02/08/2019 Turkey (International Christian Concern) – This week, Turkish President Erdogan met with Greek Prime Minister Tsipras in Ankara. The Prime Minister petitioned Erdogan for the reopening of the Halki Greek Orthodox Seminary, which is located in Turkey and was closed by the authorities in 1971.

The meeting was notable because of the historically tense relationship between Turkey and Greece. When Erdogan was asked to reopen the seminary, he denied any responsibility of the current leadership in the matter of the seminary’s closure. He then made statements drawing a connection between the seminary’s closure and a controversy in Greece where the parliament has begun to appoint the Mufti rather than allow local Turkish Muslims to elect their own judicial experts.

Erdogan’s pressure on Greece to allow Muslims this kind of autonomy stands in contrast to his continued interference in preventing the Armenian Church autonomy to elect their own patriarch. Additionally, the authorities have in the past given many false hopes that Halki Seminary would reopen, only to continue with the closure.

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