Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, has brought a case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) regarding the Turkish government’s expropriation of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Saint Spyridon.
On April 26, the European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ) intervened as a third party in the affair pending at the ECHR, “Dimitri Bartholomeos Arhondoni and others v. Türkiye“. The ECLJ reports:
Since the establishment of modern Turkey [in 1923], the Turkish regime has sought to dispossess the Orthodox churches of their heritage in order to erase their history from Anatolia and ‘Turkify’ this land. One way of doing this is to declare the religious foundations that own and manage church properties ‘disaffected’, thereby transferring their ownership to the State. This is what the Turkish General Directorate of Foundations did in 1967. Since then, the Orthodox Church has been seeking to recover its property. All appeals to the Turkish courts have been rejected, as the Turkish authorities and courts are experts in delaying tactics against minorities. This led the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
The confiscation of the property of Christian churches in Anatolia is unfortunately a common practice, facilitated by the exodus of Christians who have become an ultra-minority in their own country. On several occasions, the European Court has condemned Turkey for violating the property rights of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches.
The ECLJ further explains that,
In 1935, Turkey had asked community foundations to declare the property they owned or managed. The official list resulting from this in 1936, now known as the ‘1936 Declaration,’ was used as a pretext to delegitimize all property acquired between 1936 and 1974. Today, the Greek Orthodox community still struggles to recover the thousands of properties stolen by these methods.
The Turkish government’s overall policy towards Greeks and their Orthodox churches can be defined as an ongoing genocide. The country’s history confirms it. Greeks are an indigenous people in what today is called Turkey. They built many cities and towns across Anatolia (within the present-day boundaries of Turkey), whose name stems from the Greek word “Anatole” meaning “the East” or “sunrise.”
The city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine I (272–337) in A.D. 324 on the site of an already-existing Greek city, Byzantium, built in the 7th century B.C. Constantine called the city a New Rome (Nova Roma). In 330, Constantine consecrated it as the empire’s new capital, a city which would one day bear the emperor’s name. Historian Donald L. Wasson notes that ”Constantinople would become the economic and cultural hub of the east and the center of both Greek classics and Christian ideals.” It was only in 1930—after the formation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923—that the city’s name was officially changed to ”Istanbul,” another Greek word. Specifically, “Istanbul” derives from the Greek phrase “is tin poli,” which means “to the city.”
The beginning of the Islamization of the land that is currently within Turkey’s borders dates to the 11th century, when the Muslim Turks, originally from Central Asia, arrived in the Armenian highlands and Anatolia. Through military invasions, they seized the towns and cities where indigenous Christians had lived for centuries. Ottoman Turks finally invaded Constantinople in the 15th century, bringing the destruction of the Byzantine Empire.
After the Turkish Ottoman takeover, many indigenous Greeks and other Christians converted to Islam to escape pressure, discrimination, and persecution—particularly the second-class dhimmi status—which required them to pay a high poll tax (jizya) in exchange for their lives. Converting to Islam would eventually include adopting the Turkish language. Hence, many people in Turkey today have Greek or other Christian ancestry.
Christian persecution in the Ottoman Empire culminated during a 10-year long genocide. The Association of Genocide Scholars announced in 2007 that “the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.” More than 3 million people are estimated to have been killed in the genocide.
The present legal status of the Greek Orthodox community in Constantinople was originally established by the 1923 international Lausanne Treaty (particularly by the Annex of this Treaty on the Exchange of Populations between Greece and Turkey). The Lausanne Treaty recognized the boundaries of the modern state of Turkey, granted basic human rights to Greeks, Armenians, and Jews (many of which Turkey has systematically violated), and settled other issues between Turkey and the other signatory states. It further specified the first internationally ratified compulsory population exchange. As a result, those indigenous Greek Orthodox Christians who had survived the 1913-23 genocide were forcibly displaced to Greece.
According to the treaty’s second article, the Greek inhabitants of Constantinople would not be included in the population exchange. Thus around 130,000 ethnic Greeks remained in Istanbul, as well as on the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada) and Bozcaada Tenedos (Bozcaada). Though the Greeks of Istanbul were initially excluded from the 1923 population exchange and were allowed to remain in their native city, the Turkish government managed to eliminate them through policies that included a pogrom and forced deportations. According to Amy Mills,
In 1922, the National Turkish Trade Association was founded to determine which businesses were Turkish. The association discovered that 97% of the import-export trade in Istanbul, and all shops, stores, restaurants, and entertainment centers in Beyoğlu [a central district of Istanbul] were owned by minorities [Christians and Jews]. This survey was a precursor to actions taken with the aim of Turkifying the city’s economy; in 1923, non-Muslims were expelled from trading jobs and insurance companies. In 1924 minorities were barred from service jobs, bars, restaurants, coffeehouses, as well as trades such as boat captain, fisherman, and streetcar driver, jobs previously dominated by non-Muslims. In 1934 a law identified further minority-dominated professions to be prohibited to foreigners.
From April 1941 to July 1942, Greek, Armenian, Jewish, and Assyrian men in Turkey were forced into labor battalions in which no Muslim citizens were enlisted. This policy is known as “the conscription of twenty classes” (in Turkish, “yirmi kur’a nafıa askerleri” or “soldiers for public works by drawing of twenty lots”). Instead of active service, they were forced to labor under terrible conditions constructing roads and airports. Some lost their lives or caught diseases.
In 1942, the Turkish government enacted the Wealth Tax Law as a way of removing Greeks, Armenians, and Jews from Turkey’s economy. Those who could not pay the exceedingly high tax were sent to labor camps or deported; their properties were then seized by the government. According to Corry Guttstadt:
Many families were forced to sell their shops and businesses, their houses, even their carpets, furniture, and other household articles, to raise the tax money … Some people committed suicide in despair.
The tax led to a dramatic rise in the liquidation of enterprises with non-Muslim ownership and a sharp decline in the formation of new non-Muslim businesses, as well as a commensurate increase in the number of Muslim businesses.
Then came the Istanbul pogrom (sometimes referred to as Septemvriana). It was a Turkish government-instigated series of riots against the Greek minority of Constantinople in September 1955. According to well-documented evidence, thousands of Greek shops and businesses were sacked and plundered; Greek homes were vandalized and robbed. Greek schools were stripped of their furniture, books, and equipment. Greek churches, monasteries, and cemeteries were violently attacked and, in some cases, destroyed. The tombs of some ecumenical patriarchs and other Christians were opened and desecrated. Some Greeks were murdered; women and children were raped.
According to Alfred de Zayas, a scholar of history and international law, the 1955 anti-Greek pogrom in Constantinople “is characterized as a ‘crime against humanity,’ comparable in scope to the November 1938 Kristallnacht in Germany, perpetrated by the Nazi authorities against Jewish civilians.” This savage pogrom escalated the Greek exodus from the city.
Nine years later, in 1964, Turkey denounced the 1930 Greek-Turkish Ankara Convention, refusing any negotiation for its replacement. Greeks in Istanbul were ordered to leave the country. As a result, over 12,000 Greeks were deported from the city. Most of them held dual Greek citizenship but were natives of the city. They were allowed to take with them only one suitcase weighing not more than 20 kilograms, and just $20 in cash. These pressures forced a further 40,000 ethnic Greeks (relatives of those deported) also to flee the country. Along with the deportations, a governmental decree froze all Greek assets in Turkey. The houses and properties of the deported Greeks were confiscated by the Turkish government after being characterized as “abandoned.”
In 1971, the only school for training the leadership of Orthodox Christianity, Halki Seminary, was arbitrarily closed by the Turkish government. To this day, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople remains unable to train clergy and potential successors for the position of Patriarch. The Ecumenical Patriarchate has been a particular target of confiscated properties. According to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, ”Through various methods, the Turkish authorities have confiscated thousands of properties from the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Orthodox community over the years including our monasteries, church buildings, an orphanage, private homes, apartment buildings, schools and land.”
Meanwhile, Turkish authorities do not allow the use of the term or title of “Ecumenical” for any religious activity although it has been used since the 6th century and is recognized throughout the world. Today, Constantinople is almost devoid of Greek, Armenian, and Jewish communities, and their considerable civilizational contributions.
The current Greek Orthodox population in Constantinople is around 1,200. Alarmingly, Turkey’s abuse of Greek cultural and religious heritage is ongoing. Hagia Sophia (Greek for “Holy Wisdom”) was built as a church by Greeks in the 6th century. Nearly 1,000 years later, Ottoman Turks converted the Hagia Sophia Cathedral into a mosque, killing or enslaving the Christians inside. In 1930, the Turkish government converted Hagia Sophia into a museum; and in 2020, it was converted back into a mosque.
More recently, Turkey has converted yet another historic Greek church, the Chora Church, into a mosque. The art historian Robert G. Osterhaut described its “second in renown only to Hagia Sophia among the Byzantine churches of Istanbul.” Jamie Dunlop’s “Byzantine Architecture Project” notes that “The original structure was built by the Holy Theodus in 534 in the reign of Justinian. In the 11th and 12th century, it was rebuilt by the Comnenus family and dedicated to Christ (thus the name, Christ in Chora).”
After the fall of Constantinople, Ottoman Turks converted the Chora Church into a mosque. And, after the founding of Turkey, the mosque was converted into the “Kariye Museum and Museum Warehouse.” It was converted back into a mosque through a Presidential Decree in 2020. On May 6, the mosque was officially opened to Muslim prayers.
There is no shortage of mosques in Turkey. According to 2024 official data, the number of mosques in the country stands at 89,817. Yet Turkey is constantly converting historic churches into mosques, for doing so is a declaration of Islamic dominance and superiority over all other religions. In this environment hostile to Greeks and other Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is fighting a legal battle at the European Court of Human Rights. He seeks to preserve the status and properties belonging to the Foundation of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Saint Spyridon in Constantinople, a city built by his very ancestors. Christians around the world should stand by him.
Turkey Purges Greeks and Targets Orthodox Churches
An Icon of the Theotokos with the Christ Child behind an inscription of the name “Allah” in the Hagia Sophia. Since the reversion of the ancient Christian church to a mosque in 2020, Christian imagery has been covered over. Photo by Imad Alassiry on Unsplash
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, has brought a case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) regarding the Turkish government’s expropriation of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Saint Spyridon.
On April 26, the European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ) intervened as a third party in the affair pending at the ECHR, “Dimitri Bartholomeos Arhondoni and others v. Türkiye“. The ECLJ reports:
The ECLJ further explains that,
The Turkish government’s overall policy towards Greeks and their Orthodox churches can be defined as an ongoing genocide. The country’s history confirms it. Greeks are an indigenous people in what today is called Turkey. They built many cities and towns across Anatolia (within the present-day boundaries of Turkey), whose name stems from the Greek word “Anatole” meaning “the East” or “sunrise.”
The city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine I (272–337) in A.D. 324 on the site of an already-existing Greek city, Byzantium, built in the 7th century B.C. Constantine called the city a New Rome (Nova Roma). In 330, Constantine consecrated it as the empire’s new capital, a city which would one day bear the emperor’s name. Historian Donald L. Wasson notes that ”Constantinople would become the economic and cultural hub of the east and the center of both Greek classics and Christian ideals.” It was only in 1930—after the formation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923—that the city’s name was officially changed to ”Istanbul,” another Greek word. Specifically, “Istanbul” derives from the Greek phrase “is tin poli,” which means “to the city.”
The beginning of the Islamization of the land that is currently within Turkey’s borders dates to the 11th century, when the Muslim Turks, originally from Central Asia, arrived in the Armenian highlands and Anatolia. Through military invasions, they seized the towns and cities where indigenous Christians had lived for centuries. Ottoman Turks finally invaded Constantinople in the 15th century, bringing the destruction of the Byzantine Empire.
After the Turkish Ottoman takeover, many indigenous Greeks and other Christians converted to Islam to escape pressure, discrimination, and persecution—particularly the second-class dhimmi status—which required them to pay a high poll tax (jizya) in exchange for their lives. Converting to Islam would eventually include adopting the Turkish language. Hence, many people in Turkey today have Greek or other Christian ancestry.
Christian persecution in the Ottoman Empire culminated during a 10-year long genocide. The Association of Genocide Scholars announced in 2007 that “the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.” More than 3 million people are estimated to have been killed in the genocide.
The present legal status of the Greek Orthodox community in Constantinople was originally established by the 1923 international Lausanne Treaty (particularly by the Annex of this Treaty on the Exchange of Populations between Greece and Turkey). The Lausanne Treaty recognized the boundaries of the modern state of Turkey, granted basic human rights to Greeks, Armenians, and Jews (many of which Turkey has systematically violated), and settled other issues between Turkey and the other signatory states. It further specified the first internationally ratified compulsory population exchange. As a result, those indigenous Greek Orthodox Christians who had survived the 1913-23 genocide were forcibly displaced to Greece.
According to the treaty’s second article, the Greek inhabitants of Constantinople would not be included in the population exchange. Thus around 130,000 ethnic Greeks remained in Istanbul, as well as on the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada) and Bozcaada Tenedos (Bozcaada). Though the Greeks of Istanbul were initially excluded from the 1923 population exchange and were allowed to remain in their native city, the Turkish government managed to eliminate them through policies that included a pogrom and forced deportations. According to Amy Mills,
From April 1941 to July 1942, Greek, Armenian, Jewish, and Assyrian men in Turkey were forced into labor battalions in which no Muslim citizens were enlisted. This policy is known as “the conscription of twenty classes” (in Turkish, “yirmi kur’a nafıa askerleri” or “soldiers for public works by drawing of twenty lots”). Instead of active service, they were forced to labor under terrible conditions constructing roads and airports. Some lost their lives or caught diseases.
In 1942, the Turkish government enacted the Wealth Tax Law as a way of removing Greeks, Armenians, and Jews from Turkey’s economy. Those who could not pay the exceedingly high tax were sent to labor camps or deported; their properties were then seized by the government. According to Corry Guttstadt:
The tax led to a dramatic rise in the liquidation of enterprises with non-Muslim ownership and a sharp decline in the formation of new non-Muslim businesses, as well as a commensurate increase in the number of Muslim businesses.
Then came the Istanbul pogrom (sometimes referred to as Septemvriana). It was a Turkish government-instigated series of riots against the Greek minority of Constantinople in September 1955. According to well-documented evidence, thousands of Greek shops and businesses were sacked and plundered; Greek homes were vandalized and robbed. Greek schools were stripped of their furniture, books, and equipment. Greek churches, monasteries, and cemeteries were violently attacked and, in some cases, destroyed. The tombs of some ecumenical patriarchs and other Christians were opened and desecrated. Some Greeks were murdered; women and children were raped.
According to Alfred de Zayas, a scholar of history and international law, the 1955 anti-Greek pogrom in Constantinople “is characterized as a ‘crime against humanity,’ comparable in scope to the November 1938 Kristallnacht in Germany, perpetrated by the Nazi authorities against Jewish civilians.” This savage pogrom escalated the Greek exodus from the city.
Nine years later, in 1964, Turkey denounced the 1930 Greek-Turkish Ankara Convention, refusing any negotiation for its replacement. Greeks in Istanbul were ordered to leave the country. As a result, over 12,000 Greeks were deported from the city. Most of them held dual Greek citizenship but were natives of the city. They were allowed to take with them only one suitcase weighing not more than 20 kilograms, and just $20 in cash. These pressures forced a further 40,000 ethnic Greeks (relatives of those deported) also to flee the country. Along with the deportations, a governmental decree froze all Greek assets in Turkey. The houses and properties of the deported Greeks were confiscated by the Turkish government after being characterized as “abandoned.”
In 1971, the only school for training the leadership of Orthodox Christianity, Halki Seminary, was arbitrarily closed by the Turkish government. To this day, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople remains unable to train clergy and potential successors for the position of Patriarch. The Ecumenical Patriarchate has been a particular target of confiscated properties. According to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, ”Through various methods, the Turkish authorities have confiscated thousands of properties from the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Orthodox community over the years including our monasteries, church buildings, an orphanage, private homes, apartment buildings, schools and land.”
Meanwhile, Turkish authorities do not allow the use of the term or title of “Ecumenical” for any religious activity although it has been used since the 6th century and is recognized throughout the world. Today, Constantinople is almost devoid of Greek, Armenian, and Jewish communities, and their considerable civilizational contributions.
The current Greek Orthodox population in Constantinople is around 1,200. Alarmingly, Turkey’s abuse of Greek cultural and religious heritage is ongoing. Hagia Sophia (Greek for “Holy Wisdom”) was built as a church by Greeks in the 6th century. Nearly 1,000 years later, Ottoman Turks converted the Hagia Sophia Cathedral into a mosque, killing or enslaving the Christians inside. In 1930, the Turkish government converted Hagia Sophia into a museum; and in 2020, it was converted back into a mosque.
More recently, Turkey has converted yet another historic Greek church, the Chora Church, into a mosque. The art historian Robert G. Osterhaut described its “second in renown only to Hagia Sophia among the Byzantine churches of Istanbul.” Jamie Dunlop’s “Byzantine Architecture Project” notes that “The original structure was built by the Holy Theodus in 534 in the reign of Justinian. In the 11th and 12th century, it was rebuilt by the Comnenus family and dedicated to Christ (thus the name, Christ in Chora).”
After the fall of Constantinople, Ottoman Turks converted the Chora Church into a mosque. And, after the founding of Turkey, the mosque was converted into the “Kariye Museum and Museum Warehouse.” It was converted back into a mosque through a Presidential Decree in 2020. On May 6, the mosque was officially opened to Muslim prayers.
There is no shortage of mosques in Turkey. According to 2024 official data, the number of mosques in the country stands at 89,817. Yet Turkey is constantly converting historic churches into mosques, for doing so is a declaration of Islamic dominance and superiority over all other religions. In this environment hostile to Greeks and other Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is fighting a legal battle at the European Court of Human Rights. He seeks to preserve the status and properties belonging to the Foundation of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Saint Spyridon in Constantinople, a city built by his very ancestors. Christians around the world should stand by him.
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