Turkish Orthodox Church

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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 →

Writing in Today’s Zaman, Orhan Kemal Cengiz throws a little cold water on current reports that the Halki Seminary may be reopened. Has anything really changed, he asks? Cengiz points to a long campaign, dating back to the Ottoman period, designed to either force the patriarchate to leave or to push it into extinction. The Turkish “deep state” was behind much of this, the writer says. And he places considerable blame for the patriarchate’s dire situation on its own passivity. Opinion piece follows:

Is the ecumenical patriarchate in Turkey waiting for Godot?

By Orhan Kemal Cengiz

Since the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power in 2002, the reopening of the Halki Seminary has repeatedly returned to the political agenda in Turkey.

There is almost a pattern. Some government officials say, “There is no harm in reopening the school [which was closed down in 1971], and there are some preparations taking place to that effect.” If you read these statements you can get the (wrong) impression that there is only technical work needing to be done, and the government is working on it. For the last seven years, we have heard exactly the same story. But, in the end, nothing comes out. Why?

Because the Halki Seminary is only a part of a much more complex question that may not be well appreciated even by the government itself. The question is namely the existence of the ecumenical patriarchate in Turkey. There is a deep-rooted state policy that has brought the patriarchate to the verge of total extinction. This policy was shaped during the late Ottoman and early republican era and has been applied vigorously since then. This is a policy of taking gradual steps to push this historical institution into a corner to force it to choose one of the two options: Either it will stay in Turkey and will lose everything slowly and painfully, or it will leave Turkey once and for all.

The lesser of two evils

The name of the street in front of the patriarchate is Sadrazam Ali Paşa (Sadrazam means grand vizier). Ali Paşa was the state official who hanged Patriarch Gregorios over the front door of the patriarchate in 1821. His name was given to the very street to which the patriarchate opens its doors every day. It is a constant reminder of the “past,” of course. (I suggest the EU Commission get this onto their agenda and encourage the government to change this name showing some respect to this historical institution.) Neither was it a coincidence that a so-called “Turkish Orthodox Church” was established in the early years of the Turkish Republic. The Turkish Orthodox Church was designed to fight against the ecumenical patriarchate and was established with financial aid provided by the state. Papa Eftim, so-called patriarch of the Turkish Orthodox Church, had spent his entire life in war with the ecumenical patriarchate. We now know that the Ergenekon (deep state) gang held some of its strategic meetings on the premises of the Turkish Orthodox Church. Sevgi Erenol, press spokesperson of this church, is now in prison for being one of the high-ranking members of this gang. Continue reading →

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

The Ecumenical Patriarchate and the ‘Deep State’