A Question of Freedom

The Turkish government blocks work permits for non-Turkish citizens who wish to work at the Ecumenical Patriarchate, such that the 10 Greek clergymen, one American layman and one British layman now working at the Phanar are doing so illegally, and must leave the country every three months to renew their tourist visas.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate is not permitted to own property; thus it owns none of the churches under its religious jurisdiction. Turkish authorities have also confiscated houses, apartment buildings, schools, monasteries and lands that were once owned by the Ecumenical Patriarchate; the state seized the patriarchate's 36 cemeteries, which are now the property of various legal subdivisions of the city of Istanbul; and, earlier this year, the state confiscated the boys' orphanage run by the patriarchate (which is the oldest wooden building in Europe and of great historical value).

The Turkish government also determines who may teach in the elementary schools that serve the Orthodox community, and enforces a six-year "approval" process to control the flow of books to Orthodox school libraries.

No Christian community in the West would tolerate such conditions, which involve violations of basic human rights. If Turkey is to be the model of a modern Islamic society, it must remove restrictions on the exercise of some of the most fundamental aspects of religious freedom: the freedom of religious communities to educate their people, perform works of charity and choose their leaders according to their own theological self-understanding. Might Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to Turkey focus the world's attention on the stranglehold the Turkish state attempts to exercise on Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and his people, such that that stranglehold begins to ease? If the 79-year-old pontiff managed that, Christian unity and the dialogue between the West and Islam would both be advanced.

Weigel is senior fellow at Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author, most recently, of "God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church."

© 2006