Founded under the leadership of Atatürk, the new Turkish state aimed at building a new national identity by eradicating religious identities during the transition period from the empire to the nation-state. The project of “creating equal citizens within the framework of secularism” under the new republic, which had been influenced by the principles of the French revolution, never succeeded. This project could never go beyond “defining the nation in terms of religion,” which had been the common denominator for Balkan nationalisms. Therefore, there was no place for the non-Muslims in the new nationstate. The “future Turk” could emerge exclusively on the basis of being a Muslim. The natural consequence of this approach was that Muslims were regarded as “eligible citizens” and non-Muslims as “unwanted citizens.” The new state defined its official minorities in terms of religion and limited them under the label “non-Muslims,” although this contradicted its claim for secularism. Within this context the minorities faced various difficulties during the first

decades of the Turkish Republic. Similarly, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the most important institution of the Greeks, was subjected to the same discriminating policies. This chapter will try to highlight the main incidents that defined the relations between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Turkish government by examining the official policies towards the Patriarchate during the singleparty era (1923-45). Official documents of the Turkish Archives (Bas¸bakanlιk Cumhuriyet Ars¸ivi, or BCA) and reports and articles of some leading newspapers published in English will be employed in a framework of historical methodology in order to provide a factual account of this era, which has not been attempted to a satisfying degree with the exception of Alexis Alexandris’s classic study The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-Turkish Relations 1918-1974.1

On October 30, 1918 the allies of World War I and the Ottoman Empire concluded the Armistice of Moudros which put an end to the hostilities

between the two sides in the Near and Middle East. From that date until 1922, the year the Greek-Turkish war in Asia Minor ended, the politics of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople were to determine its status as this would be defined by the Lausanne Treaty and respected by the Republic of Turkey. The Lausanne Treaty of 1923 officially ended the Greek-Turkish war in

Asia Minor and at the same time changed the historical standing of the Patriarchate in Turkey. During the Lausanne Conference in December 1922 the Turkish delegation proposed the deportation of the Patriarchate from the country, a proposal that caused great reaction. Although the secular character of the new Turkish state was put forward as a means to justify the claims of the Turkish side, the real reason was that Ankara had been alarmed by the nationalist activities of Patriarch Meletios IV. By deporting the Patriarchate, Ankara thought it could remove permanently an institution that was seen as the centre of Greek Orthodoxy and Hellenism. At the same time, the new regime wanted to ward off any remaining Greek irredentist aspirations aiming at rendering Istanbul a Greek territory as part of the Megali Idea.2 After a series of negotiations, on January 10, 1923 it was finally decided that the Patriarchate would remain in Turkey, but it would be stripped of its authority and the privileges it enjoyed during the Ottoman times. Its responsibilities would be confined to spiritual matters only. With the defeat of the Greek Army in Asia Minor, all eyes turned to the

Patriarchate. The British Minister of Foreign Affairs Lord Curzon, being concerned about the eruption of inter-ethnic tensions between the Greeks and the Turks in Istanbul, entrusted General Charles Harington to protect Patriarch Meletios. On December 2, 1922, in an attempt to calm these tensions, the Patriarch gave interviews in the newspapers Stamboul and Journal d’Orient, where he called for everyone “to forgive and forget.”3