Leitmotivs of The Turkish Republics Minority Policies PDF

IR 514
Turkish-Greek Relations
Leitmotivs of the Turkish Republics minority policies:

The Ecumenical Patriarchate and its changing relations with the state throughout history
Istanbul Bilgi University
Matthias L. J. Van Hoey

11501130
June 2016
Leitmotivs of the Turkish Republics Matthias L. J. Van Hoey
minority policies June 2016
Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3
Part I ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Defining the Church ............................................................................................................................ 4
The Formation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its Church ........................................................... 5
Christianity before Nicaea: The Early Post-Apostolic Church ....................................................... 5
Nicaea and Beyond: The Birth of the Imperial Church ................................................................... 6
The Medieval Church .......................................................................................................................... 9
Constantinople and Rome ............................................................................................................... 9
Emperor and Patriarch ................................................................................................................... 10
The Ottoman Church: Orthodoxy after Byzantium ........................................................................... 11
Emperor of the Rum ...................................................................................................................... 11
A New Oikoumene: The Orthodox Millet..................................................................................... 13
Greek Nationalism: The Rise of National Churches ..................................................................... 14
Part II ..................................................................................................................................................... 16
1: General treatment of the Greek Minority ...................................................................................... 16
Lausanne I ..................................................................................................................................... 18
The Treatment of the Istanbul Rum Minority ............................................................................... 18
2: Treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate .................................................................................... 21
Lausanne II .................................................................................................................................... 22
Turkification of the Ecumenical Patriarchate ................................................................................ 23
Questioning Ecumenicity .............................................................................................................. 25
Reciprocity .................................................................................................................................... 27
Conclusion............................................................................................................................................. 28
Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 29
Articles .......................................................................................................................................... 29
Books ............................................................................................................................................. 29
Chapters ......................................................................................................................................... 29
Internet .......................................................................................................................................... 29
Unpublished material .................................................................................................................... 30
2
Introduction1
Although nearly over a century an integral part of the (nationalistic) Turkish Republic and since 1453
under Turkish Ottoman, Islamic rule, Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople and Byzantium,
always remained an integral spatial part of the Greek nationalistic conception of its space, its past and
its identity. Whether liked by Greek nationalists or not, Istanbul a proper name of Greek origin
remains the ultimate symbol of the Greek nations Byzantine, Eastern-Roman heritage which is still to
this day, partially through the rites of the Church, fundamentally interweaven in Greek culture and daily
life. It is as such a spatial symbol, a literary concept reminiscent in popular Greek memory of a former
Byzantine Empire, an identity fundamental to current Greek nationalism.
Although after more than five centuries under Turkish rule, the population of Istanbul remains quite
cosmopolitan to this day. The original Greek population of the City is however steadily declining, a
declination which was actively stimulated by the Turkish government in the 20th century, to the point
where it is arguably nearly impossible to state that theyre still present in the city today. Byzantium, as
I will argue, despite all of this still survives on to this day, both de jure wholly institutionally and de
facto as a remnant of a greater institutional system in the Greek-Orthodox Church and specifically in
the institution and body of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This institution, the Ecumenical Patriarchate,
will be the main subject of this paper.
Because this paper is written for the course IR 514 Turkish-Greek relations, I will put special emphasis
on the 20th century history of this institution. How was the Ecumenical Patriarchate treated in Republican
(nationalist) Turkey as a non-Turkish, non-Islamic, non-secular Greek-Orthodox institution and why? I
will discuss this topic in the greater light of Turkish nationalism and as such also link it to the sufferings
of other de facto minorities in Turkey. Since this course deals on the relations between Greece and
Turkey, I will also describe and analyse the place and role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Greek
nationalism. How do Greek and Turkish nationalism interact with each other? How are they related and
what role does the Ecumenical Patriarchate play in all of this?
This paper will be divided into two main parts. In the first part I will give an overview of the long, actual
history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek-Orthodox Church from its birth in Late-Antiquity,
to its ecclesiastical formative period in conjunction with and opposition to Rome, to end with its new
existence under the Ottoman sultan and its role and relation with Greek nationalism. To understand the
present, one has to understand the past, especially in the case of an institution as old as the Greek-
Orthodox Church. In the second part, I will describe the formation of Turkish nationalism and what that
meant for the Ecumenical Patriarchate. I will describe its intellectual purposes together with its actual
practices and policies. What are minorities in Turkey? How are they defined and how are they treated
in modern day Turkey?
Part I
In this part I will try to give a summarised historical overview of the enormously long and complex
formation process and history of what eventually became the Eastern- or Greek-Orthodox Church,
headed by the Ecumenical Patriarch, the subject of this paper. I will write on the formation of the
Church in Late-Antiquity and about its speedy fragmentation into other different churches that all
1 Id like to thank all those people that helped me writing this paper. Especially: Tugrul Artunkal, my friend and ever loyal
reader for his advice and help; Burcu Culhaoglu, my professor, who arranged two visits to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and
supported my research throughout the semester; Elcin Macar, Samim Akgonul, Cengiz Aktar and Emre Oktem for their advice
and the invaluable articles and chapters they provided me with; Mesut Tufan for his advice and help; Ariana Ferentinou for an
amazingly interesting discussion and the time she spend on introducing me to the topic; and Monse Tapia for reading parts of
my paper and giving me general support during my many hours spent working.
3
claim to be the one and only true Church; I will also write about the formation of the term patriarch
and its relation with the Church of Rome and on its history in the Ottoman Empire; I will explain the
changing, historic meaning of the term oikoumene, first in its Roman context then in its Ottoman context;
finally I will include the formation of Greek nationalism and its ties with the Eastern-Orthodox Church
and the Patriarchate, but will reserve the nascence of Turkish nationalism for the second part.
Understanding the Ecumenical Patriarchate is understanding its Church; understanding its history is
understanding the history of its Church. Since the Patriarchate is an ecclesiastical institution, it is
fundamentally intertwined with its Church and should not be studied independent from it. Firstly,
however, I will discuss the different meanings of the term church and the institution it represents, in
order to be able to better understand the symbolic baggage of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Defining the Church

What is the Church? What does it entail and how is it related to the Orthodox Church? Multiple
explanatory avenues are possible, yet we must remember the diachronic nature of this term; its meaning
changed throughout time.
The Church is, theologically speaking, conceived by many Christians today and in the past to be the
worldly representation of Christ on Earth. Just like Christ, the Churchs function is indeed to spread the
Christian Message or the Gospel on Earth. Like Christ, it is also considered to be able to perform
miracles (the Eucharist), and it is considered to be the intermediary between man and God. Obviously
this last consideration is not true for all Christian denominations (especially Protestants, but their views
are not relevant for this paper). It is commonly understood that access to God can only be achieved
through the Church, but where does this idea come from? Why is a man in Christianity not able to reach
God on his own? Two interdependent, not exhaustive, explanations come to mind.
The first and most important one is that only little people could read in Antiquity; literature was often
read aloud by a performer and knowledge of literature was thus only attained through an intermediate
reader. We know that Christianity is a very literate religion; knowledge of God and as such true
knowledge of reality was primarily preserved in a written corpus. This corpus of different religious
books, stories and theological treatises was only attainable through attending a communal reading of the
sacred texts by one specific individual. This practical situation, combined with the mystical, Hellenistic
aspects of Christianity can be beautifully linked to the importance of prophets in the young religion.
Knowledge of the divine always came through the word and was written down. The importance of the
spoken word in Early Christianity is well illustrated by the very fact that Christ himself is identified with
the Logos or the Word.2 Christ spoke the Gospel which was written down later. He spoke to his small
community of followers. This brings us to the complementary second explanation. After Christs death,
he asked the members of his community the apostles to go and spread his word in his name. They,
in other words, took upon themselves his function on Earth. Christ literally said to the apostle Peter,
according to the Gospel of Matthew, that he will build his church on Peters faith or rock.3
Obviously the Gospels were not written in modern English but in Greek. It is thus necessary to actually
clarify the original meaning of the word church. Church in Greek literally corresponds with the word
ekklesia. Now, the Ekklesia is the name given to the assembly of the people of Athens.4 Church in its
earliest meanings thus must have referred to the community or communion of Christian people being
together. The performer or priest read the sacred texts to such a specific community. The apostles were
2 John, 1:1. Logos as a word entails a multitude of meanings. It refers to logic, to the spoken word, the meaning that the spoken
word carries, thinking, the truth of reality, etc.
3 Matthew, 16:18.
4 Rhodes (P.J.). Ekklesia In: Brills New Pauly. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/ekklesia-
e327970#e12221500>, last checked on 29/05/2016.
4
the community of Christ. The Church is as such all the Christian people being together in communion.
The institution of the Church is of a later date and its construction is the result of specific historical
events and evolutions. All Christians were supposed to spread the word of Christ and the Christian
community was the Church. Yet a person in Antiquity could only reach God and the divine truth
through the Church. This is on a different note very typical for Hellenistic mystery cults: only through
being a member of the secret and closed community, can one take part in its mysteries. The Church in
its earliest meaning was the community of all Christians being together at one space. This would
however change.
The Formation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its Church

Christianity before Nicaea: The Early Post-Apostolic Church
In its earliest forms, the Church was not an organised administrative institution. Up until the 4th century,
the Church was actually nothing more than a network of spread out communities that existed in different
cities. These early Christians mainly lived in the Eastern cities of the Empire and were not really to be
found on the countryside or in the West.5
At the time of Constantines conversion to Christianity in the early 4th century, probably only a small
portion of the population of the Roman Empire was Christian Cyrill Mango estimates it to be around
10 percent.6 Obviously there were Christians living outside of the Roman Empire too, but Im not taking
them into account here for the construction and as such the birth of the actual Church that would
eventually lead to the Greek-Orthodox Church happened in the Roman Empire. The earliest Christian
communities living in the Empire lived in a very urban society and could not wholly seclude themselves
from the city. When their communities started to grow, each community started to appoint an overseer
for their own community called episkopos or bishop.7
Religio in the Roman Empire was not a private institution nor faith. Rituals and cults were public and
nearly always linked to the state (there are obviously some exceptions of which Christianity is one)
which appointed the priests performing these rites. For a Roman Pagan, the gods were real business and
keeping them happy was of such a great importance that it became state business to do so by organising
sacrifices. Averting the gods wrath was avoiding misfortune and keeping them happy was essential to
the survival and the wellbeing of the Roman State and its head, the emperor.8 Multiple gods existed in
the Empire, spread out over a vast geographic region but this was no problem for the emperors. Not only
did they generally try to link these gods to their own, the Pagan worldview simply allowed the existence
of multiple gods. As long as their adherents sacrificed for the sake of the emperor, everything was fine.
Let it just be this that the early Christians refused to do. As such they were considered to be a real threat
to the wellbeing of the state and multiple persecutions followed. The existing Christian communities
were already not very centralised and only became weaker because of the harsh persecutions inflicted
on them.9 When the Roman emperor Galerius ended the persecutions in 311 and when subsequently the
emperor Constantine converted to Christianity,10 the Christian communities were weak and divided.
With the reign of Constantine, the construction of the Church as we know it today in its many forms and
shapes eventually started. What once was a community of all Christian people, would become an
administration led by bishops and priests independent of the members of its community. They would
still be a part of the Church, but would not anymore be the Church.
5 Mango (C.). New Religion, Old Culture. In: Mango (C.), ed., The Oxford History of Byzantium. 2002, p. 96.
6 Mango (C.). New Religion, Old Culture. p. 96.
7 Herrin (J.). Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. 2008, p. 39.
9 Herrin (J.). Byzantium. p. 39.
10 The exact date and nature of his conversion is uncertain.
5
Nicaea and Beyond: The Birth of the Imperial Church

It is important to note the reasons why the Roman emperor Constantine the Great decided to convene a
great council of all the bishops in the Empire in Nicaea in 325. As we know, the Church was not a
great institution before Constantine, and it would still take a couple of centuries for it to develop into
one. This existing, communicating network of bishops did not share a clearly defined orthodoxy, nor a
clearly defined way of handling matters. Within each community every overseer or bishop held local
councils or synods to resolve issues concerning faith and doctrine.11 This would be the origin of, among
others, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. With the construction of Christian theology and
history as an apologetic answer to Pagan oppression and polemics, different viewpoints on the nature of
the trinity arose. Different to the Pagan worldview, wherein religio was nothing more but the rituals and
the stories executed and told by the priests,12 Christianity incorporated a theoretical explanation of the
world within its religio as a defence mechanism against Pagan polemicists. This explanatory or
theoretical field was in the Pagan worldview reserved for philosophy and was not directly linked to the
actually important execution of the rites in order to please the gods.13 Different philosophies, different
theoretical, contradictory worldviews existed side by side without a problem. These different
philosophical viewpoints were called heresies. Using the intellectual language of Pagan education,14
Christian theologians and intellectuals appropriated the word heresy for denoting differing intellectual,
philosophical (thelogical) viewpoints on God.
An important Christian heresy at that time was the view that the personae of the trinity were not equal
to each other in the divine hierarchy. This view, called Arianism, was devised by an Egyptian priest
called Arius in Alexandria. This led to fierce discussions within the Church and mutual hatred. Contrary
to pagan philosophy, there was only one possible truth possible within the Church. Orthodoxy, not
orthopraxy defined the Christian faith. Constantine, despite his conversion still a Roman emperor, did
not understood why the churchmen could not just agree to disagree and perform their religio in
harmony.15 Performing the religio was necessary for maintaining both actual unity and stability within
an Empire experiencing civil war and discord for over a century, and also for pleasing God and securing
his graces for the emperor and Empire. This is the reason why the emperor decided in 325 to convene
the leading bishops or overseers of the damaged Christian communities in his imperial palace in Nicaea
to hold a great council of the Church which, unlike the previous local councils, would held legal sway
for the entire Christian universe or oikoumene. The following council of Constantinople in 381 would
later confirm this special universal statute of the council of Nicaea by proclaiming it to be the First
Ecumenical Council of the Church.16 At the Council of Nicaea it was decided to reconstruct the Church
in a similar administrative fashion as the Roman Empire.17 The council also declared Arianism to be a
heresy in the modern sense of the word and declared that all the personae of the Trinity are equal and
of the same nature.18 For the first time a universal orthodoxy was declared for the whole Church, together
with different universal reforms. The oikoumene, the Orthodox Imperial Church, fell together with the
Roman Empire.19
11 Herrin (J.). Byzantium. p. 39 and Mango (C.). New Religion, Old Culture. p. 103.
13 Mango (C.). New Religion, Old Culture. pp. 98-99.

15 Constantine send a letter to the arguing bishop of Alexandria and the Egyptian priest Arius that they should stop fighting
over these philosophical matters. In: Mango (C.). New Religion, Old Culture. p. 105.
17 Hoffmann (L.). Patriarch. In: Brills New Pauly. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-
pauly/patriarch-e12224440#>, last checked on 29/05/2016.

19 Hoffmann (L.). Patriarch.
6
Although considered to be ecumenical and as such representative for the entire Church as every bishop
himself was representative for his own community only a couple of bishops from the West were
present; the majority of the attending bishops was Eastern. This absence of Western prelates would
become a tendency which will lay parts of the foundations of what will become the Roman Catholic
Church. Understanding that these councils happened over the course of centuries, ending with the 7th
Ecumenical Council in Nicaea 787, the Church, which was slowly constructed over centuries and as
such based largely on custom and tradition, in the West, where the majority of the population spoke
Latin, would develop a rather different viewpoint on authority within the institution of the Church than
its Eastern, Greek speaking counterpart. In a lot of ecumenical councils, only the bishop of Rome, the
patriarch of the West, represented the entire Latin Church.20 Bishops in the West were entirely dependent
on Latin translations and reports made and delivered to them by the bishop of Rome. When it came
down to deciding universal truths about the Church, the only perceived source of information and as
such authority, was the pope of Rome. In the East all the bishops decided together in equality on the
universal truths and indeed to this day we find the Eastern-Orthodox Church to be less centralised than
the Catholic Church, bishops being more equal to each other in authority. The Ecumenical Patriarch is
only considered to be the first among equals, nothing more. There were obviously other causes that
facilitated the split between the Churches of Rome and the East and the rise of the idea of papal
supremacy beyond a position of honour.
Another fundamental development is the preeminent position of the emperor within the Late-Antique
Church. It was the emperor that presided over the councils, it was the emperor that called upon the
bishops to convene the councils. The emperor was both the bishops worldly leader as they were
citizens of the Roman Empire and their spiritual leader.21 In the Roman state, it was the emperor who
decided what was orthodox and what was not, not the Church.22 The Roman emperor was the final head
of the Christian universe. This led under different emperors to the endorsement of different heresies.
Especially Constantines successors, in negation of the council of Nicaea, supported the Arian
doctrine.23 Visiting Germanic nobleman were as such converted not to Nicaean Orthodoxy but to
Arianism, which would play a fundamental, existential role in the formation of the Medieval Catholic
Church and its alliance with the Frankish kings later.
To enforce unity and stability in the Empire, the emperors tried to shape the Church as an extra
administrative layer on top of the already existing Roman one.24 In reality the Church only brought more
instability to the Empire due to its continuing bickering on theological issues.25 Describing the
administrative and perceptual shape of the Roman Empire, Chris Wickham interestingly and accurately
defines the Empire like [] a union of all its cities [].26 Like the Empire, the Church will become
an organisation primarily focused on cities. The bishops will become metropolitans, their churches
extending their sway over the countryside. The bishops of bigger, more prestigious cities in the Empire
were logically perceived as being of a greater honour and became leading figures within the Church.
Their higher moral authority was often theologically legitimised by a supposed direct link with an
apostle. These important bishops were the bishops of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch.27 Theodosius I

23 Herrin (J.). Byzantium. pp. 40-41.
25 Herrin (J.). Byzantium. p. 44. These will lead to schism within the Church and as such defiance towards the official imperial
system.
26 Wickham (C.). The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400 to 1000. In: Cannadine (D.), ed., The Penguin
History of Europe. 2 (2009), p. 24.

7
returning to Nicaean Orthodoxy insisted at the council of Constantinople in 381 that the bishoprics of
Jerusalem and Constantinople should get the same honour as the traditional three, for Constantinople
founded by Constantine the Great was the new capital of the Christian Roman Empire and Jerusalem
was the city where Jesus was crucified.28
Although it is not known exactly when the title of patriarch which was used to denote the preeminent
bishops became legally binding and incorporated into the hierarchical system of the Church, they are
attested in the literary record for the first time in Theodosius council of Constantinople.29 The council
of Constantinople would later be confirmed as ecumenical by the council of Chalkedon in 451 (the
fourth Ecumenical Council) and as such its decisions concerning the newly created patriarchies would
become universally binding.30
Seeing that the Church was being constructed on the same administrative basis as the Roman Empire,
the legal question arose which of the five patriarchs was the most important one. Even though not
anymore the capital of the Empire, Rome still was the most prestigious city within it. For being the
successor of Peter the first of the apostles and being the bishop of Rome, the pope always enjoyed
the status of being the primate of the Church, the most honourable one, the primus inter pares.31 With
Constantinople now being the new capital of the Empire, obviously the question arose which of the two
was more preeminent than the other. At Chalkedon it was thus decided that the first and most preeminent
bishop of what would become known in the 5th century as the pentarchy, is the bishop of Rome.32 After
him come in hierarchical order of preeminence not of authority the bishops of Constantinople
which started in the 5th century to be known also as the New Jerusalem Alexandria, Antioch and
Jerusalem.33 When a council was held, it was in this order that the pentarchs were seated next to the
emperor at his right hand and in this order that they signed the final results.34
Although supposed to represent the oikoumene together, each patriarch will develop his own
administrative system and, as will be seen further, especially the pope of Rome would start to drift
further and further away, leaving the four Eastern patriarchs who enjoyed the tradition of equality
because of the ecumenical councils to represent the Roman oikoumene together. A normal bishop was
only representative of his particular diocese/province confirmative to Roman administrative practice
whilst the pentarchs together represented the entire Church besides their local bishopric.35 With the
Arab conquests and concessive Church schisms, three of the five patriarchates were eventually lost and
therefore the functionality of representing the oikoumene, which the Eastern patriarchates all shared,
befell now only to the patriarch of Constantinople.36 And like that the Ecumenical Patriarchate of
Constantinople and New Rome was formed.
The ecumenical councils thus transformed an unorganised network of communities into a universal
(catholic) Church modelled on the Roman Empire and created universal, canonical laws valid for the
entire Church. The exact process of the formation of the Church hierarchies and canonical laws is
however lost to history. What we do know is that it were the emperors who took upon themselves the
creation of the Church hierarchy in order to stabilise the Empire and eradicate the remaining Pagan and
heretical elements in society.37

31 Herrin (J.). Byzantium. p. 43 and Hoffmann (L.). Patriarch.
8
The Medieval Church

Constantinople and Rome
With the fall of imperial authority in the West in the 5th century, the popes of Rome found themselves
suddenly without the protection and rule of an emperor. Even though Rome would eventually be
reconquered by the Byzantine or Eastern-Roman emperors in the 6th century, this did not alter the
fundamental shift that the Papacy would come to endure.38 Under the emperors but a spiritual leader
with the highest moral authority in the Church, hierarchically inferior to the emperor who was Gods
ruler on Earth, under the Arian Germanic kings of Italy becoming an independent worldly ruler who
ruled the city of Rome and had to engage in military and diplomatic matters for the sake of his city,
Nicaean Church and worldly power. Luckily, one Germanic tribe the Franks choose to become
Nicaean instead of Arian. When the pope asked Charlemagne in the 8th century to come and protect him
from the Arian Lombards, because the Roman emperor from Constantinople could not, it cemented an
alliance between the Latin Church and the Frankish state which will change the course of Western
history. Liberated by the Frankish king, the pope of Rome crowned Charlemagne in the year 800
emperor of the Western-Roman Empire, creating what would eventually become the Holy Roman
Empire and negatively influencing the already growing rift between East and West.
This situation of political independence from the emperor and his Imperial Church, whilst still being a
part of this Church being in communion amplified the popes already high moral stature.39 Not only
was the pope the primate of the pentarchy and the representative of the entire West in the following
ecumenical councils; Eastern bishops and priests recognised the popes highest moral authority and used
it to their own advantage when clashing with the emperor or the heads of the Eastern Church.40 As such
the pope became the supreme, independent judge concerning all matters of faith within the Church.
Although wary of the popes rising ambition to actual political supremacy, the patriarchs of the East
reluctantly approved of the current state of affairs. Eventually the Church in the West became more and
more centralised under the authority of the pope but we should shun anachronism when dealing with the
Medieval Latin Church. The bishops in the West were still very independent, the Church still very
decentralised. The creation of what we now know as the Roman Catholic Church would only happen
after the council of Trent held from 1545 until 1563 as a response to the Protestant reformation. The
dogma of papal supremacy would only be established in the 19th century.
Rivalry between the different patriarchates was however not new and even before Constantinoples
rivalry with Rome started, it was already bound up in an enormous conflict with Alexandria, a conflict
which will eventually cause two schism within the Imperial Church. After the Ecumenical Council of
Ephesus in 431, the patriarch of Constantinople was deemed a heretic by the Alexandrian patriarch and
was deposed, creating the Nestorian Church of the East. In the fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalkedon
in 451, it was the patriarch of Alexandria whom was deemed to be a heretic, leading to the creation of
the Oriental-Orthodox Church. Although there were still Orthodox patriarchs left in both Alexandria,
Jerusalem and Antioch, after the Arab conquests, these seats became de facto obsolete. The only two
existing patriarchs within the Imperial Church were bound to become rivals.
38 technically the administrative split between the eastern and western parts of the Empire was with the fall of the Western-
Roman Empire officially ended, when the new Germanic king of Italy, Odoacer, send the imperial crown of the West to the
then residing emperor of the East, Zeno, and swore allegiance to the now again sole emperor of the Roman Res Publica; in
other words, the Empire was de jure unified again, but not de facto, for the oaths of allegiance by the multiple Germanic kings
to the Roman emperor were in fact empty.
9
This does not mean that there was not a lot of cultural interchange and mutual positive contact between
the two Churches.41 Especially the Latin Church kept in contact with the Greek East. This did not prevent
a rising mutual hatred and in 1054 the Churches split. This split was however of a short nature and is
often taken out of its context in modern historic narratives about the Middle-Ages. The Byzantine
emperor thus asked the pope at the end of the 11th century to help him in his battles against the Islamic
invaders, leading to the crusades. The tensions of the crusader era would climax in the Massacre of the
Latins in Constantinople and the Latin conquest of Constantinople. Never again would the Greek clergy
trust the Latin world. In the light of the Ottoman threat, successive Byzantine emperors did try to mend
the de facto schism between East and West. The obstacles were great: mutual mistrust and hatred,
fundamental theological disagreements on the exact nature of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity and the
dominance of the pope. Since the pope became independent from the emperor, he became not only the
head of his church instead of the emperor but also a worldly ruler who ruled from the imperial city of
Rome. After the creation of the Holy Roman Empire in the West which also led to tensions with
Byzantium an enormous conflict between the Holy Roman emperor and the pope arose concerning
who was the ultimate head and ruler of the Christian universe. In the East that answer was simple: the
emperor was the head of the Church and ruled over the world. In the West however the conflict between
emperor and pope resulted in the conclusion that it is the pope who crowns the emperor and is as such
the independent spiritual but not worldly leader of the Christian universe a claim also valid on the
Byzantine Empire. The Church in the West became de jure (but not de facto) independent from any
worldly power and although the emperor was the highest king in the Christian universe, he was now
inferior to the pope.
It will be at the council of Florence held in 1431-49 that the Churches of the East and West will reunite
in one Church again, mending the schism. The Byzantine emperor converted to Catholicism and
acknowledged the supreme position of the pope as did the Ecumenical Patriarch. 10 Years later the
city of Constantinople will however fall to the Ottoman, Islamic Turks, Western promised help never
arrived. The council of Florence failed in convincing the general Orthodox Church and its population.
They resented the union with Rome, hated it. The Ottoman sultan would use this dissent to his advantage
and will quickly appoint Gennadius, a fervent critic of the union with Rome, to the office of Ecumenical
Patriarch, ending the union and confirming for ever to this day the schism with Rome.
Emperor and Patriarch

Although in principle inferior in authority to the emperor, the Church in Constantinople did manage to
build an administration independent from the imperial administration.42 Like in the West, the Church
existed next to the worldly powers but was in contrast to the West not independent from it. It was the
emperor who elected the patriarch in principle from three candidates suggested to him by the members
of the cathedral church of Constantinople Hagia Sophia but the emperors in practice tended to elect
other people that were not in the selection as patriarchs when it suited them.43 This often led to conflicts
wherein the emperor either deposed the current patriarch or the patriarch excommunicated the emperor;
generally speaking the emperor did remain the highest authority within the empire, although throughout
Byzantine history the Church did gain some more authority and power, but a relation similar to the
relation between pope and emperor in the West did not form in Byzantium. This meant that the
Byzantine Empire was politically and religiously intertwined, both the state ruled directly by the
emperor and the Church ruled and headed by the Ecumenical Patriarch (although technically ruled
by all the patriarchs and bishops together) were all unified in the person of the emperor. State and
41 Tisserant (E.C.). The Holy See and the Byzantine Church and Empire: Reflections on their Relations. In: The Review of
Politics. 9 (1947), 3, passim.
10
Church were one. This final authority of the emperor in all matters is well illustrated by the fact that the
Byzantine emperor Romanus I even had to grant patriarchal status to the Bulgarian Church when faced
with the power of the Bulgarian emperor Peter.44 It was the emperor who had the authority to do that,
not the Ecumenical Patriarch.
The Bulgarian Church was created as being independent from the Church of Constantinople in order to
enforce the unity of the Bulgarian kingdom and its stability. The unity of the Constantinopolitan Church
and the Byzantine state was an obvious threat to the integrity of the Bulgarian kingdom. With the fall of
Byzantium and the Slavic kingdoms and the rise of the Ottoman Empire, this balance between emperor
and patriarch fundamentally changed.
The Ottoman Church: Orthodoxy after Byzantium

Emperor of the Rum
When entering the main buildings of the modern Ecumenical Patriarchate, one is immediately
confronted with a prominent mosaic depicting the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II Fatih granting a document
to the appointed by him in opposition of the West Ecumenical Patriarch Gennadius II.45 It depicts
the granting of a collection of privileges of which the exact contents is lost now but which should entail
the idea of religious freedom and autonomy under the Ottoman Sultan for the Orthodox Church and the
Ecumenical Patriarchate.46
Interpreted by the new patriarch Gennadius, the fall of Constantinople which finally happened after a
long siege on the 29th of May 1453; a Tuesday (because of this many Greeks perceive Tuesday to be a
day of ill fortune)47 was the rightful divine punishment by God of the Byzantine establishment for
their unionist attitude towards the heretics of Rome. This made the final conquest of the Ottomans in
reverse perspective an act by God intended to save the Orthodox Church from the encroaching Catholic
heretics.48 Obviously the Orthodox Church had already had contacts with the Ottomans before the
conquest/fall of Constantinople.49 The Ottomans ruled an enormous part of Europe for decades already
before finally conquering Constantinople. Negative experiences with the encroaching Catholic states in
the past and the Catholic Church hierarchy under the protection of these states compared with relative
safety within the Ottoman Empire, made the Orthodox high clergy realise that it would not be entirely
in their disfavour to be ruled by an Islamic Ottoman sultan. Catholic countries that ruled over Orthodox
lands gave the Catholic Church of Rome the power which it used to expel Orthodox clergymen from
their lands, whilst the Ottomans, on the contrary, privileged the Orthodox Church in their territories
against the Catholics.50 If the city of Constantine was to fall, better to see the turban of the Turk ruling
the City than the mitre of the pope, some concluded.51 Mehmed, likewise, understood very well the
danger posed by the Catholic pope for his nascent empire, fearing possible Catholic Crusades.52 The
44 Magdalino (P.). The Medieval Empire. in: Mango (C.), ed., The Oxford History of Byzantium. 2002, pp. 206-207.
45 It as such represents the Treaty of Lausanne and the rights it granted to the minorities in Turkey (which they had to give up
nonetheless). It also reminds the viewer that the Orthodox Church always worked together with the Ottoman state, implying
its loyalty to the modern Turkish state as well. As was made clear to me by the dean of the Patriarchal Church of Saint-George,
It is not because we are Christians, that we do not defend ourselves. The Orthodox Church and the writers supporting its
interests are not an innocent source of information and a healthy dose of skepticism towards their claims is always warranted.
46 The millet-system is of a later date. In: Clogg (R.). Ottoman Rule and the emergence of the Greek state. In: Clogg (R.), A
Concise History of Greece. 2002, p. 11.

47 Clogg (R.). Ottoman Rule. p. 7.
48 Konortas (P.). Dun compromis historique vers une entente cordiale? Convergences idologiques et politiques entre le
Patriarcat orthodoxe de Constantinople et ladministration ottoman (milieu du XVe fin du XVIe sicle). [Unpublished] p. 6.
49 Konortas (P.). Dun compromis historique. p. 3, 5.
50 Konortas (P.). Dun compromis historique. pp. 5, 14.
52 Konortas (P.). Dun compromis historique. p. 11.
11
Ottoman monarch thus, already before the fall of Constantinople, supported actively the anti-unionist
movement in Byzantium.53 They shared similar interests.
Feeling the coming of the storm, the unionist Ecumenical Patriarch fled the City to the safety of Rome
in 1451. Although not in theory, the seat of the bishop of Constantinople was de facto vacant. When
Mehmed II arrived in the city, there was no patriarchate left anymore: the unionists had fled the city.
After the death of the unionist patriarch, the popes of Rome continued to appoint patriarchs of
Constantinople in exile who were all fervent Orthodox unionists. Bessarion, the third patriarch in exile,
had also signed the Union of Florence in 1449 and became even a Catholic cardinal.54 The Catholic
Church kept laying claim on the Orthodox faithful both territorial and now also spiritual.
The pact made by Mehmed II between him and the Church was of mutual political interest. Like
Constantine, Mehmed understood the importance of a stable and loyal Church not for theological
reasons as did Constantine but for the extra mental layer of glue it granted to society. He likewise
understood the danger of a disloyal Church loyal to Rome and his Western enemies. The Ottoman
Empire at his time did not yet include the vast Muslim territories to the south, its Christian population
was massive. In 1454 Mehmed reinstated the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople and appointed
the fervent anti-unionist Gennadius II, granting the promise of freedom of worship and security within
his Empire. Both would work together to diminish the influence of Western powers, the patriarch against
the influence of Rome, the sultan against the many western Catholic states that threatened him. All the
European territory conquered by the Ottoman Sultan, became an enlargement of the power of the Church
of Constantinople.
As such the Greek-Orthodox Church was the only Byzantine institution left intact after the Ottoman
conquest,55 and it became the prime and only carrier and promulgator of the Byzantine identity and
culture in the Ottoman Empire. The sultan became like the Byzantine emperor the (infidel) protector
of the Orthodox Church. Unlike the Byzantine case, the Church was not anymore fundamentally
intertwined with the state. It became a separate institution and not entirely dissimilar to the pope of
Rome after the fall of the Western Empire; it received secular power and a central, universal catholic
authority over the Church the communion of the faithful within the Ottoman Empire. The
oikoumene was not anymore the Roman Empire, it became the Orthodox millet.
The official patriarch, in theory, was still the unionist patriarch present in Rome. As such the Church of
Rome was not only a direct territorial threat to the communion of Constantinople, it also posed an
international claim on the whole Orthodox Church. In the year 1484, the Ecumenical Patriarchate held
a synod in Constantinople which rejected the Union with Rome and deemed it null and void, as if it
never happened and was never valid.56 In this way the Church of Constantinople confirmed its loyalty
to the Ottoman Sultan and turned its back towards the Western world. The treaty between Mehmed and
Gennadius was based upon mutual guaranties: Mehmed would grant the Patriarchate and its Church
autonomy, power and freedom and in return the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its Church would vow
absolute loyalty to the Ottoman Sultan.57 Both, in their hatred for the Roman Church and the Catholic
world, were united in a prosperous agreement which would last for centuries.58
All of this resulted in the fact that the Church of Constantinople at the time of Mehmed was
internationally and ecclesiastically isolated by the broader Christian community. The Church in the

58 This did not mean that the Christians throughout the Empire would be treated favourably. For all intents and purposes,
Christians were still second rang citizens. It was the Orthodox Church as an institution that profited from the new order of
being, not the communion of faithful.
12
grand-duchy of Moscow, a rising power at that time and the only independent Orthodox kingdom, broke
all contact with the Church of Constantinople when the Union with Rome was signed; rejecting it as
heretical. The appointment of an anti-Catholic patriarch by the sultan did not restore the contacts
between the Churches and the Muscovite Church continued to appoint its own archbishops in clear
violation of Canon Law. Because of the fall of Constantinople, Moscow even started claiming to be the
Third Rome. Its ruler preferably an emperor, its Church preferably independent and headed by a
patriarch.59 Eventually this autocephaly or independence will be recognised by the Ecumenical Patriarch
of Constantinople in return for funds and financial support.60
A New Oikoumene: The Orthodox Millet

Inspired by Islamic law, the Ottoman conception of a millet or nation, as it is commonly translated,
was not based on ethnic, cultural or linguistic factors but on religious grounds, a notion which still to
this day influences the Turkish conception of minorities. The Ottomans, lacking any precedents for
efficiently ruling a vast multiethnic and -religious empire, divided its population into different self-
governing millets each headed by their respective religious heads. The largest millet the Muslim one
was directly ruled by Sunni caliph the Ottoman sultan. Ignoring any ethnic differences, the Orthodox
millet which was the second largest was headed by the Greek speaking Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Linguistic, cultural and former political divisions within the Church leftover from the Middle-Ages were
washed away.61 The extent of autonomy granted to the Orthodox millet was so great that the Church in
practice dominated the lives of its members, who had only little and often negative contact with the
actual Ottomans.62 The Church received administrative, financial and judiciary autonomy and authority;
it was also exempt from taxes.63 It became the face of the state. The office of Ecumenical Patriarch
became as such a desired office and for a large part of its Ottoman history, the Patriarchate will be
characterised by political factionalism and rampant corruption endemic to Ottoman high society.64
Since its conception in the Roman Empire, the Ecumenical Patriarchate found itself for the first time in
a new existence. It was detached now from that Christian Empire, not anymore intertwined with a
Christian state and not anymore headed by that state. Although still inferior to the Ottoman sultan, the
Ecumenical Patriarchate was not anymore intimately intertwined with the state but existed separately
from it. Although still its protector, the Ottoman sultan was not the religious head of the Christian
universe. The Christian universe or oikoumene as it was understood as being unified with the Roman
state was gone. By becoming the head of the Orthodox millet, the Ecumenical Patriarch became besides
spiritual and ecclesiastical leader, also a worldly leader. Not only was the Church free now from the
Byzantine emperor and state, it became the Byzantine Emperor and state itself; the Church not being a
part of the state anymore, the state being a part of the Church. As such the oikoumene linked to the
Byzantine state, became linked to the millet. This usurpation of Byzantine power is well illustrated by
the usurpation of the Patriarchate of the sigil of the crowned (which refers to secular, imperial power)
double headed eagle. The ethnic divisions of the Middle-Ages gone, the Catholic and unionist Church
heretical and Muscovy without a patriarchate (Peter the Great abolished the Patriarchate of Muscovy),
all Orthodox nations, in the ethnic meaning of the word, were subjected to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
59 Konortas (P.). Dun compromis historique. pp. 9-10.

61 Remember the creation of the Bulgarian Patriarchate.
62 Clogg (R.). Ottoman Rule. pp. 10-11.
63 ktem (E.) and Trkmen (F.). Foreign Policy as a Determinant in the Fate of Turkeys Non-Muslim Minorities: A
Dialectical Analysis. In: Turkish Studies. 2013, p. 2.

13
Greek Nationalism: The Rise of National Churches

I will not go too much into detail concerning the origins of Greek nationalism in the Ottoman state and
nationalism in general. It suffices to say that when the Ottoman Empire started to decline in the 17th and
18th century, a new Greek speaking influential aristocratic class of rulers and diplomats started to emerge
from Istanbuls district of Phanar called the Phanariots together with the rise of a Greek speaking
mercantile class in the Western part of the Empire. Ruling the Danube principalities of Moldovia and
Wallachia as nearly independent Ottoman viceroys,65 the Phanariot princes known there as the
Hospodars, actively spread Hellenic culture.66 Through their courts Western ideas started seeping inside
the Ottoman Empire.67 Disliking the Greek speaking Church, the local populations also very much
disliked these Phanariot rulers. As of such the Ecumenical Patriarchate was identified with the more and
more disliked Ottoman state. Getting more prosperous and prosperous, Greek youngster coming from
the rising mercantile class were able to attend European universities.68 There they learned about
nationalism and the Western appreciation of the Greek classical culture, wholly forgotten by themselves.
I will not describe the actual course of the Greek revolution, which happened in the 20s and 30s of the
19th century. What matters is an analysis of the intellectual ideas of nationalism, their development and
their link with the Church. Essential to both Greek and later Turkish nationalism, is renouncing the
oriental past from the nations existence. Obviously the influence of Western enlightenment is
fundamental to this viewpoint, yet the prime reason, in my opinion, for the early Greek nationalists
embracement of a fully Western identity is more the result of the actual nature of the other against
which the early Greek national identity was be built than it is because of Western influence. It is
commonly accepted within academic circles that the Greek identity was primarily built against a Turkish
other. While this is partially true, Id like to modify this viewpoint by stating that it was not, in the
nascent period of Greek nationalism, a Turkish other but an Ottoman one against which the Greek
identity was. Although this distinction seems uselessly nitpicky, its implications are not. As Ive already
stated previously, the actual face of the Ottoman administration was not the Islamic sultan in the daily
life of the Christian subjects, but the millet controlled by the Greek speaking Constantinopolitan Church.
This Church was headed by the Ecumenical Patriarch who resided in Constantinople and worked
intimately together with the Ottoman state sharing common interests whilst also keeping alive and
promulgating the Byzantine Christian legacy. The exact nature of early Greek nationalism refuted not
only the Ottoman Empire by calling it oriental like the Turks will do later but it also equally refuted
the Byzantine Greek heritage from the nationalist identity. Greeks were first and foremost descendants
from the Classical Greeks.69 Becoming Western was purging Greece from the other, purging it from
the Byzantinist Church and the Ottoman State. Embracing the only history that was left untouched by
the other Classical Greece only accidentally coincided with the contents of the Western identity.
Claiming a Western identity allowed the Greek nationalists to seep into an already constructed,
explanatory narrative forcing them to deem the other as oriental. Paraphrasing the Greek philologist
Adamantos Korais, the general idea was that the Greeks should become aware of their intellectual
(Classical) past of which they were the true and only heirs (directed at the Western European countries
of course) and cast aside the Ottoman yoke and free themselves from the monkish obscurantism of the
Orthodox hierarchs.70
This intellectual nationalist identity was however fundamentally defunct for it denied an unescapable
truth: the Greek identity was fundamentally intertwined with Orthodox Christianity; the population was

68 Clogg (R.). Ottoman Rule. pp. 23, 27.
14
de facto Orthodox and loyal to its local Church. Resenting the revolutionaries for being a direct threat
to its power, the Ecumenical Patriarch as leader of the Orthodox millet publicly opposed the Greek
revolt.71 It was a threat to its power, a threat to its wealth and above all a threat to its ecumenicity. This
did not prevent the execution of patriarch Gregorius V by the Ottomans though.72 This tension between
refusing the Ottoman, Byzantine Orthodox other that was the Ecumenical Patriarchate, its Church and
its millet, whilst ruling at the same time a religious population whose religion had been for centuries
their primary marker of identity resolved itself in the unilateral construction of the Church of Greece in
1833. By creating a Church independent from Constantinople, they finally re-embraced the Byzantine
heritage of the Greek nation together with and side by side the Classical past. This necessarily gave
birth to the Megali Idea, reconquering the lost lands from the Ottomans and reinstituting the Byzantine
Empire, an Empire which the Ecumenical Patriarch in its very identity did not want to see restored.73
Eventually recognised by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1850, the creation of the Church of Greece will
be the first blow of many given against the Ecumenical Patriarch. The era of the national Churches had
begun, the ecumenicity of the millet-system broke apart. Resenting both the Ottomans and the Greeks,
all Balkan nationalists will eventually create their own national Churches, allowing them to be Orthodox,
whilst not being Hellenic or Ottoman. Serbia would create a national Church in 1879, Rumania in
1885.74 I should emphasise that in the historical context of the Ottoman Empire, the concept of
ecumenicity in the case of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople was fundamentally linked to the
territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and as such it was a loyal institution to the Empire. It hated
the Catholic West, it hated nationalist revolutions and it feared the disintegration of the Ottoman State.
The biggest blow for the Patriarchate will however be the creation of the Bulgarian national Church in
1870 since it did not coincide, like in the case of Greece, with the creation of a new nation-state. The
Bulgarians were still a part of the Orthodox millet. It was the millet which represented the oikoumene
after 1453 and it could not be splitted. Although certainly painful, the Church of Greece was not a part
of the millet and as such fell theoretically outside of the Orthodox oikoumene; its existence, disliked and
certainly a blow towards it, did not destroy the most fundamental logic of the idea of ecumenicity. As a
result of the creation of the Bulgarian Church supported by the Ottomans the Ecumenical Patriarchate
officially condemned nationalism as being a heresy in 1872, two years later.75
Eventually, in the 20th century, the Ecumenical Patriarch accepted the existence of national Churches.
Fiercely loyal to the Ottoman state at first and as such innocent of any treason, it switched sides and
became a fierce supporter of the Megali Idea at the dawn of the birth of the Turkish Republic.76 This,
together with the Ottoman Capitulation Treaties (discussed in part II), Christian and Islamic national
schisms and foreign Allied support for these internal groups, will lead to a fundamental obsessive need
for internal unity and control which will mark the future Turkish Republics treatment of recognised and
unrecognised for decades to come.
71 Clogg (R.). Ottoman Rule. p. 28 and Stomatopulos (D.). Ecumenical Patriarchate and Political Hegemony in the Rum
millet during the Long Nineteenth Century, 1830-1923. [Unpublished] p. 3.
72 The black entry gate where he was hung to death at Phanar, was never opened afterwards anymore and remains closed to
this day.
73 We think about Gennadius rejection of the Byzantines and his embracement of the Ottoman Empire as the saviour of
Orthodoxy.
74 Stomatopulos (D.). Ecumenical Patriarchate and Political Hegemony. p. 3.
75 Grigoriadis (I.N.). The Orthodox Church and Greek-Turkish relations: Religion as source of rivalry or conciliation? In:
Haynes (J.), ed., Religion and Politics in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. 2010, p. 57.
76 Psomiades (H.J.). The Ecumenical Patriarchate under the Turkish Republic. In: Balkan Studies. 2 (1961), 1, pp. 48, 50.
15
Part II
Heaving dealt with the necessary historical background concerning the Ecumenical Patriarchate, I will
move in this part to more recent times, namely the Republican Era, which arguably marks the beginning
of a third phase in the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The general idea of this part is to confront
the reader with the issues the Patriarchate faces and faced and to show their roots in history and how
these defined the Turkish Republican policy towards its minorities.
There are two different, complementary approaches available for describing the Turkish treatment of
the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The first approach is focusing on the general nature of Turkish nationalism,
its interminglement with the past and the Turkish state. It focusses on the human side of the Patriarchate,
the network of wherein it finds itself and how this network is treated. The second approach is looking
at the actual treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as an institution, an office in both internal and
international relations. Both will be separately discussed.
1: General treatment of the Greek Minority

To understand the treatment of the Greek minority of Istanbul known as the Rum community it is
essential to tackle the fundamental negative meaning that the word minority carries with it in Turkey.
Specifically, a minority in the Turkish context, refers to non-Muslim elements in society and carries
with it the connotation of being untrustworthy and traitorous.77 This means that the Kurds (themselves
internally divided) and the Alevis in Turkey are not considered by the government or themselves for
that matter to be minorities.78 Officially, for all intents and purposes, they are Turks. To escape
persecution and discrimination, some Kurds and Alevis have embraced this viewpoint, minimising their
differences and emphasising either a shared (Sunni) Islamic background and/or shared Turkish
descent.79 Not unlike the millet-system, whose influence on both Greek and Turkish nationalism is
debatable in my opinion,80 nations are primarily defined by Turks and Greeks not on the grounds of
ethnicity or language but by religion. Does this mean by definition that every Greek-Orthodox is a
member of the Greek nation or every Sunni Muslim is a member of the Turkish nation? No. Obviously
language, ethnicity and culture play an important role besides religion in defining ones nationality. Still,
the dominance of religion in defining the nationality of person is well illustrated by the deportation of
50 000 Turkish speaking Orthodox Christians from Anatolia in the population exchange between Greece
and Turkey despite promises made at Lausanne which I will tackle a bit further to the contrary.81
Religion is the first layer of identity; culture, language and descent the second.
Indeed, nearly all Orthodox Christians were deported from Turkey to Greece, except the inhabitants of
a couple of islands and the born inhabitants of Constantinople, the Rum. After the deportation, only 200
000 Greeks were left in Constantinople but around 90 000 quickly fled.82 By law they became Turkish
citizens but this did not mean that they became Turks. The minorities of Turkey were perceived to be
dangerous aliens present within the boundaries of the Turkish nation and should be mistrusted. It will
become implicit official policy to purge Turkey from all deviant people. Both the officially recognised
77 Dressler (M.). Our Alevi and Kurdish Brothers Some Remarks on Nationalism and Minority Politics in Turkey. In:
Omarkhali (K.), ed., Religious Minorities in Kurdistan: Beyond the Mainstream. 2014, passim.
78 Dressler (M.). Our Alevi and Kurdish Brothers. pp. 140, 143.
79 Dressler (M.). Our Alevi and Kurdish Brothers. pp. 145-147.
80 Nationalism in the West although less explicit also saw religion as an exclusive factor in defining membership of the
nation. As is illustrated by the rampant antisemitism at that time.

81 Psomiades (H.J.). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. pp. 52-53.
82 Mason (W.). Constantinoples Last Hurrah: Turkey and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In: World Policy Journal. 2001, p.
57.
16
minorities as the Alevis and Kurds will become the victims of rigorous, discriminatory and outright
genocidal Turkification policies.83 In contrast to the Greeks, Jews and Armenians, the Alevis and Kurds
were not protected by any international treaty.
The Turkish governments claim at Lausanne that only non-Muslims were supposed to be considered
minorities, was not innocently the result of the intellectual legacy of the millet-system, despite the fact
that this proposed Islamic unity was essential for the formation of the Turkish Republic. Why were the
Turks so obsessed with unifying the nation? Why did they mistrust both the recognised and unrecognised
minorities?
The driving force, arguably, behind Turkeys unificatory policies was the fresh memory of the lot that
befell the Ottoman Empire. Their mistrust of the Christian minorities was obviously motivated by the
different Christian nationalist revolutions happening in the Balkans and in Greece against the Ottoman
Empire. In a sense this was to be expected; the Christians were fundamentally not a part of the Islamic
community. The fact that these Christians were still present in Turkey could understandably be
interpreted as a potential, traitorous danger. The Turkish War of Independence was aimed specifically
against the invading Greeks whose Megali Idea was vehemently supported by the Greek population of
Western Anatolia. To prevent these people to fragment the Turkish nation any further, these traitors
had to be converted to Sunni Islam and forced to embrace Turkish culture, or should be pestered away.
The most difficult blow, however, was also the treason committed against the Ottoman state by their
fellow Muslims, like the Egyptians and the Arabs. Even their fellow Muslims could not be trusted.
Unifying the nation in a monolithic cultural block was the only safe way to protect the young nation.
Nationalism was to be the new ideology. All signs of the weak Ottoman past including religion in
general and the minorities reminiscent of the fatal millet-system had to go. The new Turkish state was
in principle totally Western and secular, in practice Sunni Islam remained an important factor in daily
life. This fundamental fear of a divided internal state of affairs will be a main Leitmotiv in Turkeys
treatment of its minorities. Traumatised by the internal revolutions done by other nations within the
Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic was going to mistrust every alien element in society. Muslim
or Christian, all non-Turks were potential traitors.
Fundamental to the dissolution of the Ottoman state in different nations, was also the influence of the
Great Christian Powers of Europe on the Christian and Muslim ethnic minorities. They were the ones
who incited both Christian and Islamic nationalist revolutions. Turkeys fear of the existence of an
internal enemy which prompted the young nations Turkification policies was complementary to its
fear of foreign influence on internal affairs. The Turkish nation had to be a unified bloc, blocking away
any possible foreign influence.
During the Ottoman period, the sultans had given capitulation treaties to the Western Christian nations
which gave them a way to influence internal Ottoman politics and apply due pressure.84 These included
protection rights for their own citizens and for specific Christian communities and/or places. When the
Ottoman Empire was in decline and the West rising, the Western nations did not hesitate to use this
influence to their advantage, especially when they became the Ottoman Empires main enemies in World
War I. Preventing any foreign access to Turkish internal affairs will become a second main Leitmotiv
influencing Turkeys relation with both the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its minorities in general. To
protect the unity of its internal being, the Turkish nation will up a great isolationist shield. Unlike the
Ottoman Empire, no outside power should be able to influence Turkeys internal politics.
I will not discuss here the precise course of the Turkish War of Independence, but it suffices to say that
the insurgents main rally call was Islamic unity against the Christian internal and external other. Sunni
83 One thinks about the Dersim genocide.

84 ktem (E.) and Trkmen (F.). Foreign Policy. p. 3.
17
Kurds and Sunni Turks fought together against the Christian enemies of Islam. That is why at Lausanne
the Kurds and Alevis which have always been considered by the Turkish state to be Sunnis in official
discourse were not included in the category of minority. They were, unlike the Greeks and Armenians
(and Jews in the common anti-Semite sentiment of the time), loyal to Turkey and deserved to be seen
as full and equal members of Turkish society. The Turkish state will however officially refute the
importance of Islam as a unifying power and embrace in its official discourse secularism. Although in
practice Sunni Islam still played a major role, the discourse of Islamic unity was gone. The Kurds had
to become Turkified, the Alevis Sunnified. A true Turk spoke Turkish and was a Sunni Muslim.
Lausanne I
The Treaty of Lausanne can rightfully be considered as the founding document of the Republic of
Turkey.85 The conference was held in 1922 until 1923. Among other things, it regulated the population
exchange between Greece and Turkey: one million Orthodox Christians were deported from Turkey to
Greece, 400 000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey.86 I will not discuss the consequences of the population
exchange in this paper, but it suffices to say that it damaged both countries in unimaginable ways, both
economic as cultural and historic.
Articles 38 until 44 regulated the rights of the remaining minorities in Turkey which were defined as
being of religious in nature.87 They guaranteed the non-Islamic communities an equal legal treatment
with the Islamic majority, they protected the communities from discrimination and secured for them the
right to found charitable, religious and social institutions and also community schools; which the Turkish
government guaranteed to protect.88 The 45th article stated that the same would be applicable for the
religious minorities in Greece.89 When any of these fundamental articles would be broken, the
international community is expected intervene.90
The Treatment of the Istanbul Rum Minority

The Turkish government will, despite its commitments at Lausanne, eventually break all of its promises
made in the treaty. The interbellum period will be characterised by the promulgation of a whole set of
discriminatory laws designed to limit the influence of foreigners and of religious minorities. In this part,
I will give some examples concerning the treatment of the Rum population in general. I do however not
claim to be exhaustive. The treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as an institution will be discussed
further below. The main Leitmotivs are going to be: remove all deviance within society and built up an
isolationist shield against foreign powers.
One fundamental pattern in Turkeys treatment of both its recognised and unrecognised minorities is the
disconnection between practice and official discourse. Kurds did not exist according to the government,
yet the government made secret studies, researching the exact nature of specific Kurdish groups and
how they could be most efficiently Turkified as possible, implying that they obviously knew that most
Kurds were actually not Turks.91 Similarly the Turkish nation-state will adopt a fantastical,
pseudoscientific reinterpretation of its history which in its core essence is still being educated today.
Fundamental to Turkish nationalism and the survival of the Turkish nation-state, besides unifying the
nation, is renouncing its Ottoman, oriental past. Not only were the Turks apparently the ancestors of all

86 Mason (W.). Constantinoples Last Hurrah. p. 57.
90 ktem (E.). La question de loecumnicit du Patriarcat orthodoxe dIstanbul. Rflexion sur un arte de la Cour de
cassation turque. In: Rivista di studi politici internazionali. 77 (2010), 3, p. 411.

91 Bruinessen (M.). Aslini inkar eden haramzadedir!: The debate on the ethnic identity of the Kurdish Alevis. 1997, p. 13.
18
Western people, all languages in the world were claimed to be deriving from Turkish.92 Islam, which
was deemed oriental, for it was fundamentally linked with the Ottoman Empire, had to be removed from
and subjected to the state. In reality, as is shown by the very fact that minorities which are
fundamentally not Turks are defined as being non-Muslim, Sunni Islam still played an important role
in society.
The first big breach of the Lausanne Treaty, instigated by the first Leitmotiv, was the adaptation of a
new civil code in 1926 which de facto prevented non-Muslims from creating foundations.93 It should be
noted that according to the Treaty of Lausanne, any law that contradicts the treaty, is invalid.94 Turkey
solved this inconvenience by pressuring its minorities into giving up their rights.95 First the Jews
renounced their privileges that protected them given to them at Lausanne, then the Armenians and
later eventually also the Greeks. Seeing that they renounced their rights voluntarily the Turkish
government understood the treatment of these minorities from now on as an internal affair. In reality it
was the final blow to the Ottoman millet-system and closed a possible weak point allowing foreign
nations to apply pressure to Turkey and influence internal affairs (the second Leitmotiv). Different laws
will threaten the property of minorities, will exclude minorities and foreigners from exercising specific
jobs which will be specifically reserved for Turkish citizens (read Sunni Muslim Turks) and a whole
set of discriminatory taxes.96 Especially the 1942 Wealth Tax should be mentioned. It was directed
nearly exclusively towards non-Muslims and it ruined lots of Greeks. Those who converted to Islam had
to pay twice as much as the few taxed Muslims, whilst those remaining Greek-Orthodox, Armenian-
Orthodox or Jewish had to pay sometimes ten times the rate of the converts. Those who couldnt pay,
were deported to work camps in the east of Turkey.97 Illustrating the fundamental mistrust of the state
towards its Greek citizens, is the fact that until the 1940s non-Muslim Turkish citizens were registered
in the registration office as foreigners.98
Illustrative is also the Turkish governments campaign Citizen, speak Turkish in the 40s directed at
both Kurds and recognised minorities. Destroying foreign elements which all had (be it Kurds,
Alevis, Jews, Armenians, Bulgarians or Greeks) lived for over centuries together with the Turks (the
Greeks, Armenians, Jews and arguably the ancestors of the Alevis even before the Turks) in the territory
of what became later the Turkish Republic either by assimilation, genocide or forced deportation, was
the prime motivation for all of these campaigns. As a result Istanbuls Rum community was steadily
declining as more and more Greek speaking Turkish citizens emigrated to Greece.
Arguably a new phase in the treatment of the Greek minority by the Turkish government began with the
Cyprus issues. There were three major periods of crisis. The first crisis period, and the most traumatising
one for the Rum, were the events of 55, followed by the second period in 64 and the third in 74.99 The
first real violent events happening against the Istanbul Greeks are the September 6-7 events, also known
as the Greek Pogrom (Which also targeted Jews and Armenians in Istanbul). Leading to the pogrom,
was the pro-Turkish campaign launched in Istanbul by the association called Cyprus is Turkish.100
When on the 6th September news came to the City that Greek terrorists had bombed the birth house of
Atatrk in the Greek city of Thessalonica, the forenamed association took immediately to the streets and
caused violent destructions of Greek, Jewish and Armenian property. They looted and destroyed shops,

94 ktem (E.). La question de loecumnicit. p. 411.
96 ktem (E.) and Trkmen (F.). Foreign Policy. pp. 5-6.
19
schools and churches belonging to non-Muslims. Although not directed specifically against the
Ecumenical Patriarchate, the protesters did question its position on the Cyprus issue, asking why the
patriarch did not excommunicate Makarios which they claimed he could do as Ecumenical Patriarch
which led to the desecration of the graves of patriarchs and even the death of a priest.101 More than
5000 buildings were destroyed, with massive damage as a result.102 To this day it is unclear exactly what
happened that day, but it is certain that the house of Atatrk was not bombed by Greek terrorists and
that the violent demonstrations against Istanbuls non-Muslim minority were not entirely spontaneous,
without any government involvement.103 One thing is sure, it fitted within the general political theme of
the Turkish state: covertly undermining the very existence of its minorities on racist, nationalist and
religious grounds, whilst maintaining a discourse of equality, innocence and negation; complementary
with the always returning remark that foreigners should not concern themselves with Turkeys internal
affairs. Fearing for their lives, lots of Greeks left. From now on, the Turkish government would always
punish its minorities when an issue concerning Cyprus arose.104 A case of reciprocity? Or just another
excuse to advance its Turkification policies? Probably both.
In 64, following ethnical cleansings in Cyprus by Greeks on Turks, the Turkish government unilaterally
abolished the Turkish-Greek Treaty on Residence, Trade and Navigation, which allowed 12 000 Greeks
who were originally deported in the population exchange to again stay in Turkey. Immediately more
than 8000 Greeks were forced to leave and many more followed, fearing for their lives.105 These peoples
properties would remain frozen for more than 20 years until released again in 1988. In 74 the Turkish
government would invade Cyprus and would punish its minorities again, this time through the legal
system, which declared illegally that any acquisitions of property made by non-Muslim foundations
after 1936 were illegal and had therefore to be removed, leading to the illegal seizure by the Turkish
government of hundreds of immovable properties.106
The situation for Turkeys recognised minorities started to improve after the 1980s though, yet most of
the damage was already done. Especially after 1999, with the possible foresight of EU-membership, the
Turkish government approved of several packs of legislation improving the situation of Turkeys
dwindling minorities.107 To what extent these better circumstances are ascribable to the influence of the
EU or the exact, islamist ideological nature of the new leading party in Turkey the Justice and
Development Party (AKP) is a question which should be treated in another paper. It suffices to say
that Hseyin elik, the former AKP minister of education and spokesperson of the AKP declared that
the Halki Seminar a Greek-Orthodox theological school located on the island of Heybeliada closed in
1971 on the grounds of being deemed unconstitutional and now an important symbol of the repression
of the Greek-Orthodox community in Turkey could be reopened in less than 24 hours by a simple
administrative decision. He called upon the radical Islamic opponents of the reopening to empathise
with their fellow Orthodox citizens by claiming that reopening the school is a humanitarian and Islamic
duty.108 With the rise of Islamic inspired parties, it could be that the Leitmotivs of the new government
concerning its minorities are indeed changing from kemalist, nationalist inspired policies of harsh, racist
discrimination and ethnical cleansing, combined with a paranoid fear of foreign influence, to newer
Islamic inspired Leitmotivs. Islams main Leitmotiv concerning its Christian and Jewish minorities is
101 Macar (E.). A Victim of Reciprocity: The Greek Patriarchate of Istanbul. In: Akgnl (S.), ed., Reciprocity: Greek and
Turkish Minorities: Law, Religion and Politics. 2008, p. 144.

107 ktem (E.) and Trkmen (F.). Foreign Policy. pp. 9-10.
108
ktem (E.) and Trkmen (F.). Foreign Policy. pp. 12-13.
20
indeed one of toleration (there are exceptions and the degree of toleration has not always been the same),
instead of outright kemalist persecution. Anyways, the school has remained closed to this day. Is it
because of religious, confessional hate, or because of the fact that the kemalist Leitmotivs concerning
minorities are not quite gone yet in the Turkish perceptual mind? If these newer, more recent
improvements are indeed to be understood as the result of Islamic toleration, which is always nicer and
better than nationalist persecution, then it should be argued that we should not expect the status of
minorities to rise too much. Islamic toleration is still not the same as humanitarian and democratic
equality, equity and fairness.
But does this all even matter? After less than a century, Istanbuls Rum population has dwindled from
200 000 to around 2000 people. In a city of millions, that means proportionally that they are practically
gone. It does matter.
2: Treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

In this part, I will treat the specific policies, acts and attitudes of the Turkish government towards the
Ecumenical Patriarchate currently located in the Fener area of Istanbul as an institution during the 20th
century. The Turkish Republics attitude towards foreigners was and still is prompted by two Leitmotivs:
Putting up a protective, isolationist shield in order to prevent foreign influence on the internal affairs
and purifying the internal composition of the nation of any foreign elements. On top of that comes also
the ever present kemalist policy to remove any remnants of the millet-system and of the Ottoman Empire
in general.
Although loyal to the Ottoman Empire throughout its history and fiercely opposed to any form of
nationalism, the political attitude of the Ecumenical Patriarchate changed in 1918, with the defeat of the
Empire at the hands of the Allied Powers, towards an overt support of the Megali Idea.109. Politically
this was characterised by the forced abdication of the then residing patriarch Germanus V. As such, the
Patriarchate became perceived by the Ankara government besides already suspicious for being a
Christian remnant of the Ottoman Empire to be a dangerous foreign (read non-Turkish) institution
that could act as an entry point for foreign powers to breach the isolationist shield put up by the young
republic around its internal affairs. To close this hole in its protective wall, the Turkish state has
executed throughout the 20th century up until now a whole bunch of policies and acts against the
Ecumenical Patriarchate. These can be chronologically classified in three periods and I will discuss them
as such.
The first goal was to remove the Patriarchate all together from Turkey, and if not possible, to chase it
away by attacking the institution itself and by attacking the Greek minority in general to remove the
Ecumenical Patriarchates popular support and manpower. This first Leitmotiv securing the internal
affairs by purging all foreign elements will remain present in a weaker form throughout all three
periods. Removing the Patriarchate from Turkey, would effectively remove the potential hole in the
isolationist shield as well. The second period is characterised by a realisation that the Patriarchate was
going to stay in Turkey. The second Leitmotiv which is limiting the influence of foreign powers on
the internal affairs of the Turkish state became the dominant motive for policy making now. Closing
the hole that is the Patriarchate was done by Turkifying the members of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as
much as possible, to limit the influence of foreign nations within the Patriarchate and to make it loyal to
the interests of the Turkish state. As such it would prevent foreign interests to seep within the Church
of Constantinople. The state also supported the creation of a Turkish national Church for a while, but
gave up on this eventually. The third period is characterised by the realisation that the Ecumenical
Patriarchate is capable of breaching the Turkish protective shield itself and can contact foreign powers
21
itself. In a reversed movement not from the outside inwards, but from the inside outwards the Turkish
state found itself powerless. As such it attacked the ideological idea supporting the Ecumenical
Patriarchates opening towards the world: its ecumenicity.
It is essential to realise that all of these periods are not indivisible from each other. Laws and policies
made in a previous period will still affect the Patriarchate in a later period. In this part I will also shortly
tackle the question of reciprocity concerning the Patriarchate and I will discuss the mosaic of Mehmed
II Fatih and Gennadius II present in the modern building of the Phanar.
Lausanne II
The initial main demand of the Turkish delegation at Lausanne concerning the Ecumenical Patriarchate
was the immediate removal of the Ecumenical Patriarchate from Turkey and all the Greeks from
Constantinople in the population exchange.110 This was requested by the Turkish delegation for the first
time on the 16th of December 1922.111 Their argument was twofold. Firstly, with the establishment of
the Turkish Republic, Turkey would become a modern nation-state wherein all of its citizens were
supposed to be equal to the law. In the understanding of the Turkish delegates, this meant a total abolition
of everything even remotely Ottoman. If all citizens were going to be equal, then the privileges granted
to religious minorities because of the millet-system should be removed. With the removal of the
Caliphate which fits within the notion of westernising the perceived as inherently oriental Ottoman
society through the embracement of secularism the religious head of Sunni Islam was effectively
removed from Turkish society fitting the relinquished hope in Islamic unity after the Islamic nationalist
separations from the Ottoman Empire. If all citizens within the state were going to be equal, it was
argued, then the Ecumenical Patriarchate which they conceived wrongly to be of a similar religious
nature as the Caliphate and a last bastion of the millet-system plus a potential internal security threat,
which headed the Orthodox Church spiritually should be abolished too, or at least removed from
Turkish territory.112
The second argument against the Ecumenical Patriarchate was the view that it was a political
institution.113 Obviously inspired by its function as the head of the Orthodox millet but also inspired in
the light of recent events. The Ecumenical Patriarchate supported the Greek invasion of Asia Minor.114
Add to this the relations between the Patriarchate and the Greek government, which had a strong
influence on the Patriarchate, was proof enough for the Ankara government of its political power. If the
Ecumenical Patriarchate is by definition a political institution, the Turks argued, then it could no longer
exist within the boundaries of the Turkish state. Wanting to get rid of every remaining aspect of the
millet-system and the Ottoman state in general, the Turkish Republic subjugated religion in the case
of Sunni Islam to the state in order to neutralise its potential political rivalling power. Only one power
could be present within the coming state of Turkey and only one people could live within it (with one
religion). It could not tolerate any rival power left. The Turkish delegates argued that the Ecumenical
Patriarchate, if it would remain in Turkey, would be stripped of all its political powers, therefore
rendering it useless in its existence.115
The removal of the Ecumenical Patriarchate from Constantinople was formally requested on the 4 th of
January 1923. The Turkish delegates brought to attention the Patriarchates hostile attitude towards the
Turkish Republic during the war and threatened to remove all Greeks from Constantinople if their
110 Psomiades (H.J.). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. p. 48.

22
demands were not met.116 All the other delegates were opposed to this proposal. Greece claimed that
only the archbishop of Constantinople could be the Ecumenical Patriarch. Removing the Patriarchate
from Turkey to another see, would be in violation of canon law and as such ipso facto heretical.117 To
this the French delegates proposed that the Patriarchate would stay in Turkey but would be stripped of
any real political power, limited exclusively to spiritual matters.118 Supported by Greece, the Greek
delegation promised the Turks to arrange the disposal of the current patriarch Meletius IV, who
maintained an anti-Turkish position, if the Turks would agree to this arrangement.119 Eventually, after
20 sessions, the leader of the Turkish delegation, Ismet Pasha, verbally approved this arrangement. 120
There were no clauses included in the Treaty of Lausanne concerning the specific rights and/or
privileges of the Ecumenical Patriarch though.121
It should become immediately clear that the Turkish government had already from the start of Lausanne
the intention to ethnically, culturally and religiously cleanse and unify the country, their first Leitmotiv.
The agreed upon minority rights already discussed above were minimal seeing the non-inclusion on
non-Muslim minorities and were made against the actual interests of the Turkish state. Their prime
discursive motive was to establish the equality of every citizen, to abolish all remains of the millet-
system. The forced voluntary declaration by all the minority communities in Turkey later to renounce
the rights given to them at Lausanne fits in this picture perfectly, the delegates never intended to give
the minorities any privileges, since these could warrant interventions by foreign powers and as such
constitute a breach in the protective shield as such making it more difficult for the state to chase these
minorities away. In fact they never intended to actually keep any minorities at all. The promise to allow
more Greeks to stay in Constantinople was therefore in reality void and luckily the other nations did not
agree to this.
Turkification of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

The Ecumenical Patriarchate was thus allowed to stay in Turkey. Its members in theory enjoyed the
minority privileges granted to them by the Lausanne Treaty, but the institution itself had, besides the
promises made at Lausanne, no real guarantees against government interference. The prime goal of the
Turkish state was to expel the Patriarchate from Turkey, if this failed, the government could either chase
it away by annoying it all the time, or it could make the best of things by minimising the damage through
eliminating all possible foreign influences.
The first tactic used by the Turkish government to chase the Patriarchate away was its support of the
Turkish-Orthodox Church project by the renegade priest papa Efthim.122 Efthims early support from
the population, media and state against the Phanar is due to the anti-Turkish policies of the then residing
Patriarch Meletius IV.123 The Turkish-Orthodox Church was officially created when the metropolitan of
Konia, Procopius, and two other titular bishops created an independent Synod that claimed the rights to
govern the Church in Turkey. They immediately coopted papa Efthim and another priest in the synod
and Efthim became its general representative.124 Suspicious of the involvement of the Ankara
government, Meletius agreed to create an autonomous ecclesiastical province in Anatolia, subjected to
the Patriarchate but allowed to use Turkish as its liturgical language.125 Efthim claimed that the Turkish

23
Christians could only find peace in Turkey if their ties with the Church of Constantinople were entirely
cut; the Ecumenical Patriarchate was under foreign influence, according to him, and would never be
trusted by the Turkish state.126
All of this fits obviously within the broader historical arc of the breaking up of the Orthodox oikoumene
in different national Churches. The fundamental difference with the other national Churches and the
Turkish-Orthodox Church however was the fact that the nation-state to which it belonged, did not
consider itself to be Christian. 50 000 Turkish speaking Christians from Anatolia were eventually
deported to Greece under the terms of the population exchange.127 The Turkish-Orthodox Church had
lost its flock and reason to exist. This was not the end of Efthim though, and he will continue his
harassment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, supported by the government; occupying the Phanar on
multiple occasions, hurting the patriarch Meletius, and meddling with the elections of Patriarchs and the
affairs of the Holy Synod, the ruling body of the Church.128 Eventually the Turkish government had
enough of Efthims unpredictable behaviour. Disiring good relations with Greece, the Turkish police
ousted Efthim from the Phanar after his occupation of the building because of his displeasure with the
election of Gregorius VII, the successor of Meletius, as the new Ecumenical Patriarch.129
After Lausanne, the Turkish government had to accept the fact that the Ecumenical Patriarchate was
there to stay. Having been promised that the Patriarchate would only concern itself with its religious
duties, the state, having successfully subjected Islam and as such diminished its independent power in
society, will try to attempt to dominate the Patriarchate as much as possible too. The fact that the Greek
government promised the Turks that they will convince Meletius to abdicate which the Turks liked
had confronted them with an awkward truth: the Ecumenical Patriarchate was prone to foreign influence
and was potentially disloyal. On top of that, it could still form an excuse for foreign nations to meddle
with internal Turkish affairs. The state decided that every Ecumenical Patriarch from now on had to be
a Turkish citizen excluding any foreigners carrying with them foreign interests and the members of
the Holy Synod electing them had to possess the Turkish nationality too.130 The successor of Meletius,
Gregorius, was fine for both parties but serious problems arose with the election of Gregorius successor,
Constantine VI. This would become the final standoff between Greece and Turkey concerning the exact
status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Greece wanted it to become recognised as an international
organisation, as such protecting the Patriarchate from the whims of the Turkish government. 131 The
Turkish government vehemently opposed any such notion, the Patriarchate was Turkish, an internal
affair and subjected to Turkish law.132 Recognising the Patriarchate as international institution would
threaten the unified sovereignty of the Turkish state and would only enlarge the hole in its isolationist
shield that the Patriarchate already maintained.
The Greek influence on the Patriarchate had to be ended once and for all. The precise problem was that
Constantine VI, although a Turkish citizen, was not Constantinopolitan by birth. The Turkish
government, simply stated, unilaterally decided that he had therefore to be deported to Greece. On the
30th of January 1925, the Turkish police thus deported Constantine VI to Greece.133 The issue was finally
settled when Turkey granted immunity from deportation to the other remaining members of the Holy
Synod and promised to keep papa Efthim away from the Phanar.134 In return the Greek government

129 Psomiades (H.J.). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. p. 57-58.
130 ktem (E.). La question de loecumnicit. p. 416 and Psomiades (H.J.). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. pp. 57, 62.
24
asked Constantine to abdicate. A period of relative ease followed for the Patriarchate (as an institution)
and Turkish and Greek relations improved.135 It seemed as if, with the abdication of Constantine VI, the
issues concerning the second Leitmotiv were finally settled and the status of the Patriarchate as an
internal affair of Turkey confirmed.
Questioning Ecumenicity
Throughout the paper, I tackled the historical changing meaning of the word ecumenical concerning
the Patriarchate and the broader Church. In Roman and Byzantine times, the oikoumene referred to the
Christian dimension of the Roman Empire, in the Ottoman Empire it transformed into the Christian
dimension of the Orthodox millet. With the rise of the national Churches, however, the core idea of
ecumenicity as being linked to a state and governing all Orthodox people was challenged, which led to
a period of theological and internal turmoil for the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Eventually, the patriarchs
of Constantinople had no choice but to accept the new order of business. Ecumenicity in the 20th century
can be understood in two complementary ways. First of all the Ecumenical Patriarchate recognised that
it had no spiritual, juridical, worldly or ecclesiastical power anymore over all the autocephalous and
autonomous Churches. Contrary to the Roman Pontiff whose Church as a result of 19 th century
nationalism and 18th century absolutism (and the reformation) also was confronted with the rise of
national Churches of a whole different kind though the Church of Constantinople experienced a
direct opposite outcome. The Roman Catholic Church, shocked by the nationalist occupation of Rome,
renounced modernism and embraced a doctrine of Catholic unity and papal supremacy. The Catholic
Church became even more centralised then it had been after the Council of Trent. The prime differences
between Old Rome and New Rome are linked to certain historic developments like the fact that the
bishop of Rome represented the entire Western Church in the Roman Empire at the ecumenical councils,
becoming the sole authority on universal dogma, that the Roman Pontiff was independent of any state
in the Middle-Ages making him the supreme judge within Christendom and making him, when
nationalism finally arose, independent of the all others against which was revolted. The Ecumenical
Patriarchate did not gain but lost centralising authority, its ecumenical function degraded into being
purely the honourary head of the Church with some small pan-Orthodox prerogatives within the Eastern-
Orthodox Church. In fact, illustrative for this new meaning of ecumenicity, is the usage of the word pan-
Orthodox for it implies that the current Orthodox universe called pan-Orthodox is not the same as
the old Orthodox universe, the oikoumene. This new pan-Orthodox interpretation of the ecumenical title
of the Ecumenical Patriarch clearly does not correspond with the realities of the past; an important
realisation since in its historic antagonism with Rome, the Church of Constantinople still claims that the
central power of the pope is heretical and contrary to the Christian past, which is correctly preserved
as is wrongly claimed in the modern Eastern Orthodox Church. Obviously my historical part in this
paper illustrates that this point is not true.
The second meaning that ecumenicity received in the 20th century, is linked to the rise of communism
and globalisation. In the 20th century, lots of Orthodox diaspora communities were established in the
New World and Europe, fleeing from communist persecution and/or cutting their ties with the patriarch
of Moscow for the Muscovy Patriarchate became an instrument of communist foreign policy. All of
these Churches are now subjected to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and as such its
influence spread over the entire world.136 On top of this is also the fact that the Ecumenical Patriarchate
exercises direct jurisdiction over the Church in Crete, in the Dodecanese islands, Mount Athos and over
large parts of northern Greece. Concerning the parts in northern Greece, the Church of Athens is

136 Its direct ecclesiastical power also extends to some parts of Greece. In agreement with the Church of Athens, the Patriarchate
is the spiritual head, appointing the bishops and priests whilst the archbishopric of Athens is responsible for the administrative
functioning of these Churches. In: Grigoriadis (I.N.). The Orthodox Church and Greek-Turkish relations. p. 57.
25
responsible for the daily administration, but it is the Ecumenical Patriarchate which appoints bishops,
metropolitans and priests.
The Turkish government, having made sure that no foreign governments can influence the Patriarchate,
faced thus a new problem: it was the Ecumenical Patriarchate itself which opened up to the outside
world. This brings us to the most recent battle fought between the Turkish government and the
Ecumenical Patriarchate: namely the recognition of its ecumenical title.
The discussion surrounding the recognition of the title of Ecumenical Patriarch in Turkey is arguably,
in my opinion, a sad discussion. Inspired by the second Leitmotiv, it is a weak countermeasure
symbolising Turkeys inability to prevent the Patriarchate from opening up to the world.
The Turkish state does not want the Patriarch of Phanar to use the title ecumenical for it does not
recognise the Ecumenical Patriarchate as ecumenical. This is a very recent debate and the question of
the ecumenicity of the bishop of Constantinople was not discussed, for example, at Lausanne. It is, in
my opinion, a symbolic symptom of the Turkish governments fear of having what it considers to be
alien bodies inside its territory. Illustrative for it being a new phase in Turkeys negative policies
towards the Ecumenical Patriarchate, is the fact that the Ecumenical Patriarchate was criticised in the
60s for not excommunicating Makarios, stating that it was able do such a thing since it was
ecumenical.137 This criticism was part of a discourse proving that the Ecumenical Patriarchate was not
loyal to Turkey and should be considered as a foreign element, which made it ipso facto suspect.138
Denying the ecumenicity of the Patriarchate serves two points.
The first point is that denying the ecumenicity of the Patriarchate, is denying its power abroad and
denying its jurisdiction over Churches outside of Turkey. According to the Turkish state, the Patriarch
of Phanar is only responsible for the Christians in Turkey and is only the community head of the Greeks
remaining in the country. The question can be asked if this understanding of the function of the
Patriarchate, which is not discussed at Laussane, is due to a Turkish official misconception concerning
the exact symbolic and canonical nature of the terms patriarch and ecumenical, or the result of an actual
correct understanding of these terms. Both are probably true. Understanding the new interpretation of
the ecumenicity of the Patriarchate, is understanding that the hole that Patriarchate represented within
the isolationist shield of Turkey, which was considered to be closed, can also be opened up from the
inside out. Having spent so much effort in both reducing foreign influence in the Patriarchate and
reducing its manpower pool inspired by the first Leitmotiv, suddenly the Patriarchate itself, from inside
Turkey, breached the closed, isolationist shield of the Turkish state. Having direct control over church
communities abroad, both in Greece and other parts of the world, allows the Patriarchate to exercise its
soft power in these countries, lobbying successfully for its own interests; interests, which do not per se
coincide with the interests of the Turkish state. The patriarchate can as such become a political power
again. As the leader of the pan-Orthodox Church, the patriarch does indeed get internationally
recognised as an international player. Especially the current patriarch, Bartholomeus I, is indeed a world
player concerning the treatment of the environment within the Orthodox and Western oikoumene,
increasing his own influence and soft power because of this engagement and bringing as such also
obviously intended or not attention to the dire situation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate within
Turkey. The Turkish state is quite powerless when it comes to closing this breach, and can only actively
try to deny the Ecumenical Patriarchs ecumenical title and as such symbolically deny its international
prestige, limiting the Patriarchs soft power.
The second concern of the Turkish state concerning the ecumenical nature of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate is, although often argued by academics and pro-Orthodox writers as resulting from Turkeys
137 Macar (E.). A Victim of Reciprocity. p. 144.

26
ignorance on the matter (with which I do not agree),139 the fear of it becoming an international institution.
The Turkish government fears that by recognizing the Ecumenical Patriarchate as ecumenical, it would
start the process of making the Ecumenical Patriarchate into an extraterritorial entity, as such de jure
and de facto breaching Turkeys sovereignty, which it likes to keep so secure and unified at all costs.
Despite Bartholomeus himself stating on multiple occasions that the Phanar complex would never
become a second Vatican, this (nationalist) fear still appeases the fundamental first and second
Leitmotivs of the Turkish state. The arguments from multiple academics that claim that such a scenario
would be extremely unlikely concerning the nature and history of the Eastern-Orthodox Church, should
be nuanced. It is true that it appears unlikely in the new interpretation of ecumenicity that the Phanar
would become a second Vatican, but historically speaking, the Ecumenical Patriarchate did develop
similar tendencies like the Papacy. The raison dtre of the Vatican is the notion that the pope as supreme
leader of the Church should be independent from the influence of another power. The Greeks argued
similarly at the time of the dispute concerning the patriarch Constantine VI, concerning the political
nature of the Phanar.
The discussion concerning the ecumenicity of the Patriarchate is thus obviously political in nature, yet
it is being fought on the judicial level. The Turkish state does not recognise the Ecumenical Patriarchate
as a legal personality, independent from an actual recognition of its ecumenicity and neither does it
recognise the other religious heads of different minority groups in Turkey as such either.140 This policy,
legitimised as being essential to the secular nature of the Turkish state and as being essential for
reserving the equality of all the Turkish citizens, can obviously be understood as part of the Turkish
states discriminatory policies serving the purpose of chasing the remaining non-Islamic Turkish citizens
away and removing other entities that could exercise any form of power in the territory of Turkey besides
the Turkish state (the first Leitmotiv).
Reciprocity
Although it could be argued that the treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Turkey can also be
understood in the light of a reciprocity principle towards Greece generally meaning that a state
punishes the nationals of another state residing within its territory, when confronted with diplomatic,
political or military disputes I personally believe that the main Leitmotiv of the Turkish states policies
against the Ecumenical Patriarchate remained in the 20th century anchored in the greater historical arc
that is the already abundantly explained security and national unity issue.
This does not mean that on the discursive level, Turkey didnt apply the reciprocity principle to the
Patriarchate, on the contrary, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared during the Cyprus crisis of 64
that it would consider the Ecumenical Patriarchates treatment as a trump card in negotiations with
Greece.141 This is well illustrative of the typical Turkish governments displacement between official
discourse the Patriarchate is a Turkish institution, subject to Turkish law and purely an internal affair
and actual practice the Ecumenical Patriarchate is seen as fundamentally Greek and can be used to
punish Greece, implicitly warranting the intervention of Greece on behalf of the Patriarchate through
diplomatic concessions concerning the position and treatment of official and unofficial minorities in
Turkey.
Several policies were undertaken to harm the Patriarchate during the different cycles of the Cyprus issue,
yet Greece never wavered.142 As such Turkeys treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as a trump card
139 In the confrontation between Turkey and Greece concerning the patriarch Constantine VI, Greece indeed stated that the
Ecumenical Patriarchate should become an international institution, since that would be necessary for the execution of the
ecumenical function of the Patriarchate.
27
might be classified as a failure if one naively assumes that these policies were only executed in the light
of diplomacy and foreign affairs. The Turkish state considered all acts done against the Ecumenical
Patriarchate as fait accompli.143 As such these discriminatory policies should also be understood from
the greater perspective of the Turkish states 20th century mistrust of minorities in general and the
Patriarchate in particular and their wish to diminish the influence of minorities in the Republic as much
as possible.
Conclusion
In conclusion it seems that the Ecumenical Patriarchate was treated by the Turkish state in a very
negative way. The state continuously attacked both the institution itself and the network op people
wherein it existed. These negative policies stemmed from an existential fear which resulted from the
traumatising conditions wherein the Turkish Republic was born. Suddenly a world empire broke apart,
betrayed by all its members on the basis of nationality and religion. Different cultures and people could
no longer be trusted. If the successor state of the Ottoman Empire was going to survive, it had to cleanse
its internal demographic composition from any deviant ethnicities, faiths or nations. Despite a history
of loyalty towards every state wherein it existed, the fact that the Ecumenical Patriarchate turned its
back on the Ottomans at the very end, marked it in the eyes of the new Turkish nation as inherently
suspicious. The perception that all different nations, be it Christian or Muslim, betrayed the Ottoman
Empire, made the founders of the Turkish Republic believe that stability and safety could only be
procured through ethnically unifying the country and removing all institutions from the past. On top of
that, all foreign influence which incited in the eyes of the Turkish beholder these traitorous acts
should be shunned away, the internal, vulnerable demographic composition of the nation protected by a
giant, imaginary shield.
The actions of the young Republic against its minorities can be understood to be motivated by two
Leitmotivs: to unify the internal ethnical and national composition of the new nation, exterminating any
deviance either by genocide, repression, forced migration or assimilation; to shield the potentially
unstable interior of the state by an isolationist shield, preventing any foreign nation to put pressure on
Turkey or break it up from the inside out. Both Leitmotivs are complementary and the policies enacted
because of them are fundamentally interweaven. The presence of recognised minorities, gave foreign
powers through the Treaty of Lausanne ways to pressure Turkey and to influence its internal affairs.
Fearing the results of the Ottoman capitulation treaties, no foreign nation should be allowed anymore to
breach this isolationist shield. Especially dangerous for this shield, was the Ecumenical Patriarchate. A
Greek and international institution which existed within Turkey, but was considered to be fundamentally
non-Turkish. It reminded the state of the Megali Idea and the Ottoman millet-system. It was a gateway
for foreign interests to bypass Turkeys isolationist shield. Something had to be done. With the opening
up of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the world as a result of its incorporation within the isolationist
shield, it recently became official policy to limit the international status of the Patriarchate as much as
possible by denying it is ecumenical title. I hope my paper made clear why the Ecumenical Patriarchate
of Constantinople and New Rome is treated like this within the Turkish Republic.
With the rise of islamist parties, however, new Leitmotivs towards minorities might take the place of the
previous, kemalist ones or meld together in a new synthesis. Especially motivated by the EU, the status
of these minorities has improved considerably over the last years, yet still all of this is far from enough
and the question should be asked to what extent Islamic inspired Leitmotivs can bring true equality to
other religious minorities. Let this be the subject of further research.
28
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30

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Leitmotivs of the Turkish Republics minority policies:

Istanbul Bilgi University

Matthias L. J. Van Hoey

Defining the Church

e327970#e12221500>, last checked on 29/05/2016.

The Formation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its Church

Nicaea and Beyond: The Birth of the Imperial Church

14 Mango (C.). New Religion, Old Culture. p. 101.

pauly/patriarch-e12224440#>, last checked on 29/05/2016.

20 Herrin (J.). Byzantium. p. 40.

History of Europe. 2 (2009), p. 24.

28 Herrin (J.). Byzantium. p. 43.

The Medieval Church

Emperor and Patriarch

The Ottoman Church: Orthodoxy after Byzantium

Concise History of Greece. 2002, p. 11.

53 Konortas (P.). Dun compromis historique. p. 5.

A New Oikoumene: The Orthodox Millet

59 Konortas (P.). Dun compromis historique. pp. 9-10.

Dialectical Analysis. In: Turkish Studies. 2013, p. 2.

Greek Nationalism: The Rise of National Churches

65 Clogg (R.). Ottoman Rule. p. 21.

1: General treatment of the Greek Minority

nation. As is illustrated by the rampant antisemitism at that time.

83 One thinks about the Dersim genocide.

The Treatment of the Istanbul Rum Minority

85 ktem (E.) and Trkmen (F.). Foreign Policy. p. 4.

cassation turque. In: Rivista di studi politici internazionali. 77 (2010), 3, p. 411.

92 ktem (E.) and Trkmen (F.). Foreign Policy. p. 4.

104 ktem (E.) and Trkmen (F.). Foreign Policy. p. 7.

2: Treatment of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

109 ktem (E.). La question de loecumnicit. p. 408.

110 Psomiades (H.J.). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. p. 48.

Turkification of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

116 Psomiades (H.J.). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. p. 48.

126 Psomiades (H.J.). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. p. 52.

135 Psomiades (H.J.). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. p. 67.

137 Macar (E.). A Victim of Reciprocity. p. 144.

143 Macar (E.). A Victim of Reciprocity. p. 146.

Rhodes (P.J.). Ekklesia In: Brills New Pauly.

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