Government sanctioned hate mobs in Turkey threaten patriarch

[Vasilis Kirikos]

Ecumenical Patriarch in much danger and threatened by Turkish government sanctioned hate mobs. Turkish Nationalists Continue Harassment and Demonstrate at Ecumenical Patriarchate.

10/29/2005 Dogan Daily News Inc.Demonstrators on Friday held banners aloft and waved Turkish flags in a protest in front of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul's Fener district.

ISTANBUL - TDN with wire services Turkish nationalists demonstrated on Friday outside the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul to protest its desire to use the title "ecumenical," which is not recognized by Turkey, witnesses said.

Waving Turkish flags and that of the extreme right-wing Nationalist Movement Party, about 150 protestors laid a black wreath at the door of the Patriarchate on the European side of the city bearing the words "Off to Greece with the Patriarchate." The Turkish government has even closed the ancient Greek Orthodox Thelogical School of Halki on contrived false pretenses.

"Patriarch! Do not lose your way, do not exhaust our patience," the demonstrators chanted amid other threat of voilence. Almost daily a grenade is thrown at the resicency of the Partiarch. Turkish authorities never investigate the bombings.

The government sanctioned mobs' jeers and threats came a week after the head of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Bartolomeos I, told a conference in Istanbul that Turkey was preventing him from using his "ecumenical" title, which denotes leadership of 250 million Orthodox worshippers around the world.

Ankara says its legislation does not allow the patriarch to use the title and treats him as the spiritual leader of only some 2,000 Orthodox Greeks in Turkey.

The Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, which dates from the Byzantine Empire, is a regular target of demonstrations by Turkish nationalist movements that accuse the institution of seeking an independent, Vatican-like status and international support to extract concessions from Ankara.

Many wonder how Turkey could ever be seriously considered for membership in the European Union given that there is little religious tolerance for those other than Muslims in Turkey.

[Owen Jones]

It's time for the Patriarch to pack up and leave Istanbul and move to New York. As for the title Ecumenic, it's an anacronism. Perhaps with some spiritual meaning, but still an anacronism. Also, there aren't 250 million Orthodox. Maybe 50 million would be a generous figure, if you counted a lot of non-Church-going people in Russia.

[Kosmas Damianides]

That would make two Patriarchal Sees in Exile. Antioch and Constantinople. All we can do is pray, as we should have always done. In any case, this is a relatively small crowd of protesters and I don't think the Patriarchate is in any immediate danger. 150 people is nothing. We had more than 4000 protesting against FYROM using Macedonia as their national name. And we are talking about Perth Western Australia; total population less than 2 million.

Protesting is a democratic right of any nation. I'm not condoning religious hatred, but we should also see this reasonably and logically.

How would you feel if Moslems were to build their "head- quarters" in the in the middle of your capital city? i know that our Orthodox "headquarters" was there long before Turkey came into existance, but think about it. Someone is bound to get upset arn't they?

[Vasilis Kirikos]

The Turkish hate group recently in the news "exercising their democratic right ", as you say, is not a very accurate description of what is going on in that riot in Turkey against the Patriarch. And if you think those rioting are merely some ad hock group suddenly coming together over this one issue you are again quite wrong. The "Gray Wolves" is the name of the group demonstrating; and the Gray Wolves is a group very similar to the Nazis guilty of many murders.

As a matter of fact, all indications are is that they are Nazis. . The Gray Wolves are government sponsored and government organized. The only difference between them and Hitler's brown shirts is the geographic location.

It was this same group that is burning churches in Cyprus and rioted in Constantinople in 1955 burning the businesses and homes of Christians.

What is very curious is the fact that NOT ONE newspaper in the West covered that night to pure terror in 1955. NOT ONE WORD SPOKEN ABOUT IT! EVEN NOW NO WESTERN NEWS AGENCY IS COVERING THIS HATE AGAINST THE ORTHODOX CHURCH.
How do you think the press would respond if this were happening to a Roman Catholic community, much less the pope? Or what do you think would happen in the press if the Greeks did that to the Turks living in Greece? I don't think your analogy that these rioters are merely exorcising some democratic principal has any merit at all.

Moreover, up to the 1955 Gray Wolves night of terror in Turkey there were over 200,000 Greek Orthodox Christians living in Constantinople. Soon after the riots that number has drastically gone down to less than 2000 people. . Now do you still insist that this is merely a normal reaction that would occur in any democracy?

You want us to believe that Turkey is a democracy? You equate Turkey to a democracy? Foremost of all TURKEY IS NO DEMOCRACY! Turkey is run by an oligarchy made up of a few generals in the military. These generals approve or disapprove by absolute veto any of the legislative acts of their puppet government. Indeed, in a not too long ago national election a woman was elected PM of Turkey; but the generals did not approve of victor so they voided the entire election and held a second election!
Do you call that a democracy?

If you want to read something about what the Turks do to the Christian community read "The Blight of Asia" by George Horton. You can down-load the entire book free from this URL: http://www.hri.org/docs/Horton/HortonBook.htm

Here is a brief excerpt from The Blight of Asia: That it should have been possible twenty centuries after the birth of Christ for a small and backward nation, like the Turks, to have committed such crimes against civilization and the progress of the world, is a matter which should cause all conscientious people to pause and think; yet the writer shows conclusively that these crimes have been committed without opposition on the part of any Christian nation and that the last frightful scene at Smyrna was enacted within a few yards of powerful Allied and American battle fleet.

We turned a deaf ear to the dying Christians, when they called to us for aid, fully aware that America was their only hope, and now it would ap*pear that there is a growing tendency in this coun*try to whitewash the Turks and condone their crimes in order to obtain material advantages from them.