A discussion of Greek-Turkish ties over Orthodox Easter

I could not help but notice that several of our readers commented on my article last week about this year's Easter celebration in Phanar, Istanbul. Some confirmed their sadness at the low attendance of the faithful for the most important date in the Orthodox calendar. Others wrote to tell me with disarming directness, "Do you blame them for not attending?" And some wanted to ask about Halki Seminary. Why, they asked, has it disappeared from the agenda when, not so long ago, we were told that the re-opening of the school was about to happen "any day?"

Well, I had the chance to put the question to a close adviser to the Turkish president with whom I happened to have an interesting talk last week. 

"Why don't you re-open Halki?" I asked him. 

He answered me with another question: "Why should we?" 

And then he continued with several more questions which echoed the frustration of the Turkish president and the government toward the Greeks. "Why should we? What did they do for us? What did they do for our request for a mosque [in Athens]? Our president went to Greece as a prime minister; he asked one Greek prime minister after another: Karamanlis, Papandreou, Samaras… Make a mosque. 'Yes,' they said. And they did nothing. "

Of course, the Greek government had always maintained that the re-opening of the Halki Seminary was not supposed to be a reciprocal gesture but an issue of human rights and religious freedoms of the Orthodox minority whose members are Turkish citizens. But it is true that Greek political leaders had repeatedly promised their Turkish counterparts to build a mosque in Athens where almost half a million Muslims currently live. They promised but delayed it due to strong opposition from hardcore anti-Turkish...