The decade-long dispute between the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and Turkey's Islamic government continues.
Some time ago, the General Directorate of
Foundations in Turkey returned 470 acres of land to the Halki seminary,
one of the most important educational institutions for the country’s
clergy and the place where approximately one thousand priests from the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople were ordained between 1844 and
the day - in 1971 - when the Turkish government decided to close it
down.
The decision was taken on the basis of a 1961 law which stipulated that “only Turkey’s armed forces and the police were allowed to open private colleges.”
But although the land was handed back, the seminary remained closed, giving rise to the decade-long dispute between the Patriarchate and Tayyp Erdoğan’s Islamic government. It also sent out a negative signal concerning the treatment of Turkey’s ethnic and religious minorities.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Theological School of Halki, was closed in 1971, and “since then, the Orthodox community has spent each day of the 42 years that have passed in hope that the School would be reopened, but in vain,” says Turkish human rights lawyer, Orhan Kemal Cengiz.
The School is named after the island of Halki, in the Sea of Marmara. For over a century, it has trained priests exclusively to serve the Turkish Orthodox community and the hundreds of churches that form part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate across the world.
Twelve of its members became Patriarchs, so the School’s closure has made the Patriarchate’s fight for survival even tougher. Life has been tough for the members of the Orthodox Church living in Turkey since the foundation of the Republic.
The Patriarchate was saved by the Treaty of Lausanne. The School’s closure violates articles 40 and 42 of the Treaty, which stipulate the equal treatment of Muslims and non-Muslims. The document was signed at the height of Greek-Turkish tensions over the Cyprus question.
Things started looking up in 2002 when Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP) came to power. Never before in the history of the Turkish Republic had any other party introduced policies that lacked hostility towards minorities.
The AKP never said the School would not be reopened; in fact, members of the party expressed themselves in favour of its reopening, both publicly and in private. This was since 2003, when the Turkish Minister of Education, Huseyn Celik, announced Halki’s doors were going to open once more.
The international community got involved too. Ankara’s historic ally, the U.S., did not miss the chance to push for the School’s reopening. President Clinton suggested this to Turkish President Süleyman Demirel, on a visit to Halki in 1999.
The U.S. Congress called for the School’s reopening on a number of occasions and so did Barack Obama in a speech to the Turkish government. This line has been actively backed by the European Union and a number of European countries, but with no success.
Orhan Gemal Cengiz says this is because Erdoğan “wants two mosques to be opened in Athens in return for the reopening of the Orthodox seminary in Istanbul. This nonsensical request shows that the prime minister is simply perpetuating the mentality of his predecessors, according to which, non-Muslims are like “foreigners”.
The seminary’s abbot, Elphidophoros Lambriniadis, said this attitude lacks consistency.”
In a statement, Lambriniadis said: “If we were Greek citizens, the request would make more sense. But we are Turkish citizens.”
And so Halki’s doors remain shut and the community is left waiting.
As to why the Patriarchate has chosen, for now at least, not to go down the legal route, which has had positive results in other cases, is a mystery.