Turkish deep state

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’We cannot breathe, the Patriarchate is dying,’ says patriarch
ASLI AYDINTAŞBAŞ
ISTANBUL – Milliyet
Thursday, December 24, 2009

Following criticism of his controversial statement to a U.S. television network describing his community’s problems, Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew says his comments were emphasized, but the serious problem of opening Halki seminary needs to be addressed.

Criticized for telling U.S. network CBS that he felt “crucified in Turkey,” in an interview he told daily Milliyet, “We are without oxygen, the Patriarchate is dying.”

He said the interview with CBS was not planned and that the media had emphasized the crucifixion quote. He said this was a metaphor for detailing Greeks’ problems in Turkey, highlighted by the issue of the Halki seminary located on Heybeliada, one of Istanbul’s Princes’ Islands in Marmara Sea.

“What will we do, if we cannot raise men of the cloth? Our metropolitan bishops in Europe are over 70 years old. The ones here are 75 years old. Now, who will I nominate to this post,” said the patriarch, who will turn 70 this February. “Why should we nominate people to this post who were not raised in Turkey and educated on Heybeliada?” he asked.

“The seminary was open during Ottoman rule; [Mustafa Kemal] Atatürk [founder of Turkish Republic] did not close it down. But it was wrongly closed down in 1971, since it did not have university status but was a vocational school for higher education,” he said. Continue reading →

By Yasemin Budak and Elif Kaya in the Nov. 26 Today’s Zaman (HT: National Herald):

Plotters planned to overthrow government by using us, says Bartholomew

His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew has said dark forces planned to use minorities to overthrow the government as revealed in the investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine organization accused of attempting to create chaos and undermine the stability of the country in order to trigger a coup d’état.

Based in İstanbul, the spiritual leader of the world’s approximately 300 million Orthodox Christians, Bartholomew was referring to the latest revelations of a devious plan, called the Cage Operation Action Plan, by a group of members of the Naval Forces Command aimed at intimidating the country’s non-Muslim population by assassinating some of their prominent figures and in this way undermine the power of the ruling party. Recent incidents in İstanbul’s Kurtuluş neighborhood and Adalar district suggest that the alleged plan had already been put into operation. Speaking on Tuesday, the Orthodox religious leader recalled that a meeting of the Association of the Zoğrafyon High School Alumni was raided about four years ago. Continue reading →

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: ‘Patriarchate is dying’

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: ‘Dark forces’ in Turkey plotted to assassinate minority leaders