Why Halki Seminary Matters

Recent reports have indicated that Turkey is moving in the direction of allowing the resumption of theological education at the historic Halki Seminary. While there is still much to be sorted, Metr. Emmanuel of Chalcedon stated that “water has entered the channel.”

Closed for more than five decades, the seminary is located on the island of Halki (or in Turkish, Heybeliada) and shares grounds with the Monastery of the Holy Trinity. The latter was founded by St. Photios the Great in the ninth century, and after it fell into disrepair under Ottoman rule, the monastery was converted to a seminary in 1844. It remained that way until 1971.

Why Is It Closed?

Several major events occurred in the years leading up to Halki Seminary’s forceful closure in 1971. These events help us to understand why today’s Greek Orthodox community in Istanbul is so small, numbering only a few thousand.

As Giselle Soares also argued in a piece published earlier this year, we must look at the 1942 Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax), the events of Sept. 6-7, 1955, and the expulsion of nearly 15,000 Greeks in 1964. This goes without even mentioning the Greek genocide, which lasted roughly a decade between the 1910s-20s, depending on how one wishes to calculate it.

At a surface level, the Wealth Tax was a straightforward policy to raise funds as a defense provision in case Turkey needed to enter the Second World War. However, it was effectively used to eliminate non-Muslims from the economy through disproportionate application, with the Turkish researcher Ridvan Akar calling it “economic genocide against minorities.”

Another scholar, Basak Ince, stated:

“Converts paid about twice as much as Muslims, while non-Muslims ended up paying up to ten times as much. In addition, non-Muslims were required to pay their taxes in cash within 15 days; as a result, they had to sell their businesses or property to Muslim businessmen at low prices to cover the bill. The law was also applied to the many poor non-Muslims (numbering 26,000), such as drivers, workers, and even beggars, whereas their Muslim counterparts were not obliged to pay any tax.” 

If one was unable to pay the tax, they were sent to a labor camp, deported, or had their properties seized by the government. Out of the several thousand people sent to the camps, 21 of them died and had their assets sold to Turkish Muslims at a low price. Even the elderly and infirm, who were supposed to be exempt from the tax, were dragged to the train station and deported. 

At the same time this was taking place in Turkey, roughly 100,000 civilians in Greece had died under German occupation between 1941-42. The total number of civilian deaths would rise to several hundred thousand over the course of the war – whether it be from starvation, execution, or disease – corresponding to almost 10% of the population.

In 1955, “Krystallnacht in Constantinople” took place. As Orthodox historian Matthew Namee writes in his chronology:

“As the decades passed, that population declined, but even in the mid-1950s there were many tens of thousands of Greeks in Istanbul — I’ve seen estimates as high as 100,000. That all changed on September 6, 1955, when a Turkish mob launched a planned night of terror against the city’s Greek Orthodox population. Children were raped, churches were destroyed, and holy objects were desecrated. The cruelty of the Turks would have made the Bolsheviks proud.”

Greek historian Speros Vryonis, Jr., noted that it took seven hours to enact something that had been planned for years, and was the worst pogrom since Nazi Germany’s Krystallnacht in 1938.