July 29 marked the 50th anniversary of the closure by the Turkish government of the Halki seminary, formally the Theological School of Halki, in 1971. The school served as the main school of theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church’s Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The US Department of State released a statement, urging Turkey to reopen the institution. Below is the full statement by the State Department:
Today marks 50 years since the Turkish Constitutional Court ruled that all institutions of higher education must either nationalize or close, resulting in the closure of the Theological School of Halki, a seminary of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Halki Seminary had operated for 127 years, and its closing deprived the Ecumenical Patriarchate of a training school for Orthodox clergy in Turkey, its home for 1,690 years. Since Halki’s closure, those wishing to become Orthodox clergy have been forced to go abroad for their training.
The United States continues to urge the Turkish government to respect the right to freedom of religion or belief as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and allow the reopening of the Halki Seminary. Moreover, we call upon the government of Turkey to allow all religious groups to again train their clergy within the country.
During a briefing of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe held in Washington DC in 2006, Archbishop Demetrios, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, described the significance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its theological school for Christianity:
The foundation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate may be traced to apostolic times, to the 1st century A.D., when Christianity reached what is now Turkey.
In the 4th century A.D. Emperor Constantine transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to the East, to the so-called, at the time, known as Byzantium, and named the new city Constantinople.
It was in this context that the Ecumenical Patriarchate began to take its institutional form that we know today, as the religious and ecclesiastical administrative center of the Orthodox Church worldwide.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate and its surrounding areas served as the locations for the seven ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian church, which were convened over the course of the first Millennium…
[T]he Ecumenical Patriarchate today and its constituency in Turkey continue to suffer from unfair treatment at the hands of the Turkish state…
In spite of numerous petitions and appeals to the Turkish Government for its reopening, including personal appeals made by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton – and allow me to say that I was there when both presidents arrived and spoke on behalf of the Halki reopening – in spite of this advocacy, the Government of Turkey still refuses to allow this important school to reopen.
The Theological School of Halki is the only institution of the Ecumenical Patriarchate for the training of its clergy. One cannot underestimate its importance for the essential survival of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. If you don’t have a school, you don’t have clergy. If you don’t have clergy, you go down by an inexorable process.
Another major problem facing the Ecumenical Patriarchate, added Archbishop Demetrios, is the confiscation of church property by the Turkish Government, which refuses to recognize titles to the Greek Orthodox minority properties purchased or acquired by donation after 1936.
The current Greek population in Turkey is estimated at fewer than 2,000. But this population decline was not due to natural causes; the Greek community in the country has become nearly extinct due to many state-sponsored attacks and pressure.
The most widespread and murderous attacks took place during the last years of the Ottoman Empire, followed by pogroms and discrimination continuing until the present day.
In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) announced that “the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.”
One tool to annihilate non-Turkish communities including Greeks was the so-called “Liberation Courts” that operated in the 1920s in many Anatolian cities.
“These courts,” writes the author Raffi Bedrosyan, “passed arbitrary decisions that almost invariably resulted in death sentences, with no defense or appeals allowed, and hangings carried out immediately. Among the victims of these courts were hundreds of Greek teachers in the American and Greek schools of the region, prominent community leaders, clergymen, and, tragically, entire members of the Merzifon Greek high school football team, only because the team was named Pontus Club, which was deemed sufficient reason to label them a rebel terrorist organization.”
Systematic pressures targeting Christians have continued until the present day. In 1941, for instance, Christian and Jewish men in Turkey were gathered in labor battalions in which no Muslim citizens were enlisted. This policy is also known as “the conscription of twenty classes” (in Turkish, “yirmi kur’a nafıa askerleri” or “soldiers for public works by drawing of twenty lots”). Instead of doing active service, they were forced to work under terrible conditions for the construction of roads or airports for over a year. Some of them lost their lives or caught diseases.
In 1942, the Turkish government enacted the Wealth Tax Law, which heavily taxed the Christian and Jews of the country. Those who could not pay the taxes were sent to labor camps, deported or their properties were seized by the government. The government also confiscated the property of the tax debtors’ close relatives, even if they had been sent into labor service.
Beginning on September 6, 1955, everything belonging to Greeks in Istanbul – homes, schools, offices, businesses, churches, monasteries, and cemeteries, among others – was attacked, vandalized and robbed. In some cases, they were destroyed. This pogrom greatly escalated Greek emigration from Turkey. Helsinki Watch described the pogrom as follows:
In 1955, on September 6 and 7, extensive, well-organized, violent anti-Greek riots took place in Istanbul. The American Consul-General telegraphed the Department of State that “the destruction was completely out of hand with no evidence of police or military attempts to control it. I personally witnessed the looting of many shops while the police stood idly by or cheered on the mob.”
A British journalist reported that the Greek neighborhoods of Istanbul looked “like the bombed parts of London during the Second World War.”
Nine years later came the Greek expulsions. In 1964, using Cyprus as an excuse to target Greeks in Turkey, the Turkish government broke its agreement with Greece and prohibited all commercial dealings by Greeks holding a Greek passport, leading thereby to the departure of some 40,000 Greeks.
Helsinki Watch noted that “the Greeks were not allowed to sell their houses or property or to take money from their bank accounts.” They were forced to leave Turkey only with personal items weighing 20 kilos and money amounting to 20 dollars. According to the researcher Salih Erturan, the 1964 expulsion brought an end to the Greeks of Istanbul.
Keeping the Halki Seminary closed is not Turkey’s only violation against the Greek Orthodox Church. The Turkish government does not even recognize the legitimate ecumenical title of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Archbishop Demetrios said:
The title refers to the conciliatory role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in its global ministry. It is a title that is historically established since the 6th century and internationally recognized by political and religious communities. Yet the Turkish Government refuses to allow the Ecumenical Patriarchate to use this title in all contexts.
The Turkish government also refuses to allow the Patriarchate to have legal status as such.
All these destructive policies turned the once majority-Greek Asia Minor into a region with a dying Greek community. Before Turks arrived in Asia Minor from Central Asia in the eleventh century, the indigenous population of the region spoke and wrote in Greek and was Greek Orthodox. Other major indigenous communities included Armenians and Assyrians/Syriacs. Even the names of the region come from the Greek language, such as “Anatolia” (from the Greek “Anatole,” meaning “the east” or “sunrise”) and “Asia Minor” (from “Mikra Asia” – Little Asia).
Today, however, the Greek cultural heritage in Turkey is on the verge of disappearing forever. Christians comprise only less than 0.1 percent of Turkey’s whole population. As the researcher Tania Karas wrote in 2012:
One thousand, seven hundred Greeks left in a nation of 79 million… A century of oppression has nearly wiped out a religious minority group with historic ties to the region.
The Republican People’s Party (CHP), which established the Turkish Republic in 1923 and ruled until 1950, stated in its 1946 report on minorities that its aim was to leave no Greek in Istanbul until the 500th anniversary of the 1453 Ottoman “conquest” or invasion of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1953.
It seems that their “dream” is about to come true.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara.
Frank Anderson says
Imagining that other religions will be tolerated in islamic countries and societies is totally delusional and reflects complete ignorance of the hateful, violent, oppressive teachings and practice of 1400 years. The “final, perfect, complete and unchangeable” goal of islam is world conquest, slavery and murder. Those who cannot face and accept that fact are leading to its victory.
Stating that truth is cause to be banished from many communities who live in denial, and will die that way. “Those who cannot remember the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat them.” Jorge Santayana, The Life of Reason (1905).
gravenimage says
Grimly true, Frank.
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
BOYCOTT ALL MUSLIM COUNTRIES. THEY ARE CESSPOOLS OF HATRED.
DRLJR says
The Islam government controlling what is now called Turkey has been doing its best to destroy anything that promotes Christianity, Judaism, and other religions since it invaded the area in the 1500s. In the 1905-1915 time frame the Islam government drove out the native people of Turkey, i.e. the Armenians, since they retained Christianity. People need to learn the real history of Islam and the violence Mohammad promoted when his lies about Hubal and Jehovah being the same god were rejected by just about everyone – including those who worshiped Hubal. Islam is rooted in depravity and this becomes obvious when one reads the Qur’an and learns its history.
Sabri S. says
It would better serve the community as a mosque and islamic school. Change it now and stop keeping this living museum going….every major institution in the middle east should be Muslim!!
gravenimage says
By this, Sabri S. means that Muslims have the right to destroy everything of the people they invade–including the people themselves, of course. They believe they have the right to steal everything that civilized people create. But why not? The “Prophet” Muhammed himself was a thief, pirate, and caravan-raider.
And Turkey is not the “middle east”, in any case–but this is mostly a reference to pious Muslims wanting to destroy civilized Israel.
Utimately, this is the plan that Muslims have for the entire world.
Infidel says
Actually, the term ‘Middle East’ does include Turkey: the end countries are Turkey, Egypt and Iran. That has been the classical definition for decades, but since 9/11, since Pakistan and Afghanistan were al Qaeda bases and battlefields, the extended Middle East has come to include that as well
In pre-Islamic times, there was no concept of a ‘Middle East’: you had Anatolia, which was Greek, Syria which was the desert west of the Euphrates, Mesopotamia which was b/w the Tigris and the Euphrates, and then regions like Persia, Media and Parthia to the East. You also had Phoenicia and Canaan/Palestine, where Palestine itself consisted of Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Negev, Sinai. And Arabia was everything south of that
gravenimage says
Seems that you are correct in many definitions, Infidel. Thank you.
GreekEmpress says
GI—Thanks for your measured response to SS. I didn’t dare, as I was afraid I’d come up with something purely emotional rather than rational.
PS—using that person’s logic, should Christian nations take over mosques and repurpose them? Shouldn’t every major institution in Europe, the Americas, etc. be Christian?
gravenimage says
Thank you, GreekEmpress.
And good question. Of course, this is all one way with Muslims.
Infidel says
You can stop pretending that this supremacist desire of yours is constrained to the Middle East
gravenimage says
+1
gravenimage says
Turkey Keeps Main Orthodox Christian Theological School Closed for 50 Years
………………
More Muslim crushing of freedom of religion. And in 1971 most in the west considered Turkey to be moderate and secular. This was never really the case.
GreekEmpress says
The Turks won’t be happy until every last Greek and Armenian is gone. Glad that my ancestors got out of there when they did. Sad, though, that I’ll never go to see from whence we came.
I won’t set foot in occupied territory.
The Turks are just squatters.
gravenimage says
Too true, GreekEmpress.
Robert Spencer’s ancestors escaped from the same place.
Infidel says
Well, they’re now trying to reconquer Greece. And destroy any remaining semblance of classic Greek history and culture once they get to take a stab at it
gravenimage says
Too true.
Raja says
Gravenimage,
It is the Leftist loonies who are propagating that Turkey is “bridge” between the West and the East. Do they have the wherewithal to speak on that subject. I still remember Time covering the subject in the late 1990’s. I must concede though that the world’s knowledge of islam then was pathetic.
Infidel says
Turkey was only a bridge b/w East and West in pre-Islamic times. Actually, not even that: it was a battlefield b/w the Greeks and Persians during the Median Empires of Cyrus and Darius, and b/w the Macedonians and Persians during the Achaemenid Empire
Had islam never been born, Anatolia would still have been the heart of a Byzantine nation today
spiro says
This building is wood construction
If it was reopened and used again as it was intended I’m concerned some Muslim nutcase would burn it with a heavy loss of life it’s also in poor condition
Some Greek Orthodox like myself ask why the patriarch does move to MT Athos
The patriarch must be a Turkish citizen among other government rules that make it most difficult to find younger men to be patriarchs as designed by Turkey
This issue is more complex than just reopening a school
spiro says
Also one more point
With Turkish hatred of Christianity and Greece. How safe do you think that building would be especially filled with future
Priest