Faith, hope and parity

Financial Times
August 26, 2005

By Vincent Boland

One recent Saturday afternoon, in the enervating heat and noise of
Istanbul, the holiest man in the Orthodox Christian Church joined a
queue to catch a ferry. His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew I stood in line with about 200 others, mostly tourists,
bound for the little island of Heybeliada, about an hour’s ride from the
city. For many of those boarding the boat, a visit to the island is part
of the experience of being in Istanbul, something recommended in the
guidebooks. It has excellent beaches, a naval high school and a
watersports club popular with Istanbul’s rich.

The Patriarch might have been just another day-tripper too, were it not
for his long black cassock, the beautiful staff he carried, and a small
entourage fussing around him and carrying briefcases and his travel
bags. Still, even that was not enough to merit the attention of most of
the other travellers, anxious to get a good seat on the ferry. They
might have glanced at the man in black, but they did not acknowledge him.

The Patriarch doesn’t normally queue, he admits a few minutes later,
when I remark on the informality of his embarkation. As the boat
manoeuvres around the stretch of water where the Bosphorus joins the
Marmara sea and begins our journey, he explains that the Patriarchate is
awaiting the delivery of a new private boat to replace one that was sold
recently. Until it arrives, he says, he is happy to line up with
everybody else.

Bartholomew is the 270th occupier of the Patriarchate of Constantinople,
one of the founding churches of Christendom. For his followers he is
first among equals among the patriarchs of his church. His position is
not universally accepted; in the notoriously schismatic Orthodox Church
there is intense rivalry between Bartholomew and Alexei II of Moscow,
whom the Russian church – and perhaps the Russian government – would
claim to be Bartholomew’s equal (they are involved in a fierce battle
for the allegiance of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine). And since the
Orthodox Church is organised more along national lines than the Roman
Catholic Church, there is frequent dispute among the patriarchy. Still,
Bartholomew is regarded, especially in Greece and the Anglo-Saxon world,
as the leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, and he has
the mien and bearing of a man of influence. And for him, a visit to
Heybeliada – known in Greek as Halki – is more a pilgrimage than a day out.

It is also a political act. At the summit of this speck of land stands a
Greek Orthodox seminary that has been at the centre of an extraordinary
dispute between Orthodox Christians and the authorities in Turkey since
it was closed by Ankara in 1971. The dispute pits Turkey’s fiercely
secular authorities against one of the world’s great Christian churches.
It raises a profound question about the degree to which Turkey – whose
prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is said to pray at least three times
a day – is committed historically and constitutionally to secularism.
Can it grant rights to minority religions that it is not willing to
grant to the majority faith? It also poses a dilemma both for Turkey and
for Europe: can a Muslim country that aspires to join the European Union
embrace freedom of religion and remain committed to stifling political
Islam?

The seminary, built on the site of the Holy Trinity monastery, is a
splendid piece of mid-19th century school architecture, airy,
high-ceilinged and with views of the sea or the city in every direction.
It was opened in 1844, during a period of reform in the late Ottoman
empire known as the Tanzimat, as a theological school to train priests
for the Orthodox Church. The Patriarch himself was a student here from
1954 to 1961, and he describes it as `a perfect place between Earth and
heaven’.

The seminary was closed as part of a campaign by the Turkish state
beginning in the 1960s to rein in private educational institutions,
which were felt to be a threat to the state ethos, especially if they
were religious institutions. The seminary was included in this crackdown
partly through a legal ruling that it could not remain independent. So
it was officially `discontinued’. And despite a three-decade campaign by
the church to reopen it, that is how it remains.

The silence of the seminary’s halls and classrooms and the threat from
neglect to its library of theological and history books and old
manuscripts, are emblematic of a wider problem: what Orthodox Christians
claim is the systematic mistreatment of the Patriarchate over many years
by successive Turkish governments. They say Ankara has confiscated not
only the seminary but thousands of buildings – churches, schools,
hospitals – that are the property of the Patriarchate, impoverishing it
in a deliberate attempt to destroy it, or force it to leave Istanbul,
where it has resided for 1,700 years.

So the conduct of the Turkish government, Orthodox Christians claim, is
both an offence against Turkish history and a rebuke to the principle of
religious freedom enshrined in the constitution. Every visit the
Patriarch makes to the seminary, including the one he will make on this
trip to Heybeliada, is therefore a way of reminding the authorities of
what the church considers a violation of its historical and
constitutional rights.

‘We are a part of this country, born and educated here,’ His All
Holiness tells me on the ferry, in a voice that is both grave and soft.
`That is why we are so disappointed, because although we [Orthodox
Christians] are part of this country we are treated as second-class
citizens. Because of our faith and our national background [essentially
Greek] we are seen in a different way [to Muslim Turks]. It is a shame
and a pity to have such a beautiful place empty when the Patriarchate
has such great need of it.’

After his visit to the seminary, the Patriarch attends to the immediate
task that has brought him to Heybeliada: the reopening and
reconsecration of the tiny church of St Nicholas in the island’s little
seaside town. Dressed in his most elaborate ecclesiastical robes and
attended by several priests, some of whom have travelled from Greece, he
begins the elaborate ceremony with prayers, incense and hymns sung in
deep male voices. There is quite a crowd: most are tourists from Greece
or from Istanbul’s tiny Greek Orthodox community, or have been invited
especially for the occasion regardless of their religion.

The church has a plain exterior, but its interior is full of
iconography: Jesus Christ, Mary, the saints. Its vaulted ceiling draws
the gaze upwards towards the icons and decoration on the walls, and the
high altar is a rich elaboration of wood and gold. Like a lot of
interiors of Orthodox Christian churches, its decoration seems
excessive. It is a vivid contrast with the places and forms of Muslim
worship in Turkey. There are many wonderfully elaborate mosques all over
the country; the collection of great mosques in Sultanahmet and Fatih,
in old Istanbul, is among the world’s finest. But their elaboration is
an exterior one; inside they are as austere and simple as the ceremonies
they hold. Still, not even the fascination of the ceremony at St
Nicholas can keep everybody entranced; the stifling heat soon sends some
of the congregation outside, where evening is approaching and it is a
little cooler.

The Patriarchate – which is for Orthodox Christians what the Vatican is
for Roman Catholics – is a collection of mostly wooden buildings that
sits squarely in the middle of old Istanbul, in a district called Fener.
Once this area was home to a sizeable population of Jews and ethnic
Greeks; now it is among the most conservative Muslim quarters of the
city. Women here are invariably covered from head to toe; their menfolk
sit in teashops smoking and chatting. It seems an odd place for the
world headquarters of a Christian church.

This modest compound is the focal point of Istanbul’s Greek Orthodox
Christian community. Inside, it is a warren of corridors and rooms where
informality appears to be the norm. Visitors to His All Holiness bow and
kiss his hand on meeting him, but there is none of the ritual that
surrounds the Pope in Rome. Outside, guards hover at the gate and there
is airport-style security. On the advice of the local mayor, the
Patriarch has a police bodyguard – seated discreetly behind us on the
ferry – because of occasional hostility from neighbourhood nationalists.

The Orthodox community in Turkey has three main components: Armenian,
Greek and Syrian. Figures for how many adherents each branch has are
difficult to find – the census does not classify them. Official
estimates, however, suggest about 3,000 Greek Orthodox Christians, and
there is little doubt that the community has been in decline for many
years. Its interaction with the wider Turkish community in the city has
invariably reflected over the years the state of relations between
Turkey and Greece, which were antagonistic for many decades until the
late 1990s but are now the warmest they have been for years (the prime
ministers of the two countries are friends).

The relationship between Turkey and Greece is ancient and complex. But
to understand their postwar history, it is necessary to recount the fate
of the Greek Orthodox community in Istanbul. If nothing else, it helps
to explain why there are so few members of that community today. In
1955, over a period of about 24 hours on September 6 and 7, Istanbul
witnessed a mob assault against its ethnic Greek inhabitants that marked
the beginning of the end for the community and the Orthodox Church in
the city. This community numbered about 100,000 at the time, when
Istanbul was much smaller than it is today.

The precise cause of what the Greek-American historian Speros Vryonis,
in an exhaustive new history of the incident, calls a pogrom (ie that it
was orchestrated by government forces) is complex. But it started when
reports reached Istanbul that the house where Mustafa Kemal Ataturk –
the founder of the republic of Turkey – is said to have been born, in
the Greek city of Thessaloniki, had been bombed by Greek nationalists.
The reports were not true; even today the origins of the reports appear
unclear. Within a few hours hundreds of Greek businesses and
institutions in Istanbul were ransacked and about 40 people were killed.

Walking the pleasant district of Cihangir in central Istanbul now, where
much of the community lived, one sees houses on every other street
standing empty even as the neighbourhood undergoes rapid gentrification.
These are the homes of Greek families who fled after 1955 and that now
exist in a kind of legal limbo awaiting some resolution that is not
forthcoming. By the Besiktas fish market an Orthodox church stands
silent and shrouded, and opposite it a school appears to be rotting
away. These were centres of Greek life in Istanbul at one time; now they
are reminders of an ugly and barely remembered incident in the city’s
recent history.

Perhaps this is why Istanbul now feels like a city with something
missing. Many residents of the city regret 1955 deeply. Today, however,
thanks in part to the remarkable turnaround in Turkish/Greek relations,
the Greek Orthodox community’s prospects may be brightening. Not only is
the Patriarch a widely respected and much-liked man; the community, like
many small minorities, is mostly wealthy and successful, and some of
those who left in the 1970s and 1980s are returning to reclaim and
renovate their properties, according to Alexis Alexandris, the
consul-general of Greece in Istanbul.

One legacy of the disaster that befell the Greek Orthodox community in
1955, though, may be paradoxical: it has created a greater sense of its
position inside Turkey today. What the community seeks now from the
Turkish state – the reopening of the seminary on Heybeliada and a
recognition of the Patriarch’s `ecumenical’ status as a worldwide leader
– they seek as Turkish citizens rather than as a religious minority.
Part of the dismay the Patriarch feels at his treatment by the state is
that he is intensely loyal to that state. `I spent two years in the
Turkish army,’ he tells me. `We [Orthodox Christians] pay our taxes,
obey the laws, and we are very loyal citizens.’

So the quarrel between the Orthodox Church and Turkey is not one between
Christians and Muslims. It is one between the church and the country’s
secular authorities; and the stakes are high. Activists in the Orthodox
Church say the very survival of the Patriarchate is at issue. For
Turkey, the dispute raises a fascinating question about the place of
religion in a secular society. It asks searching questions about
Ankara’s treatment of minority religions. These questions, in turn,
trouble the European Union, which Turkey wishes to join and which has
absolute positions on such principles as religious freedom. The
controversy offers a revealing glimpse of the dilemmas that Turkey faces
as it becomes a freer and more democratic society.

Despite – or perhaps because of – the high stakes, Turkey has trouble
making its case for the defence. This may be because Turkey does not
have one: the fate of the seminary on Heybeliada appears, on the face of
it, to be open and shut. Or it may be because it is unwilling to
undertake a unilateral act before October 3, when it begins the formal
EU accession process. Reopening the seminary could therefore be a
bargaining chip to be played at a more propitious moment.

The issue is extremely sensitive, nonetheless. Not only did both the
directorate of religious affairs and the foreign ministry decline to
speak on the record for this article; it is difficult to ascertain even
what the official position is on the seminary. What is clear, however,
is that reopening it is not a simple matter. If it were, a decree to do
so would have been issued long ago because, officials assured me, the
government is `pre-disposed’ to finding a solution. But, the officials
said, reopening the seminary presents a complicated legal, political,
diplomatic and electoral quandary for the current government, which is
headed by the most openly devout Muslim prime minister in Turkey’s
recent history.

I first got a sense of how potent the quarrel is becoming about three
months ago, during a conversation with two Americans over coffee in an
Istanbul hotel. Anthony Limberakis is a radiologist in Philadelphia, and
one of the leading members – or `archons’ – of the Greek Orthodox church
in the US. With him was Father Alex Karloutsos, an Orthodox priest from
Long Island.

They had arrived in Istanbul from Brussels, which has become the latest
and, arguably, the most important battleground in the seminary dispute.
The Patriarch himself was there a few weeks ago, raising the issue with
the European Commission and expressing his support for Turkey’s EU
membership. Limberakis and Karloutsos say they also support Turkey’s EU
bid. But there is a sense of urgency in their words, and not a little anger.

The plight of the Patriarchate inside Turkey, Limberakis says, `is an
impending catastrophe. We are talking about the very survival of the
spiritual centre of world Orthodoxy. For a secular country to be
consumed with [a perceived threat from] a few thousand Christians is
very perplexing. Turkey ought to be greater than that.’ He also finds
insulting Turkey’s refusal to recognise the term `Ecumenical’ in the
Patriarch’s title, which refers to his worldwide vocation.

Karloutsos hands me a list of properties listed as `confiscated by the
government of Turkey between 1974 and 2002′. It contains details of 153
hospitals owned by the Patriarchate that were, in effect, nationalised
by the state during that time. The list is part of a hefty batch of
documents presented to the US Congress (which Karloutsos also gives me)
as part of an intense lobbying effort that has won the backing of
powerful US politicians and church leaders.

Limberakis and Karloutsos have now turned their attention to the EU,
aware that it offers the best immediate hope for a solution. During the
accession process Turkey can expect the minutest scrutiny of its record
in observing and implementing human and civil rights. Its record is poor
but improving; its stance on the seminary, according to diplomats in
Ankara, will be a test of how far it is prepared to go to accept certain
principles that may conflict with its current, secular constitutional
settlement.

On the face of it, this settlement ordains a strict separation between
the state and religion in Turkey. Ataturk decreed that the country was
to be secular, nationalist, republican, popular, statist and modern.
These are its governing principles today, 82 years after it was created
from the ruins of the Ottoman empire. So the people of Turkey, the
majority of whom are Sunni Muslims, are free to worship. But what and
even how they worship is, to a large extent, dictated by the state.

One of the main functions of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, an
arm of the government, is to write the sermons that are preached in
mosques every Friday. Religious schooling is permissible but limited,
and is tightly controlled. Many Turkish people are quite content with
this arrangement, believing that it protects them from a stifling and
perhaps oppressive Islam. Others are not, believing that it has left a
spiritual vacuum, perhaps even a hostility to religion per se, at the
heart of the Turkish state.

However, as Ali Carkoglu, a professor at Sabanci University in Istanbul,
puts it, the result is that Turkey does not recognise any religious
authority independent of the state. This, as much as anything, is what
secularism means in Turkey today. `All imams [in Turkey] are state
officials – clerks, basically,’ Carkoglu says. `They follow orders. So,
if [Turkey] recognises a religious authority that is not under state
control, the whole system will change. The issue of the Patriarchate
touches that nerve.’

There is an irony to Turkey’s stance on secularism – or, more
accurately, French-style laicism – that is not appreciated very well in
the EU. By strictly controlling what they say, Turkey in general has
avoided the phenomenon of radical imams that is now causing such
soul-searching in Britain and France. Instead, religious practice in
Turkey is largely a private matter, which is how the constitution and
the secular authorities have always regarded it, Carkoglu says.

According to Cengiz Aktar, a prominent Turkish academic who is the head
of a Turkish/Greek friendship society, part of Turkey’s dilemma about
how to deal with the Patriarchate and with other Christian religions is
that the authorities in Turkey do not really understand the Christian
world. `There are lacunae in the appreciation of the role of the
Patriarchate in the world among the secular authorities,’ he says. `In a
wider sense, reopening the seminary would strengthen the position of
Istanbul within the Orthodox Church. But there is no appreciation among
the secular authorities that this might be beneficial for Turkey.’

Olli Rehn is the EU’s commissioner in charge of expanding the union to
include new members. He sums up the EU’s position in fairly stark terms:
`Freedom of religion is one of the core issues to be addressed by
Turkey, and the reopening of Halki is a critical litmus test of its
implementation,’ Rehn says in a telephone interview. `I have significant
difficulties to understand how a tiny Christian minority could pose any
threat to the Turkish state or to the predominant culture in Turkey. It
should be as easy to open a church in Eskisehir [a town near Ankara] as
it is to open a mosque in Finland. But it is not, for the moment.’

So why is Ankara not acting to reopen the seminary? In my conversations
with officials and with opinion-formers who are familiar with the issue,
I got a clear sense that there is a desire bordering on urgency to find
a solution. They acknowledge that the reopening of the seminary, and the
benefits it would bring to the Orthodox Church, present no threat to
Turkey; the opposite is true. It would reap instant dividends in
relations with the EU and the US. It would also help to neutralise the
growing body of opinion outside Turkey that the country does not respect
the fundamental value of freedom of religion.

The government, rooted in the country’s tradition of political Islam,
arguably should have ordered the reopening of the seminary after it came
to power in late 2002 on a wave of popular disenchantment with the state
of Turkish politics. Perhaps it would have done had it realised how
thorny the problem would become. Now, however, it may be too late for
this government to act. To understand why, it is necessary to appreciate
the difficulties in which Erdogan now finds himself and his government.
Rehn’s comment about Turkey becoming more like Finland is not glib; it
cuts to the heart of the Turkish dilemma.

When Erdogan and his Justice and Development party were elected, the
bedrock of their support came from Muslim voters outside the big cities
who were appalled at the corruption that was then (and still is)
rampant, and whose way of life had been undermined by a financial crisis
in 2000-2001 that scarred Turkey’s emerging middle class. The government
has not wiped out corruption. But it has steadied the economy,
satisfying at least one demand of its core voters.

Now those core voters want something else. They want their sons to be
educated at religious schools (which is permitted) and then to have the
freedom to pursue a university education of their choice (which is not).
They may even want to make adultery a criminal offence, as Erdogan tried
(and failed) to do last autumn, to the horror of secularists. Most of
all, they want their daughters to be able to wear a headscarf as a
matter of civil and religious liberty (‘covered women’ may not enter
official buildings or attend classes at state universities, and may not
be appointed to a range of jobs in the civil administration). One might
say that they want what Patriarch Bartholomew wants – the freedom to
govern their religious lives as they choose, without state interference.

Yet whenever Erdogan tries to make concessions to these voters, he bumps
up against the constitution, and sometimes even against the military,
which considers itself the guardian of Ataturk’s legacy. When he sought
last year to allow boys from religious high schools to pursue a
university education of their choosing, he was forced to abandon the
measure because of fierce opposition from secularists. Despite his huge
parliamentary majority (due less to the size of his core vote than to
the electoral rules concerning parliamentary representation), Turkey’s
secular forces are remarkably powerful, and even if they cannot stop
him, the constitution and constitutional court probably will.

So if Erdogan cannot provide his core Muslim voters with greater
religious freedom, how can he offer it to Turkey’s tiny Orthodox
Christian community? It would be electoral suicide. It is not that the
vast majority of Turkish Muslims want to keep the seminary closed; it is
that, if the Orthodox community can have a religious school independent
of the state, then so should they. Turkey may ultimately be able to
present a solution to the seminary closure, one that is acceptable to
everybody, only through a wider move that addresses the grievances of
all religions. There is no sign that this country is ready for such a
constitutional upheaval.

In the past, Patriarch Bartholomew has expressed his belief that the
seminary on Heybeliada will one day reopen. He said he believed it would
reopen as he believed in God. When I ask him, on the ferry, what he
thinks today, he sounds pessimistic, even deflated. He says: `I still
hope that one day we will get permission to reopen it.’ And he cannot
resist referring to one last irony of the closure of his beloved and
silent seminary. In the garden in front of the seminary there is a bust
of Ataturk above a slogan attributed to the great man that reads: `The
main virtue in life is knowledge.’ His All Holiness smiles a weak smile.
`How ironic,’ he says, `that this should appear at the entrance to a
closed school.’

Vincent Boland is an FT correspondent based in Ankara.