As in previous years, the Order of St. Andrew (the Order) sent a delegation in late 2013 to Warsaw, Poland, to participate in the annual 58-member Conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in which the United States also holds membership and plays a major role.

Two papers were presented: “The Status and Issues of the Greek Orthodox Minority in Turkey” and “The Status and Issues of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.” Both papers were posted on the Archons web page.

In the first paper, the Order took up the rights of the Greek Orthodox minority and its multiple problems which have accumulated over centuries but especially after the disastrous war of Asia Minor 1921-22 and the anti-Greek pogrom in Istanbul in September 1955.

The presentation focused on the appalling violations of the human rights of minorities as they have been reported over the past several years in spite of the fact that the constitution of the Turkish state explicitly prohibits discrimination on religious grounds. These have been listed in great detailed not only by the Order but also in the annual 2013 Report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and in a similar annual report issued by the U.S. Department of State with which the Order is fully aligned.

While giving credit to actions by the current Turkish government, including the process of constitutional and other reforms, the Order highlighted the practice of property confiscation, under various pretexts, as was evident in the past 60 years, especially against the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its associated Greek-Orthodox foundations. The main instrument of the government’s interference has been a rigid and tight control by the General Directorate of Foundations (GDF or VGM or Vakiflar) over the day-to-day management of GreekOrthodox foundations, especially a policy that disabled foundations from holding regular board elections.

As a result of these insidious policies, GDF has seized, since the 1970s, 17 Greek Orthodox foundations, taking over their management and confiscating hundreds of properties belonging to them. Altogether, a policy of harassment over the past 60 years has driven down the Greek-Orthodox population of Turkey from more than 100,000 in the 1950s to about 2,500. Nevertheless, in the paper presented, the Order focused on positive developments. These include: the return of the Prinkipos (Büyükada) Orphanage building (late November 2010); the restoration of property rights to the Greek-Orthodox foundation of the island of Bozcaada (Tenedos), (March 2011); the Decree of Aug. 27, 2011 on property return or compensation; and the return of 190 hectares of forest to the Greek Orthodox Halki (Heybeliada) Seminary – the largest property return to a minority group in the history of Turkey.

Experience to date indicates that application of the Law of 2008 on Foundations and the Decree of Aug. 27, 2012, although significant and welcome, has been erratic and of limited effect.

Only 98 properties of the Greek Orthodox foundations have been returned since 2008 -- a small portion of properties expropriated by successive Turkish governments. The Order zeroed in on several defects of the decree of return and asked that they be amended forthwith.

The Order requested that OSCE should immediately impress upon the Turkey government the need to fully and immediately comply with the principles of OSCE, of which Turkey is a member.

The second paper, on Religious Freedom, focused on the rights and prerogatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. It acknowledged and gave full credit to important initiatives taken by the Turkish government and recognized that, in general, members of religious groups that had formal recognition during the Ottoman period had freedom to practice their faith.

However, the Order has the following issues with the government:

• The process for the election of a new Ecumenical Patriarch. Some progress in this matter was acknowledged: 26 hierarchs under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate have applied (15 in 2010 and 11 in 2011), of whom 21 were granted “exceptional” Turkish citizenship and five were denied; no explanation was provided other than that “the application is being rejected because it was found to be not in line with the requirements of the law in effect.”
• The denial of legal personality to religious bodies - this remains a major impediment to the functioning of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as a normal institution in Turkish society, as it has also been the case for all other religious bodies in Turkey.
• The Halki Seminary founded in 1844 and closed by Turkey in 1971, when the government banned all private higher education institutions, has become undoubtedly nothing but a cause celebre on the international scene. It remains closed today in spite of repeated assurances for its opening. It is highly discouraging and negating the reform movement of recent years that the reforms announced by Prime Minister Erdogan on Sept. 30, 2013 did not include provisions for the re-opening of this School;
• and lack of full freedom to perform religious services in all religiously significant sites, although permission was granted for certain services in certain churches (for example, the Soumela monastery) in the past few years.

Because Christianity thrived in Asia Minor for almost two millennia, many significant and historic religious sites and shrines exist in today’s Turkey. Freedom to perform services regularly, without the need for special permission, would be viewed by the international community and the religious bodies themselves as a normal expression of faith and would be a credit to the secular nature of the Turkish state.

A worrisome development, betraying a regression has been reported. The Haghia Sophia church in the northeastern port city of Trabzon, hailed as one of the finest examples of late Byzantine architecture still standing in Turkey has been converted into a mosque, after having been open to the public as a museum. Sadly, this comes on the heels of another conversion, in July 2012, of another former church, Haghia Sophia of Nicaea (Iznik). Even more worrisome and outrageous is the recent news reported in the Turkish press recently that Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinç has given the sign that Istanbul’s historic Haghia Sophia museum could be converted into a mosque.

The Order demands that the government of Turkey take a firm stand and a reverse this unacceptable and regressive trend while also disowning the Deputy Prime Minister’s statement. This unacceptable and regressive move must be stopped.