Brussels, 24/09/2004 (Agence Europe) - On 22 September, the Assembly of Armenians in Europe as well as various public figures and NGOs drew the attention of the EU Council, Commission and MEPs to the dramatic deterioration in the policy conducted toward non-Muslim minorities in Turkey for little over one year now. It presented a memorandum to the press denouncing the "campaign of hatred reactivated by the Turkish Ministry of Education". On 14 April 2003, Education Minister Hüseyin Celik had demanded in a circular letter that teachers in secondary and primary schools should oppose the "unjustified allegations of the Armenians, Pontic Greeks and Orthodox Syrians" on the existence of genocide at the beginning of the 20th century. In its teaching programmes and school manuals, the memorandum recalls, the Turkish Education Ministry uses the terminology of the authors of genocide, using a vocabulary that, according to French historian Yves Ternon, more than ever symbolises "revisionism verging on the absurd". This specialist thus makes recognition of the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians from 1915-1917 - to which the European Parliament refers in its resolution of 18 June 1987 - a "pre- and non-negotiable condition for Turkey's membership to the EU". The authors of the memorandum therefore call on the Commission to suspend financial aid available for Turkish education and trusts that an Armenian-Turk conference on school manuals will be held together with stronger support for the Turkish civil society which is actively involved in protecting the rights of minorities and human rights.