Today’s Zaman newspaper recently reported on ‘Patriarch Bartholomew found out about commission on Halki through media’.
Today’s Zaman is one of two English-language dailies based in Turkey and reports on domestic and international coverage. The published article can be read in its entirety below.
Patriarch Bartholomew found out about commission on Halki through media
2/17/2013
Read this article on the website of Today’s Zaman.
Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I in İstanbul has said he learned that a special commission was set up to decide the fate of the Halki Seminary, which has been closed for more than four decades, from newspapers.
The patriarch, referred to as the Fener Rum patriarch in the Turkish press because authorities find the word “ecumenical” politically threatening, spoke to the Milliyet daily in an interview published on Sunday. Bartholomew commented on developments regarding the Halki Seminary, which was established in 1844 on the island of Heybeliada. The seminary was closed in 1971 under a law that put religious and military training under state control.
It was the only school where Turkey’s Greek minority educated clergy. The theological school once trained generations of Greek Orthodox leaders, including Patriarch Bartholomew, who is one of its 900 graduates.
Civil society groups have long been arguing that it was closed unlawfully and that its reopening will require political will to bypass obstacles from anti-EU groups in Turkey, but steps in that direction have so far been slow.
Bartholomew said: “We are very sorry about this. It is not easy to understand how a house of knowledge can remain shut for 42 years in a modern Turkey.” He said the Patriarchate had been given false hopes many times about a possible re-opening of the school. “Recently, we read in the Hürriyet daily that a new commission was established, but we are learning about this from the media. There is no representative of the Patriarchate on this commission. It is as if we are not a party relevant to this issue.”
He said of the Halki Seminary: “[Mustafa Kemal] Atatürk didn’t shut it down, nor did [İsmet] İnönü or [Adnan] Menderes. It was shut down in 1971
The patriarch also commented on preparations to open a new Greek School on Gökçeada (Imbros), an island in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Çanakkale province. The Ministry of Education last month gave permission to the Greek community of the island to open a primary school on Gökçeada. He also said it was good news that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan offered Turkish citizenship to a number of archbishops in 2009, allowing all these individuals to participate in patriarchal elections.
“We are grateful to our prime minister. But the other issues that I have talked about are wearing us out, saddening us. This is also creating an impression that we are second-class citizens. For example, ambassadors, foreign prime ministers and presidents come to visit
He also said there was a time when the Foreign Ministry tried to block visits from foreign delegations to the Patriarchate.