Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Turkish Orthodox Church Flag
The Mother Mary Church of the Patriarchate
Entrance sign

The Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate ( Türk Ortodoks Patrikhanesi ) or the Turkish Orthodox Church is an autocephalous patriarchate that is not recognized by the other Orthodox churches in the context of the Orthodox churches in Istanbul.

It was brought into being in Kayseri in the 1920s during the Turkish War of Liberation during the Greek occupation of Anatolia and was led by the Karaman priest Zeki Erenerol (* 1884 in Akdağmadeni as Pavlos Karahisarithis ). Due to the 1923 population exchange between Turkey and Greece, the Church lost its small Orthodox community in Kayseri and moved to Istanbul.

The reason was that Erenerol saw the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople as a representative of the Greek population group of Turkey that he hated . His attitude to turkish the orthodoxy of the country quickly earned him the support of the new Turkish Republic , but just as quickly the excommunication by the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

founding

In November 1921, Erenerol convened a meeting of 72 of his followers in Kayseri with the aim of liberating Turkey's orthodoxy from Greek influences. On September 21, 1922 , a new church was founded under the official name "Independent Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate". The new church claimed to represent 400,000 Turkish-speaking Christians, mostly from the Cappadocia region . Metropolitan Prokopios was appointed patriarchal vicar and a synod of twelve bishops was installed. Turkish was made the official liturgical language. In January 1923, with the support of the Turkish government, Erenerol was named patriarch . He entered the office under the name Baba Eftim I. on. The overwhelming majority of the Orthodox Christians in Turkey, even the ethnic Turks among them, remained loyal to the Ecumenical Patriarchate despite the new foundation.

The split occurred at a time of extreme Turkish-Greek hostility. In a “ population exchange ” subsequently legitimized in the Treaty of Lausanne , around 1.5 million Greek Orthodox citizens of Turkey were expelled to Greece , from where 500,000 Greeks of Turkish origin had to leave. Many people were killed in the attacks. Erenerol tried to position himself as a good Turk, albeit a Christian, by ostentatiously differentiating himself from the unloved Greeks.

During the treaty negotiations, the Turkish delegation referred to the new church in order to prove that the Ecumenical Patriarchate did not need to remain in Istanbul any longer, and that the head of the Orthodox Church (not recognized as such by Turkey) could move his residence to Greece , since the Orthodox Christians of Turkey now had their own national church.

development

With the final consent of the Turkish government to allow the Ecumenical Patriarchate to exist in Istanbul and the ongoing expulsion of the Cappadocian Christians, the Turkish Orthodox Church quickly lost all livelihoods. After all, Baba Eftim was able to take up residence in Istanbul and was assigned some buildings by the government that had previously belonged to displaced Greeks. Besides him, 65 of his supporters were also allowed to settle in Istanbul.

An occupation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Phanar by Baba Eftim was ended by the police after 17 days. Erenerol stated that he wanted to use the occupation to protest against the then Patriarch Gregory VII , whom he accused of a pro-Greek attitude; however, tried to claim the title of Ecumenical Patriarch for himself. This was followed by formal excommunication by the Ecumenical Patriarchate on February 19, 1924. Ultimately, Erenerol was able to take possession of the Panaghia Kaphatiani church in the Karaköy ( Galata ) district , where the second meeting of the young church took place in June 1924. In the same quarter a second church, Sotiros Christos , was occupied on March 31, 1926 , but had to be returned to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1948 under pressure from the government.

The community published its own newspaper, the Anadolu'da Ortodoksluk Sadasi ("Voice of Orthodoxy in Anatolia"), which only appeared 16 times (between July 1922 and February 1923). A second newspaper, called Metarithmisis , appeared between 1926 and 1932 in Turkish, but in Greek letters. The newspaper tried to promote the cause of the Turkish Orthodox Church and, in particular, to win supporters among the then still around 100,000 Greek Orthodox residents of the city, but ultimately without any noticeable success.

Due to a lack of clergy, Eftim began to ordain his relatives as priests , for example his nephews Ermis and Doran and his son Turgut in 1937, and his second son Selçuk became a deacon in 1956 . Turgut was even ordained a bishop on October 15, 1961. On February 28, 1964 he became the second patriarch of the Turkish Orthodox Church to succeed his father, who had to give up his high office due to illness.

"Patriarch" and church founder Baba Eftim I died on March 14, 1968. The Ecumenical Patriarchate refused to be buried in an Orthodox cemetery because of the excommunication. Only after the personal intervention of the Turkish President Cevdet Sunay could Erenerol be buried in the Greek cemetery in the Şişli district .

Church after the death of the founder

Turgut Erenerol ruled the small congregation of the Turkish Orthodox Church as Patriarch Baba Eftim II from 1964 . In August 1965 militant church members occupied two other previously Greek churches, Aghios Nikolaos and Aghios Ioannis Prodromos , both also located in the Karaköy district. Eftim II died on May 9, 1991 and was only able to find his final resting place in an Orthodox cemetery after violent arguments with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. His brother Selçuk Erenerol was named Papa Eftim III. his successor in the office of patriarch.

In 1994 serious negotiations broke out to expand the Church's previously modest scope. The Gagauz , a Turkish-speaking Christian ethnic group living in Moldova , became aware of the Turkish Orthodox Church after the collapse of the Soviet Union . However, a visit by the President of the Autonomous Republic of Gagauzia , Stephan Topal, to the Patriarch did not lead to any tangible result.

The end

In 2002, "Patriarch" Baba Eftim III entered. resigned from his post in protest against what he considered to be the too lenient attitude of the Turkish government towards the Ecumenical Patriarchate. He saw himself as a victim of the Turkish efforts to join the European Union , which he vehemently rejected. "Our 80-year-old national struggle is now over, this decision will make the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Greece happy, and you can finally join the EU," he wrote in his resignation letter to the Turkish government (which, however, did not accept this resignation). A few weeks later, in December 2002, Selçuk Erenerol died.

The Turkish Orthodox Church today

Baba Eftim III. got no successor. His son Pasa and his nephew Erkin, who were ordained deacons in August 2000, no longer appear in public today. Only his daughter Sevgi Erenerol remained as the last public representative of the Turkish Orthodox Church. She occasionally takes part in meetings of ultra-nationalist groups in order to condemn the missionary efforts of foreign churches in Turkey or the intended EU accession.

The number of supporters of the Turkish Orthodox Church is controversial and unclear, it is probably in the double-digit range and is likely to be limited to the members of the Erenerol family. Three churches in Istanbul are subordinate to the patriarchate, but two of them have not been worshiped for years, and the third ( Aya Yani Kilisesi ) only because it has been rented to the Assyrian congregation since the early 1990s . The church was damaged by a bomb attack on April 29, 2000. The Ecumenical Patriarchate never accepted the taking over of the three church buildings and is demanding their return to this day.

The patriarchs

The Turkish Orthodox Church previously had three patriarchs. The office remained within the Erenerol family:

  • Eftim I. (Pavli Eftim Erenerol, 1923–1964)
  • Eftim II (Turgut Erenerol, son of Pavli, 1964–1991)
  • Eftim III. (Selçuk Erenerol, brother of Turgut, 1991–2002)
  • Eftim IV. (Paşa Ümit Erenerol, son of Selçuk, 2002-)

Turkish Orthodox Church of America

In 1966, 20 American parishes founded a Turkish Orthodox Church of America and appointed the black doctor Christopher M. Cragg as their archbishop , who in this capacity was named Civet Kristof. The church existed until the early 1980s when Archbishop Cragg moved to Chicago and opened a private clinic there. Despite the identical names, however, there was never any serious contact with the Turkish Orthodox Church in Istanbul.

See also

Web links

swell

  1. Zaman article (Engl.) ( Memento of the original on 5 December 2008 at the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link is automatically inserted and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.todayszaman.com
  2. ^ Turkish Times, December 15, 2002 AP / Turkish Times: Leader of Turkish Nationalist Church Dies ( Memento of January 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive )