PATRIARCH & TURKISH POLITICS

[June Samaras]

Plotters planned to overthrow government by using us, says Bartholomew

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-193998-plotters-planned-to-overthrow-government-by-using-us-says-bartholomew.html

Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew has said dark forces planned to
use minorities to overthrow the government as revealed in the
investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine organization accused of
attempting to create chaos and undermine the stability of the country
in order to trigger a coup d'état.

Based in İstanbul, the spiritual leader of the world's approximately
300 million Orthodox Christians, Bartholomew was referring to the
latest revelations of a devious plan, called the Cage Operation Action
Plan, by a group of members of the Naval Forces Command aimed at
intimidating the country's non-Muslim population by assassinating some
of their prominent figures and in this way undermine the power of the
ruling party. Recent incidents in İstanbul's Kurtuluş neighborhood and
Adalar district suggest that the alleged plan had already been put
into operation. Speaking on Tuesday, the Orthodox religious leader
recalled that a meeting of the Association of the Zoğrafyon High
School Alumni was raided about four years ago.

Patriarch Bartholomew is hopeful that the revelations related to the
'Cage Operation Action Plan' aimed at pitting the country's non-Muslim
population against nationalist forces will lead to solving more
problems in the country

“When the Cage Plan was revealed, we thought that the raid could be
part of that plan,” he said. “At the time we thought that they were
just trying to scare us.” The patriarch said nobody was detained in
relation to that incident. Patriarch Bartholomew is grateful to the
security forces which uncovered the “dark plans.” “It is a very
satisfactory development that the Turkish police and the prosecutors
have been revealing those dark plans so the responsible people are
captured and tried.”

The patriarch is hopeful that the troubles of the Greek minority and
other minorities in Turkey will soon be resolved. And for that he
trusts the government’s democratic initiative, which aims to grant
more rights to citizens, even though it was mostly associated with the
Kurdish initiative since it was one of the first steps. “We are very
positive about the initiatives of our government. It is imperative all
over the world that minorities should be treated with goodwill.”

In addition, the patriarch said all the initiatives involving Kurdish
and Alevi citizens and efforts to establish diplomatic relations with
Armenia will help Turkey’s European Union accession process. “It gives
us a lot of hope that Turkey is moving toward the West and the
European Union with the initiatives. Those moves make us fell better
while we are living in Turkey. God willing, the rest of our problems
will be solved and we will be treated as equal citizens.”

Records of Greek conference were stolen

On Aug. 12, 2006, all the records belonging to the Greek Conference,
which was organized by the Association of the Zoğrafyon High School
Alumni, were stolen from the association’s Taksim office. The
association’s president, Laki Vingas, said nothing but the hard-disc
which contained the records of the conference was stolen.

“We had three locked rooms in the office. The thieves did not even
bother to unlock these doors, they just took the hard disc,” Vingas
said.

“There was somebody in the conference room who was constantly
recording. I asked the person what television channel he represented.
He said he was an official. He recorded the whole conference and asked
for the participation list. We gave the list to them. Some people
might have broken into our offices to scare us.”

In the conference which brought together Greek people from İstanbul
who were dispersed all over the world, the problems of the Greek
community in İstanbul were discussed. Patriarch Bartholomew had opened
the conference called “Meeting in İstanbul: Today-Tomorrow.”

Bartholomew hopes that the main school of theology of the Eastern
Orthodox Church, the Halkı seminary, closed in 1971, will be reopened.
The seminary was closed under a law that put religious training under
state control. EU officials and the United States have repeatedly
called on Turkey to open the seminary, which has trained generations
of Orthodox leaders, including Bartholomew.After its closure, the
patriarchate tried to train future leaders of the church by sending
them to schools of theology abroad.

Patriarch Bartholomew said they would like to use legal avenues in
order to get three Greek churches given to the self-declared “Turkish
Orthodox Patriarchate” run by the Erenerol family back. As part of the
investigation into Ergenekon, several people with links to Turkey’s
“deep state” were arrested and among them was Sevgi Erenerol, the
“media and public relations officer of the independent patriarchate.”
She is the granddaughter of Father Eftim, founder of the so-called
“Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate.” “Sevgi Erenerol hurt us a lot. She
was talking against us. It has been revealed that they had meetings in
those churches against us, the state and the [Justice and Development
Party] AK Party. It’s a pity that a place of worship was used for such
purposes,” the patriarch said.

Father Eftim was a village priest from the Turkish-speaking Karamanlı
Greek community of Cappadocia in Anatolia who supported the Turks
during the War of Independence. He then became the leader of the
“patriarchate” in Kayseri in 1922 under the name of the “Independent
Patriarchate of the Turkish Orthodox.”

Eftim and his family were exempted from the population exchange
between Greece and Turkey, but his small congregation moved out of the
country. Without any congregation, Eftim moved to İstanbul in 1924,
together with the “patriarchate.” Eftim had some followers in Galata,
an area with a large Greek population. Eftim’s son Turgut succeeded
his father and called himself Patriarch Eftim II. Then came Turgut’s
brother, and then they brought Paşa [Sevgi Erenerol’s brother] from
the US to assume the role of the “patriarch.” They have all been
excommunicated by the Orthodox Church.

Eftim and his sons call themselves “patriarchs.” Patriarch Bartholomew
said nobody elected them.“Father Eftim was married, so it was not
possible for him to be a patriarch or bishop. He acted against the
Patriarchate. He was excommunicated but he declared himself
‘patriarch.’ Nobody recognizes the ‘Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate.’
They don’t even have followers. But they received state support. Eftim
and his men came to the Patriarchate and raided it in the 1920s. After
his demise his son took over. Indeed, patriarchs are elected and it is
not a position to be passed from father to son. In the end, their
relations with Ergenekon have been revealed.”

In the pages 971-980 of the Ergenekon indictment, there are
explanations about the actions of Sevgi Erenerol and “Turkish Orthodox
Patriarchate.” On Oct. 28, 2005, some platforms such as the
Nationalist Businesspeople Association, the Noel Baba Foundation and
the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate held a protest in front of the Greek
Orthodox Patriarchate and shouted, “The patriarchate should go to
Greece.” Ergenekon suspect Kemal Kerinçsiz and Noel Baba Foundation
President Muammer Karabulut delivered speeches at the protest, which
were attended by also Sevgi Erenerol and Zeki Yurdakul Çağman. They
left a black wreath at the gates of the Patriarchate.

‘We are citizens of Turkey’

Patriarch Bartholomew, whose initiatives include advancing religious
tolerance among the world’s religions have been widely noted, although
received with suspicion by some in Turkey, said the number of the
Greek-Turkish citizens living in Turkey is decreasing every day.

“Democratic initiatives will prevent the rest from leaving,” the patriarch said.

“It is sad to hear that our foundations have been referred as
‘foreign.’ We are Christians but we are born here and we were raised
here. I was born in Gökçeada. I love my country and village. I did my
military service for two years. I pay my taxes. Our only difference is
our religion. But we are equal citizens under the Constitution.”

26 November 2009, Thursday
YASEMIN BUDAK/ELIF KAYA İSTANBUL