ABSTRACT
Walking by any one of the Greek Orthodox schools in Istanbul today, it should come as a surprise to read, on the official signs at their gates, that these are private schools. The placard put up at the entrance of each school announces Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Özel Rum Lisesi (Ministry of National Education – Private Greek Orthodox High School), pointing to their status as private institutions of education under Turkish law. Indeed, all Greek Orthodox schools in Turkey, as well as those of Armenians and Jews, operate under the Law for Private Educational Institutions and follow the regulations that accrue from such status. But are these schools not communal schools with legal minority rights defined and protected by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the founding document of modern Turkey? So why and how does the Turkish state treat them as private schools, a categorisation which contradicts minority regulations, and as such runs against not only non-Muslim administrations’ own classification of their institutions as communal – and not private – schools, but also the state’s underlying classification of them as communal without which the category of minority would not be possible?
