c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Ugur Akinci is the Washington-based U.S. bureau chief of the Turkish Daily News.)

UNDATED _ Imagine the conflicts that would arise if _ because of the happenstance of history _ a major branch of international Islam ended up headquartered in, say, Washington or New York. Yet that, in reverse in essence, is the situation of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s nearly 300 million Orthodox Christians.

Bartholomew _ who will arrive in the United States Oct. 19 for a month-long stay _ and the church he leads are headquartered in Turkey, a Muslim nation long in conflict with its neighbor, Orthodox Christian Greece.

For many Turks, the Orthodox church is little more than a cover for Greek political aims, and everything about the patriarch, an ethnic Greek, and the patriarchate _ as Bartholomew’s jurisdiction is called _ are suspect.

The controversies start with Bartholomew’s official Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch. Some history: In 330 A.D., the Roman Emperor Constantine chose what was then called Byzantium _ founded by Greeks _ to be the new capital of the Roman Empire, the”New Rome.”With Christianity now the empire’s official faith, Constantinople _ the”City of Constantine”_ became the church’s second most important city and capital of the Byzantine Empire, which included modern-day Turkey and most of Greece. Following the 11th century schism that resulted in Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches, Constantinople assumed the role as chief city of the Orthodox world. But in 1453, the Turks conquered Constantinople, adding it to their earlier takeover of other Orthodox lands, and the city’s name was changed yet again, this time to Istanbul. For most Turks, any reference to the modern city as Constantinople is considered an intentional slight against Turkish sovereignty and an indication of what they believe are still-smoldering Orthodox desires to revive the Christian Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople as its restored capital. Despite that, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America said in a press release announcing Bartholomew’s upcoming visit that the patriarch would depart from”the patriarchate in Constantinople and (would) arrive at Andrews Air Force Base”(outside Washington). Church officials, when alerted, admitted they had erred and promised to use Istanbul in future press releases. Turks also object to calling the patriarch an ecumenical leader, which to contemporary Orthodox Christians is the most important aspect of his role. They argue the patriarchate acquired its current status with the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, which sealed the birth of the modern Turkish republic. While the treaty secured the position of the patriarchate, it did so as a”Turkish institution”subject to Turkish laws. That means the patriarch is a Turkish citizen who travels abroad with a Turkish passport. Muslim Turks refer to the patriarchate as the”Phanar (a district in Istanbul) Patriarchate,”and in their view it only serves the 4,000 Greek Orthodox Christians left in Turkey. Then there’s the issue of the Orthodox seminary established in 1844 at Halki (Heybeli in Turkish), an island in the Sea of Marmara. In 1971, a Turkish Constitutional Court’s ruling rejected the special educational status for the seminary the Orthodox claimed for it, prompting the government to shut it down. A decade later, the Halki high school also was closed by church officials, who cited a lack of students. Bartholomew wants to reopen the school because, he says, the young seminarians who now must go to Greece to study rarely return to Turkey, and Halki remains an open wound infecting Turkish-Orthodox relations. Underlying all these controversies is the deep-seated Turkish fear the patriarchate could become a potent lever for Greek political interests. Many Turks are seriously concerned the patriarch’s moral authority could be utilized to rally international public opinion against Turkey on such issues as Cyprus, the exploitation of Aegean Sea resources, territorial boundaries and the demilitarization of Greek islands off the Turkish coast. Turks are not about to forget the activities of Greek-Americans, who, with the support of Archbishop Iakovos, former head of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, successfully lobbied Washington to impose an arms embargo on Turkey after Turkish troops landed on Cyprus in 1974. When Bartholomew received a head of state-like welcome from the European Parliament in 1994 and addressed the parliament directly, Turkish concerns reached a new high. The patriarch told the parliament in no uncertain terms his mission was not political or economic. Rather, he said, he sought only to build on the interfaith rapproachment launched in 1920, out of which grew the World Council of Churches. But his comments did not keep Turks from becoming even more apprehensive about his”real agenda.” Attacks on the patriarchate by ultra-right Turkish fringe groups have not helped the situation. In May 1994, three bombs found on the grounds of the patriarchate were defused by Turkish police, and a group known as Islamic Raiders of the Great East claimed responsibility. Other recent but isolated incidents in Turkey have included Molotov cocktail attacks on Orthodox churches and the desecration of Orthodox graves. For his part, Bartholomew has sought to re-establish the supremacy of the Istanbul patriarchate over worldwide Orthodoxy and to unify different ethnic-based branches of the church under his centralized administration. The stream of Greek political figures _ including Foreign Minister Carolos Papulias and Deputy Foreign Minister George Papandreou _ who have visited him in Istanbul has also contributed to the fears rampant in right-of-center Turkish circles. Further fanning the flames was a September 1997 cruise, billed as an environmentally-oriented excursion, that Bartholomew took along the Turkish Black Sea coast in a ship curiously named”Venizelos”_ the name of the World War I Greek prime minister who openly dreamed of re-capturing”Constantinople.” The small and virtually unknown Turkish Orthodox church _ which prides itself on the role it played during the 1919-1922 Turkish war of independence, during which Orthodox Christian Turks fought against Greece _ joined with Turkish critics who charged Bartholomew with advancing a political agenda while hiding behind an environmental cloak. But despite all these divisions, Bartholomew has consistently sought to maintain smooth relations with Turkish leaders and has emphasized the importance of mutual tolerance. In April 1996, he visited Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz, addressing him in fluent Turkish and”wishing from the bottom of my heart for the utmost success of (the prime minister’s) efforts for the happiness of our nation.” He has also met with Fethullah Gulen, the influential leader of the Nurcu Islamic sect, and has maintained close ties with a number of influential Turkish business tycoons. Clearly, Bartholomew walks a fine line. How he manages this high-wire act during his U.S. visit _ where the political concerns of Greek-Americans will compete with his Turkish allegiances and self-professed non-political mission _ will bear watching. DEA END AKINCI