Turkey on Oct. 3 begins negotiations to join the European Union, and would be the only Muslim member of the bloc.

"Our differences are not inevitably pushing us toward a clash; they must not," Erdogan said at the opening ceremony Sunday. "To those wishing for a clash of civilizations we must be able to say this: no to a clash of civilizations, yes to an alliance of civilizations."

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