Politics: Religion: Istanbul Conference of Christians, Jews, and Muslims calls for tolerance

A landmark conference on promoting conciliation and peace in Southeast Europe is under way in Istanbul, according to Southeast European News (Kathimerini - 08/11/05; AP, Pravda - 07/11/05; Appeal of Conscience Foundation). The conference was held at the invitation of Patriarch Bartholomew I, the titular head of Eastern Orthodoxy which accords him the ancient designation "Ecumenical Patriarch" but which the Turkish government does not allow him to use.

Religious figures must promote peace and conciliation, not conflict, Christian, Muslim and Jewish spiritual leaders said Monday [November 7, 2005] at the start of a three-day conference in Istanbul.

The forum, dubbed Peace and Tolerance II, focuses on inter-religious co-operation aimed at strengthening peace in Southeastern Europe, the Balkans and Central Asia.

The meeting is taking place at the initiative of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of some 250 million Orthodox Christians living around the world and a strong backer of interfaith dialogue, including efforts to heal the centuries-old schism between the Orthodox and Catholic churches. [But the actual diocese of Bartholomew I has been reduced to about 2,000 active persons due to the repression practised by the Turkish government and its unwillingness to hold to account criminal Muslim fanatics of the past, and those today of the same anti-Christian ilk. - Politicarp] The event is co-sponsored by the New York-based Appeal of Conscience Foundation, an interfaith coalition of business and religious leaders promoting peace, tolerance and conflict resolution.

Speaking on Monday, Bartholomew stressed the need for different religions to search for their common ground and to co-exist peacefully for the sake of both believers and non-believers. He voiced hope that the meeting would 'unveil possibilities of understanding,' or at least of 'avoiding the participation of religion at large' in events that lead to strife.

Among those attending the forum, according to the Associated Press, were representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, the chief Islamic and Catholic representatives of Kosovo, religious leaders from the Caucasus and Central Asia, Turkey's chief rabbi Isak Haleva, the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul and the Turkish minister of religious affairs.

Rabbi Arthur Schneier, who founded the Appeal of Conscience Foundation in 1965, said one of the main objectives of the conference was to press governments to ensure that hatred is not taught at schools. Another goal is to take a stand against religious leaders who incite violence, to marginalise and isolate them.

Viewing freedom, democracy and human rights as the fundamental values that give nations their best hope for peace, security and prosperity, the foundation has been urging religious leaders worldwide to denounce terrorism, help end violence and promote tolerance.

World leaders sent messages:

US President George W. Bush, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso and Pope Benedict XVI have reportedly sent letters welcoming the event, which were to be read by their representatives.

Restating some of refWrite's blog entry by Politicarp earlier today, in regard to Germany's greenlite to Turkey toward its joining the EU: Altho negotiations between Germany's two leading parties, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, have yet not finalized the membership of the new joint cabinet, the parties are reaching working agreement on important policy matters - one of which is the stance the new government will take toward the proposed membership of Turkey in the European Union. The new head of government, leader of the Christian Democrats, Angela Merkel, has backtracked from her former suggestion that Turkey not be welcomed into full membership, but be granted a second-tier status as a "privileged partner." For Merkel's CDU this would obviate the problem of the non-existent EU Constitution that the secularist élite of EU planners had refused to have burdened with even a mere reference to Europe's distinctly Christian historical heritage. Admission of Turkey as the first formally non-Christian Muslim-majority - or is that anti-Christian Muslim-majority? - country (with an officially secular state), into the constitutionally-unsettled EU, would foreclose an issue that Merkel's CDU and Christian Democrats of all countries anywhere simply cannot ignore.

But notice that the German parties, with other considerations still up in the air between them, have nevertheless agreed to require Turkey strictly to fulfill EU standards, while greenliting Turkey's program to qualify for full membership. We can expect this stance to dominate in the entire EU, and it should.

Underscoring the key terms: Under the deal, Germany would make sure that Turkey meets all requirements before it is allowed to join the Union, let's assume Turkey will meet all the requirements regarding human rites and civil rites, including freedom of religion. Let's help Turkey to meet those requirements.

Further, however, to Bartholomew I's initiative for Peace and Tolerance between religions, and Merkel's shift to support provisionally Turkey's full membership in the EU: there just is no avoiding the fact that Turkey, besides its historical record in committing genocide against the Armenian ethnic minority within and outside Turkey's borders (about which the present government and media are in abject and absurd denial, and which defnitely has its own Christianophobic element), the same Turkey has continued a long preceding practice and continues today to restrict the human rites and the restoration of its Christian minority. Turkey has conducted more recently attacks in the same genocidal spirit on its ancient Turkish Christian communities (not just the Greek Orthodox, but also the Syrian Orthodox), driving hundreds of thousands abroad as refugees over the last century - sometimes seizing churches, homes, schools, health centres, stores and other facilities of these communities (where the state provided nothing in the way of education, hospitals, and social services to begin with). The last great Turkish splurge against Orthodox Christianity ocurrred in 1955.

Now, 50 years later, we have an exceptional account of the catastrophe by Dr. Speros Vryonis, Jr., one of the world’s most eminent scholars of Ottoman and Byzantine history. His magisterial work, The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek [Orthodox] Community of Istanbul, was published this year by GreekWorks.com of New York. It numbers over 700 pages. ...

In the introductory chapter Dr. Vryonis describes the Greek community of Istanbul on the eve of September 6, 1955 who numbered about 100,000. Under the terms of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne regarding the exchange of populations, the Greek population of Istanbul and the Muslim community residing in Western Thrace were exempted from the exchange process. From about 300,000 Greeks in Istanbul in 1922, the number in 1955 had fallen to about 100,000. They had achieved some limited success under exceptionally difficult circumstances and years of discrimination and harassment by the Turks who repeatedly violated the terms of the Lausanne Treaty.

But, when you look at the Christianophobic decimation that took place at the hands of organized mobs rampaging in the name of a nationalistic Islam under a "secular" government, with Turkey' government carefully turning its attention elsewhere, you undersand that 1955's consequences continued to unfold toward the completion of what was really a genocidist attempt. Turkey must acknowledge this utter failure to protect its Orthodox Christian populaton; in restitution, Turkey should hold the perpetrators and their institutional successors to account and proced to bring the guilty who are still alive to the bar of justice, also restoring the properties and funds seized and stolen. Families driven out, who want to return to Turkey, should be welcomed to do so.

A move is afoot to require Turkey to welcome back the survivors and descendants of this pogrom, with compensation. There is also a move afoot to require Turkey to return the world-famous Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom Cathedral in Istanbul), the center of public worship in ancient Constantinople before the Muslim conquest, a building which was promptly seized and had become a dusty museum of some sort.

And there is a move afoot to require the restoration to the Orthodox Church of Turkey the small island and seminary building on it, where Orthodox Christianity under the Ecumenical Patriarch (no longer even permitted to use his title) had trained its clergy from Turkey and abroad in the past. In 1971, the Halki Seminary was closed by the state (the island is called "Heybeliada" in Turkish). At present, not only is no seminary permitted to function, but the Orthodox Church in the country must limit its selection of priests, monks, and bishops to candidates who are born and educated in seminary-denied Turkey. An obvious Catch 22 situation with only a 2,000-some total of persons ready to be recognized publicly as Orthodox!

I suggest that Christians in Europe, Britain, North America, Australia, and New Zealand form a unified international Christian-political action organization to support the German proposal, to support Turkey's entry into the EU - subject to Turkey apologizing, restoring, welcoming back the exiles who want to return, and compensating for the losses of the Christian community to the government and the mobs.

The EU has, I just discovered, spoken favourably to some of the extant issues quite recently.

"The matters concerning Greece and Cyprus have been covered in a very satisfying manner," said [Greek] Foreign Ministry spokesman Giorgos Koumoutsakos. "For the first time, there is a special mention in an official EU document about the issue of casus belli" [in principle a declaration of war Turkey made against Greece regarding Cyprus].

Turkey is also called on to maintain good neighborly relations and to refrain from any act that could have a negative impact on the peaceful resolution of any differences.

The report calls on Ankara to protect the rights of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul and to allow the Halki Seminary to reopen. A US State Department report on religious freedom which was made public late on Tuesday also highlights the plight of the Patriarchate and the Turkish government's refusal to recognize Patriarch Vartholomaios's ecumenical status.

Yet another report I've just discovered, mentions a Turkish signal that the state may well allow the organization (headed by the said main Greek Orthodox bishop in Turkey) to designate itself as "the Ecumenical Patriarchate" in accord with Orthodoxy's practice since the 1300s, and the worldwide pratice of Orthodox Christians everywhere today.

The Turkish online media in the English language also reports, more clearly, the meeting in Istanbul between the Ecumenical Patriarchate where Bartholemew I (Vartholomaios I) spoke to the delegation from the European Parliaments's Christian Democrats and European Democrats Group, upon their visit to Istanbul. The October 21 report appears in TurkishPress.com. Knowing this now, I can't help but think that yesterday's news of Merkel's CDU shift in Berlin comes as result of the EU Christian Democrats' earlier consultation in Istanbul, Foundations for European Solidarity and Cooperation Making Enlargement Possible, with Vartholomaios I; the Merkel / CDU German shift also signifies that the Patriarch's more recent Peace and Tolerance II conference (co-sponsored by the Appeal of Conscience Foundation led by Rabbi Schneier), are part of a strategy of the Patriarchate to "seize the day" for religious liberty and restoration, as Turkey transitions into the European fold. Vartholomaios I is helping Turkey measure up and gain entry into the EU; in exchange, he should get Hagia Sophia for the celebration of the Eucharastic Liturgy. Istanbul will profit immensely from the pilgrims and tourists who want to come for a visit to the church, many just to see its restored art.

Contrary to the second thawts of the esteemed professor, David Koyzis, there is plenty of international law on the restoration to a religious community of the properties it held and operated prior to hostile take-over by the state - seminaries, universities, schools, old folks homes, and historic pre-Communist churches some of which had been diverted to all sorts of inappropriate uses. It's time, David, for Turkey to return Hagia Sophia to the Orthodox Church in Turkey. It's time to welcome back to Turkey any of those forced to leave their homes, churches, and monasteries, and also any of their descendants, who want to adventure with a new Turkey of religious freedom. Presently, not even the Allawite Muslims are allowed an organizational existence. Even the Sufis are restricted. Peaceful communities should not be restricted, whereas fanatical opponents of religious freedom and pluralism who preach hate and terrorism should be restricted from doing so. The Rite of Return is not the same for the Orthdox of Turkey and the Palestinians, as in Turkey the Christian community had not entered into a state of war against their homeland; the restoration and compensation called for in Turkey, should not be compared to non-European situations, but to places like Hungary which returned properties to the Hungarian Reformed and Roman Catholic communities, after the fall of the Communist dicatatorship there. Where David says,

In common law jurisdictions there is a concept known as the statute of limitations, which imposes time limits on the opportunity for injured parties to redress grievances. Why? Because in its absence injustices would continue to multiply until they overwhelmed the mundane concerns of ordinary people, who would be unable to get on with their lives because they were so consumed with the desire to right the wrongs of an increasingly remote past. Eventually, their descendants would be stewing over crimes committed against forebears generations earlier, thereby poisoning lives that might be better lived if they could manage – as the cliché puts it – to forgive and forget.

I would point to the healing function of restoration, truth and reconciliation.

It is not the injured who redress grievances, but the authority which authored the injurious actions against which the injured are the grievors. The authorities redress the grievors who petition for redress of grievances. Injured parties cannot only grieve to the authority that injured them, but these injured parties can and sometimes do also complain and cry out to God and the whole world for justice - or should the Armenians just shut up? Rite now, a Rabbi from another country has been installed by an international agency in Krakow, Poland, near Auschwitz. Slowly, Jews - including those who have just discovered they are of Jewish descent (having been adopted by Catholics who perhaps necessarily hid the children's origins from these Jewish tots in a once-great centre of Jewish culture - such Jews too are coming to the modest new synagogue to study the heritage denied to them. Some older Jews from Israel are cominng back to Krakow to take a look, and some want to stay, perhaps to be buried near Auschwitz. Perhaps some of their children will also want to leave Israel to return to the ancestral land of Poland and the city which figures so large in the family's memory. In other places, synagogues seized by state authorities have been returned to nascent Judaic renewal groups.

Returning to the case at hand, equipped with ample precedent, Hagia Sophia has not been turned into a mosque; it's rather an inept museum with a treasure trove of religous art meant to adorn worship of the Almighty in an Orthodox Christian milieu. Let Turkey show it belongs in the European Community, and allow Orthodoxy to find its own proper place in a majority-Muslim society that is supportive of Turkey's de facto plural reality, rich with suppressed minorities anxious to live openly in peace alongside the majority. Let the return of Hagia Sophia be the symbol of all that. In the context of a new Turkey, the Orthodox Christians too will have to move over a bit, as there are now Evangelical and Pentecostal congregations dotted all over the Turkish national map. The Evangelicals have trouble getting building permits for their very modest churches, but hungry souls who were nominally Muslim are converting to Christ. At times these non-Orthodox Christian congregations and their members succeed in getting building permits because locally they are recognized as good neighbours. They should be protected and permitted to thrive as much as Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Allawite Muslims, Sufi Muslims, and Sunni Muslims who practice tolerance and preach neighbourliness. Let such a Turkey join the European Union, and no other. - Owlb