ANKARA - President Ahmet Necdet Sezer issued a message on Tuesday to celebrate Christmas.
Sezer said, ''I share happiness and joy of our Christian citizens as we are leaving behind a year that Turkey experienced significant developments.''
''I would like to say that Turkey has recorded many significant progress in improvement of basic rights and freedoms of Turkish people with determined steps which were taken on the path with integration with Europe in 2002,'' Sezer noted.
''The incidents that we have experienced in near past have shown us that intolerant attitudes between people from different religions and hostilities cause incredibly grave incidents,'' Sezer said that ''tolerance, peace, mutual respect and understanding to which Turkey always attributes great importance shall dominate relations between the societies.'' Sezer added that he believed that those values suggested to humanity by monotheist religions would be well understood in coming years.
He wished that Christmas would bring prosperity and happiness to our Christian citizens and all Christian world.