ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The Turkish Orthodox Church (Türk Ortall Kilisesi in Turkish) or Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate (Bağımsız Türk Ortall Patrikhanesi) is a non-canonical Orthodox Church, only recognized by the Turkish State. The head of the Church is the patriarch, who resides in Istanbul.

After its foundation, in 1922, the patriarch took the title of Pope (Baba in Turkish), adopting the calendar and the Orthodox rite but using Turkish as a liturgical language. From the beginning, and throughout, this Church held a constant confrontation with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, due to political issues and not for religious reasons.

At the beginning of the, already in frank decline, the Turkish Orthodox Church stopped offering religious services, since it had neither priests nor parishioners.

History

Origins and foundation

The so-called Turkish Orthodox Church was created by the priest Pavlos Ephimios Karahisarides in 1922 and supported from the beginning by the Ankara government, which had just emerged victorious from the war of independence against Greece.

Ephimios was born in 1884, was a member of the Turkish-speaking Greek community (Karamanlı) of Capadocia and was consecrated an Orthodox priest in 1915. The Karamanlis were ancient inhabitants of Anatolia, Christianized in the Orthodox rite, who spoke a Turkish dialect but used Greek characters for their writing.

During the war of independence (1919-1922) Efthimios fought, along with other clerics, on the side of the nationalist Turks, forming a detachment called "General Congregation of Anatolian Orthodox Turks" (Umum Anadolu Türk Oraljkslari Cemaatleri).

For reasons that are not clear, Efthimios showed early hostility towards the Greek Orthodox Church despite belonging to it. In 1921, he stated:

That same year, the Swedish diplomat Gustaf Wallenberg wrote a report in which he collected the content of a telegram dated March and sent by "the clergy and the [Orthodox] congregation of Kayseri," who explained that "with the establishment of an independent Turkish patriarchate, as we wish, we see how to put an end to the heinous slander against our patriotism that European and Ecumenical Patriarchate policy has tried to propagate."
The same document reported that, in early April, the Grand National Assembly - the legislative body of the nationalist government headed by Mustafa Kem- "appointed a committee to work on proposals that regulate the legal status of the planned Turkish Orthodox Church."

A year later, on September 21, 1922, and with the war already decided on behalf of Mustafa Kemal's troops, a council took place in the city of Kayseri (the former Cesarea) in which 72 religious led by Efthimios founded the independent Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate (Müstakil Türk Ortáks Patrikhanesi), trying to represent the 400 thousand Orthodox Karamanlis that h