Turkey’s Greeks Ponder Their Future, or Possible Lack Thereof

As a biologist, Dositeos Anagnostopulos knows a species near extinction when he sees it.

Anagnostopulos has watched the once-thriving Greek community in this nation dwindle to a tiny fraction of its former strength. When he graduated from high school here more than 40 years ago, there were 150,000 ethnic Greeks living in Turkey. They were one of the country’s largest minorities, with roots that predated Christianity.

Today only about 2,000, maybe 2,500, Greeks remain in this predominantly Muslim country. Roughly half of them are more than 65 years old.

This is how Greeks chronicle their history in numbers: Schools that no longer exist. Newspaper circulation that has dropped into oblivion. Families that have vanished into exile.

The question is less one of whether the community is fading -- it clearly is -- but rather whether it has any future at all.

Istanbul, Turkey’s most cosmopolitan city, looks to its diverse population to reflect its multilayered history and to embody its multicultural character and charm. Straddling two continents, Istanbul was always a magnet for a wide range of groups and communities.

Until the Ottoman conquest of 1453, this city was also the revered center of the Orthodox Church. One of Istanbul’s most treasured architectural gems is Hagia Sophia, a 6th century Byzantine cathedral that was converted under Ottoman rule into a mosque but retains many of its Christian features.

Perhaps more important for ethnic Greeks, Turkey is feverishly pursuing a bid to join the European Union, and therein may lie hope for the community’s revival. One requirement for EU membership is the just treatment of minorities. The death of one of the country’s principal Christian minorities would represent a black mark on the application.

“If Turkey does begin the process of joining the EU and Orthodox Christians begin to come back, then there may be hope for our community,” Anagnostopulos said. “I’d like to believe that Istanbul’s cultural wealth will succeed in bringing people back and attracting new people.”

Like many ethnic Greeks in Turkey, Anagnostopulos, 62, left to make a life abroad. He moved to Germany in the late 1960s, worked for a pharmaceutical firm, had two daughters and retired. Unlike most of his brethren, however, he decided to return to Istanbul.

He became a priest last year and now works in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, founded 1,700 years ago and the nominal head of millions of Orthodox Christians worldwide.

None of Anagnostopulos’ siblings live in Turkey anymore, however, and his daughters have no interest in moving here.

The Greek community in Turkey has declined steadily since World War II, when the pro-Nazi government imposed a “wealth tax” that disproportionately penalized Turkey’s three constitutionally recognized minorities: Greeks, Jews and Armenians. Many Greeks were bankrupted and fled. Bloody riots in 1955 that targeted Greek businesses, the 1964 cancellation of a law that allowed ethnic Greeks to hold dual citizenship, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 -- all fed a steady exodus.

Today, Greeks say Turkish authorities use bureaucracy to control the community and stunt its growth. Onerous red tape blocks Greek institutions such as the Orthodox Church from buying or selling property. The patriarchate -- the eastern-rite equivalent of the Vatican -- can employ only Greeks with Turkish citizenship, limiting the pool of potential priests.

The few remaining Greek schools, all of them hundreds of years old, teach roughly half their curriculum in Turkish. Yani Demircioglu, headmaster at one high school, said he has 49 pupils in six grades, down from nearly 700 in 1962. He said 97% of the school’s alumni have left, mostly for Greece.

Despite notable improvements -- inter-religious dialogue programs are flourishing, the government has taken initial steps to reform property rules, and hostilities between Greece and Turkey have eased in recent years -- many Greeks say they are viewed with suspicion or as a fifth column.

“Ninety-five percent of the minority are loyal and doing what it takes to be a loyal citizen: We are well integrated, we speak Turkish,” said Laki Vingas, an ethnic Greek businessman in Istanbul. “But I’m sorry to say, with some officials, there is still a gap in confidence.”

At one of Istanbul’s two surviving Greek-language newspapers, Yani Theodolou, 70, tracks the decline of the community in circulation figures. “Down, down, down,” he said.

“Every day we publish an obituary,” he said, but not too many baptism notices.

Theodolou and editor-in-chief Andrea Rombopulous run the newspaper, Echo, virtually single-handedly. Most younger Greeks no longer know the language well enough to write in it, they say. Theodolou is convinced the papers will die out eventually, with no one left to read them.

The two men work in Echo’s cluttered offices in a building that housed, in more bountiful times, an array of sports and social clubs.

Seated in his office, at a large glass-top table that rests on faux Ionic columns, Rombopulous, 38, recalled that when he graduated from high school, there were 250 ethnic Greeks in Istanbul his age. It was not difficult to find a wife within the community and to go on to university.

The prospects for his 5-year-old son are quite different. There are only three other Greek children his age.

Still, Rombopulous is a rare voice of cautious optimism. He notes that Greeks almost disappeared following the Ottoman conquest, and the community only began to grow again in the 1700s, when the sultan invited shipbuilders and other professionals to live in the empire.

At least 50 Greek-owned businesses operate in Turkey, he noted, up from just three or four a decade ago. Each business brings a new Greek family, and if the EU admits Turkey, the firms are poised to expand and capitalize on all the legal guarantees and ethical practices that the union’s standards suggest.

“All signs now indicate we will die out,” Rombopulous said. “But I am not a pessimist. There were times our community was even smaller than it is today. I know of many Greek businesses just waiting for Turkey to join the EU. Investments, more families. I believe things may improve and change.”