His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew<\/p><\/div>
\nGreek 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’\u00e9tat.<\/p>\n

Based in \u0130stanbul, 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 \u0130stanbul’s Kurtulu\u015f 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 Zo\u011frafyon High School Alumni was raided about four years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the Cage Plan was revealed, we thought that the raid could be part of that plan,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the time we thought that they were just trying to scare us.\u201d The patriarch said nobody was detained in relation to that incident. Patriarch Bartholomew is grateful to the security forces which uncovered the \u201cdark plans.\u201d \u201cIt is a very satisfactory development that the Turkish police and the prosecutors have been revealing those dark plans so the responsible people are captured and tried.\u201d<\/p>\n

The patriarch is hopeful that the troubles of the Greek minority and other minorities in Turkey will soon be resolved. And for that he trusts the government\u2019s democratic initiative, which aims to grant more rights to citizens, even though it was mostly associated with the Kurdish initiative since it was one of the first steps. \u201cWe are very positive about the initiatives of our government. It is imperative all over the world that minorities should be treated with goodwill.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, the patriarch said all the initiatives involving Kurdish and Alevi citizens and efforts to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia will help Turkey\u2019s European Union accession process. \u201cIt gives us a lot of hope that Turkey is moving toward the West and the European Union with the initiatives. Those moves make us fell better while we are living in Turkey. God willing, the rest of our problems will be solved and we will be treated as equal citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bartholomew hopes that the main school of theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Halk\u0131 seminary, closed in 1971, will be reopened. The seminary was closed under a law that put religious training under state control. EU officials and the United States have repeatedly called on Turkey to open the seminary, which has trained generations of Orthodox leaders, including Bartholomew. After its closure, the patriarchate tried to train future leaders of the church by sending them to schools of theology abroad.
\n\u2018Sevgi Erenerol injured us a lot\u2019<\/p>\n

Patriarch Bartholomew said they would like to use legal avenues in order to get three Greek churches given to the self-declared \u201cTurkish Orthodox Patriarchate\u201d run by the Erenerol family back. As part of the investigation into Ergenekon, several people with links to Turkey\u2019s \u201cdeep state\u201d were arrested and among them was Sevgi Erenerol, the \u201cmedia and public relations officer of the independent patriarchate.\u201d She is the granddaughter of Father Eftim, founder of the so-called \u201cTurkish Orthodox Patriarchate.\u201d \u201cSevgi Erenerol hurt us a lot. She was talking against us. It has been revealed that they had meetings in those churches against us, the state and the [Justice and Development Party] AK Party. It\u2019s a pity that a place of worship was used for such purposes,\u201d the patriarch said.<\/p>\n

Father Eftim was a village priest from the Turkish-speaking Karamanl\u0131 Greek community of Cappadocia in Anatolia who supported the Turks during the War of Independence. He then became the leader of the \u201cpatriarchate\u201d in Kayseri in 1922 under the name of the \u201cIndependent Patriarchate of the Turkish Orthodox.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eftim and his family were exempted from the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, but his small congregation moved out of the country. Without any congregation, Eftim moved to \u0130stanbul in 1924, together with the \u201cpatriarchate.\u201d Eftim had some followers in Galata, an area with a large Greek population. Eftim\u2019s son Turgut succeeded his father and called himself Patriarch Eftim II. Then came Turgut\u2019s brother, and then they brought Pa\u015fa [Sevgi Erenerol\u2019s brother] from the US to assume the role of the \u201cpatriarch.\u201d They have all been excommunicated by the Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n

Eftim and his sons call themselves \u201cpatriarchs.\u201d Patriarch Bartholomew said nobody elected them. \u201cFather Eftim was married, so it was not possible for him to be a patriarch or bishop. He acted against the Patriarchate. He was excommunicated but he declared himself \u2018patriarch.\u2019 Nobody recognizes the \u2018Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate.\u2019 They don\u2019t even have followers. But they received state support. Eftim and his men came to the Patriarchate and raided it in the 1920s. After his demise his son took over. Indeed, patriarchs are elected and it is not a position to be passed from father to son. In the end, their relations with Ergenekon have been revealed.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the pages 971-980 of the Ergenekon indictment, there are explanations about the actions of Sevgi Erenerol and \u201cTurkish Orthodox Patriarchate.\u201d On Oct. 28, 2005, some platforms such as the Nationalist Businesspeople Association, the Noel Baba Foundation and the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate held a protest in front of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and shouted, \u201cThe patriarchate should go to Greece.\u201d Ergenekon suspect Kemal Kerin\u00e7siz and Noel Baba Foundation President Muammer Karabulut delivered speeches at the protest, which were attended by also Sevgi Erenerol and Zeki Yurdakul \u00c7a\u011fman. They left a black wreath at the gates of the Patriarchate.
\n\u2018We are citizens of Turkey\u2019<\/p>\n

Patriarch Bartholomew, whose initiatives include advancing religious tolerance among the world\u2019s religions have been widely noted, although received with suspicion by some in Turkey, said the number of the Greek-Turkish citizens living in Turkey is decreasing every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocratic initiatives will prevent the rest from leaving,\u201d the patriarch said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is sad to hear that our foundations have been referred as \u2018foreign.\u2019 We are Christians but we are born here and we were raised here. I was born in G\u00f6k\u00e7eada. I love my country and village. I did my military service for two years. I pay my taxes. Our only difference is our religion. But we are equal citizens under the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related story:<\/p>\n

Records of Greek conference were stolen<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Aug. 12, 2006, all the records belonging to the Greek Conference, which was organized by the Association of the Zo\u011frafyon High School Alumni, were stolen from the association\u2019s Taksim office. The association\u2019s president, Laki Vingas, said nothing but the hard-disc which contained the records of the conference was stolen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had three locked rooms in the office. The thieves did not even bother to unlock these doors, they just took the hard disc,\u201d Vingas said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was somebody in the conference room who was constantly recording. I asked the person what television channel he represented. He said he was an official. He recorded the whole conference and asked for the participation list. We gave the list to them. Some people might have broken into our offices to scare us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the conference which brought together Greek people from \u0130stanbul who were dispersed all over the world, the problems of the Greek community in \u0130stanbul were discussed. Patriarch Bartholomew had opened the conference called \u201cMeeting in \u0130stanbul: Today-Tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[45,1125,114,160,296,48,50,49,1124,860],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4983"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5013,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983\/revisions\/5013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}