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The dogs of Constantinople.
Submitted by Joshua Treviño on 27 November 2006 - 9:40pm.
At night, the Hagia Sophia is invested by wild dogs. You walk about the expanse between it and the Blue Mosque, and you pull your coat tight against the early winter chill. The dogs are everywhere. They are in the streets, lolling contentedly as the odd taksi veers about. They are on the concrete, rummaging through strewn trash. They are on the grass, rooting about in the flowers, and gnawing upon disgusting chunks of rancid flesh. They ignore you. One of them barks, and at once they are all on their feet and yelping. They lope toward a solitary taksi driver who performs a small charity of sharing some meat.
Overlooking it all is the Hagia Sophia, red stone capped with black metal, topped with the golden crescent of its conquerer. It is massive. Chronicles of the Dark Ages and the Medieval era tell of Western travelers seeing the Queen City for the first time, and being stupefied at its grand church. And so I am, as Sunday slides into Monday in the dead of a Constantinopolitan night. The hulking form overpowers the grace and grandeur of the Blue Mosque, a park's length away. The great mosque apes the great church, except it is white instead of red, its minarets are native instead of alien, and its believers are thriving instead of dying.
The Christians of the Queen City are dying. The Ecumenical Patriarch housed in the Fener district used to be ecumenical -- an Orthodox Christian, to be sure, but of no particular nation. No longer. Because the Patriarchs of old lived with the Emperors in their very city, they grew accustomed to the strictures of state power -- unlike the Popes, who exercised temporal monarchy of their own. The Sultans of the Ottoman Empire saw fit to continue the relationship, reaping handsome profits from bribe-profferring claimants to the Patriarchate, and forcing the occupant of the seat of St Andrew to answer for their co-religionists. Usually this entailed a conferral of a limited intra-communal civil power upon the Patriarch; but in the Greek War of Independence, the Patriarch was lynched for his rebellious millet's temerity. As with the Sultans, so with their successors: the Turkish state continues to dictate the terms of existence for a Patriarchate that predates the mere existence of Turks in Turkey by at least seven hundred years.
The trauma of the decline of the Ottoman state, and the need during the Turkish War of Independence to fight off non-Turkish claimants (though not always foreign claimants) to Anatolia and Thrace, left the Turkish polity with an undying fear of territorial dispossession. There is a strong concept of Turkishness as inherently involving Islam; and hence non-Muslim institutions like the Patriarchate are inherently suspect. They are not "Turkish" (except in a legal sense with no claim on the sentiment of the masses or the state) but they are on Turkish soil. There is no way to Islamicize the Patriarchate, of course, but one may restrict the office to men of Turkish citizenship. And so the Kemalist state has done precisely this.
There was a time not so long ago when this would not have been an insuperable challenge. If we consider Byzantium to be historically contiguous with the imperial city, Constantinople was Greek for almost two thousand years before the Turkish conquest -- and Christian for nearly eleven hundred of those years. After the fall in 1453, it remained majority-Christian for a few centuries thereafter, and then it harbored a sizable Christian minority (mostly Greek and Armenian) through the early 20th century. That came to an end when Constantinople became Istanbul in the Kemalist era. The 1923 "population transfer" on the heels of the Greek loss in its tragic war of the megali idea wiped out the Greek communities -- and hence the Christian communities -- of Ionia, the Pontus, and inland Anatolia. Constantinople's Greeks were spared from annihilation, but their ranks thinned out of fear and harassment in the new order. Subsequent pogroms, notably the Turkish government-sponsored 1955 pogroms, had the effect of progressively reducing the numbers of native-born Constantinopolitan Christians. Concurrent with this, the Turkish state pursued an active program of expropriation which itself abetted a vicious circle: if a church property fell into disuse, the state seized it; and with the state defining "disuse," the seizures often enough had the effect of denying the remaining Christians the very pillars of their communal life, which in turn provoked more Christians into leaving, which deprived more properties of their parishioners, etc. (A prime example of this policy of seizure and closure is the theological school at Halki, which I visited today and will write about shortly.)
Today, there are approximately two thousand native-born Christians, almost entirely Greek, in the Queen City of Christendom. They are mostly old, mostly die-hards, and mostly clerics. As the Turkish state intended all along, the faith is nearly extinct in one of its most ancient lands -- and the time will come when no native-born Christian "Turk" will be competent to sit upon the Patriarchal throne. And what then? Will the Ecumenical Patriarchate simply die a quiet death after long centuries? Will its demise be met like so many other tragedies of Christendom, with small regret and apathy? Will the Turkish state be a better, more Turkish state without its Christians?
At some point in the cold night, the dogs retreat to warm recesses in the alleys and corners of Sultanahmet. For a short while, the old center of Constantinople is as empty and lifeless as its Christian caste. In the early morning, the muzzein's cries fill our hotel room. But we open the curtains, and there is the Great Church, silent, solid, enduring -- and waiting.
http://www.thenewanatolian.com/opinion-1183.htmlThe oppressions that the Western Thrace Turks are subjected to are essentially based on not using the word "Turkish." Unity, social solidarity and cultural basis are subjected to constant efforts at their destruction, and Turkish people are being forced to migrate to Turkey and other countries. Especially in accordance with Article 19 of the Citizenship Act, which remained in force until 1988, the citizenship of the majority of the ethnic minorities of non-Greek origin was annulled. This accounts for 60,000 Western Thrace Turks. If this action had not taken place, today there would have been around 350,000 Turkish people living in Thrace.
Lausanne made inapplicable
Moreover, in accordance with a law which entered into force in 1990, Turkish people are denied the right to elect their own religious leaders. The construction of new mosques is no longer allowed, the restoration of the old ones is prevented and Greek officials are appointed to some posts like mufti, which actually require officials of Turkish origin. The administration of the Turkish associations which are under the guarantee of the Treaty of Lausanne has started to be granted to Greek officials, contrary to the treaty's disposition. One of the most important injustices was that Turkish people are not given permission for the further development of Turkish schools and that the Turkish children's and community's educational rights are kept on hold. While property rights are granted to foreigners in Turkey, the Western Thrace Turks who are Greek citizens have for years been denied the ownership of immovable properties. Whenever this right is allowed, it is always under the condition of special permissions which are extremely hard to get. Today in Western Thrace there exist no Turkish pharmacies, nor are Turkish people given permission to open pharmacies. The Turks who managed to enter the Greek Parliament together with Sadik Ahmet and Ahmet Faikoglu had to surmount a nationwide election threshold of 3 percent and in order to be eligible - as the threshold requires - regions having a population up to 150,000 have to receive 200,000 votes. In addition, Turkish people are always subjected to restrictions in terms of police surveillance, oppression and right of expression and other freedoms. Turkish people cannot work at public institutions. The right to serve as reserve officer during military service, which is granted to all university graduates regardless of their ethnic origins in Turkey, is not given to Turks in Greece. Furthermore, as the system dictates, Turks in Greece are expected to complete their military service under the hardest conditions without being in possession of firearms. The associations founded by some of our Turkish citizens as "the Turkish Teachers' Union" or "Iskece (Ksanthi) Turkish Union Association" are banned from using the word "Turkish." Those who insist are incarcerated and lose their properties. Their citizenship is annulled.
Greece aims at detaching Turks from their national identity by applying systematic campaigns of education and assimilation. Turkish people, whose economic freedoms are also limited in parallel to their underprivileged situation, are becoming more impoverished every day. They can engage only in farming as a way of earning their lives.
Of hundreds of Turkmen villages around Thessalonica, none of them exist today. This could be explained by the fact that Greeks pursued a policy of genocide in the 1910s towards the Turks in Greece, which was an action in fact that greatly resembles the genocide of Muslim Bosnians by Serbs in 1992-1995.
Seems to me the Turks ought to get out of Greece and the Greeks have already been kicked out of Turkey. Turkey's on the verge of going over to an Islamic state. Should that occur they should promptly be booted out of NATO with a firm quick kick to the ass. Sorry Canavar but I've had my gutfull of Islam and it's inability to get along with any other culture. This American thinks it's time to talk turkey with Turkey (American colloquillism, you wouldn't understand). The US needs to talk straight with the Turks. We won't/can't continue a military alliance with Turkey if it is an Islamic state, period.
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=39088to renovate 750 buildings considered to be significant in terms of heritage
The Pope waveing the Turkish flag, saying he loves Turks
Tomorrow he will visit Aya Sofya and Blue Mosque in Istanbul.
Nice source Kathianne, really objective.
There is no doubt, that behind this source are Greeks.
Now to the facts:
1.Greece and Turkey had an civilian exchange programm in beginning of last century.
Except Turks of Greece in Thrace and Turkish Greeks on Westcoast of Turkey there was a mutual exchange.
So i do not get the point of claiming, that for example in Pontus (Black Sea) there are no Greeks left. It is the same when i claim why there are no Turks even more in Thesaloniki or Piräus or Athens.
Because there was a population exchange except Westcoast of Turkey and Thrace of Greece.
2. The 1955 progroms in Istanbul were really tragic, but an answer to Greeks in Greece which set the house in which Ataturk was born in Thessaloniki in fire. That house was and still is a Museum in Thesaloniki / Greece.
3. The disappropriate of Greek churches has to been viewed parallel to what Greece is doing in Thrace to Turkish minority. In Lausanne Treaty both Turkey and Greece agreed to give Greeks of Istanbul and Turks of Thrace special rights.
Both countries because of political problems with each other do not meet the rights according to the Lausanne Treaty.
Greek Christians as well as Turkish Thraceans are tolls of diplomacy which both countries use.
Human Rights Watch:
Destroying ethnic identity - The Turks of Greece
http://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/g/greece/greece908.pdf
Of course your Greek source does not mention these. And it also mentions not that Turks of Thrace are not allowed to choose their Muslim religious authority itself or educate their children in Turkish as it is stated in Lausanne treaty.
When Miltary Junta became government in Greece the Regime practiced to choose all Functionaries of Foundations by Military Government.
In 1974 when Military Junta was overthrown all foundations could choose their Leaders again.
Except Turkish Foundations. For 38 years this is still valid.
The Money and funds of Thracean Foundations were so confiscated by Greece as Greece appoints Leaders to Turkish foundations. Foundations which operate money, schools, cultural activity of Turkish minority.
Turkish minoritiy in Thrace is forbidden to build new mosques there. Renovation of existing mosques is also forbidden.
Even postal service is not made to Turkish houses but made in blue collecting points.
http://www.thenewanatolian.com/opinion-1183.html
Greeks and Orthodox Patriarchate in Turkey are no Christianity-Turkey issue, but a Greece-Turkey issue. So make no propaganda of it and look to the whole picture.
Greeks, Christians, Jews, any port in a storm.
Now your roots are showing. If all else fails, blame the Greeks.
I never talked negative about Jews. So watch your words.
I do. It was about the 'excuses' and not just you.
What's the difference between your blaming the Greeks and 'Islam' blaming the Jews? Or Hitler blaming the Jews? Or the Romans blaming the Christians?
I and Turkey can nothing do and are not responsible for what parts of Arab world think about Jews, Hitler thiks about Jews or what Romans thought about Christians.
http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/english/constitution.htmII. Right and Duty of Training and Education
ARTICLE 42. No one shall be deprived of the right of learning and education.
The scope of the right to education shall be defined and regulated by law.
Training and education shall be conducted along the lines of the principles and reforms of Atatürk, on the basis of contemporary science and educational methods, under the supervision and control of the state. Institutions of training and education contravening these provisions shall not be established.
The freedom of training and education does not relieve the individual from loyalty to the Constitution.
