Papa Eftim attempted to take over the Ecumenical Patriarchate on this day in 1923. The Ottoman Empire was wavering about which side it should join in World War I. The Empire owed money to British, French, and German banks, but the fact that its Navy in the Black Sea was manned by German sailors resulted in an attack on a Russian port in Crimea in October of 1914. Greece joined the Entente powers in 1915 under the promise of significant territorial gains in Anatolia. At that time, Colonel Ioannis Metaxas, a hero of the Balkan wars of 1912–1913, predicted that the Greek population within the Ottoman Empire was not capable of fighting, whereas the Muslims were prepared to defend their homeland. Nevertheless, the Megali Idea (“Byzantium Reborn!") prevailed, and after the defeat of the Ottomans, the Greeks disembarked in Smyrna in 1919. The atrocities committed against the Turkish civilian population set in motion a vicious cycle: this existential threat helped the Turkish people to mobilize under their “Peter the Great” (a Westernized reformer), Mustafa Kemal Pasha (known since 1934 as Atatürk). As Metaxis warned, the Ottomans lured the Greeks into inland Anatolia. By 1922, the Greek troops had been fighting already for eight years, state coffers were nearly dilapidated, and the Entente powers were not giving them any support. What was supposed to be the rebirth of Byzantium turned into a new catastrophe for the descendants of the Romans. Kemal, a hero of the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, relied on the support of the Bolsheviks. By September 1922, Greek supply lines were broken, and Kemal seized 50,000 troops, a quarter of the Greek Army, as prisoners of war. Now, there was no one to defend the Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna, including Archbishop Chrysostomos, who welcomed Greek troops in Smyrna in 1919. This was the context for Pavlos Karahisaridis, a supporter of Kemal and an Orthodox priest, to prove that he and his adherents were loyal Turks (Papa Eftim was a Karamanlid, a Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christian similar to the Gagauz people in modern day Moldava). As during the Greek Revolution of 1821, the Ecumenical Patriarchate was considered the “fifth column” of Greek Nationalism. During the population exchange between Turkey and Greece, the status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate was negotiated at the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Papa Eftim attempted to take over the Ecumenical Patriarchate during the Pan-Orthodox Congress (May 10–June 8, 1923). The future Patriarch Gavrilo of Serbia summoned Allied military police and prevented Patriarch Meletios (Metaxakis) from being lynched. Then, on December 7, 1923, the day following the elections of Patriarch Gregory VII, the Turkish police interfered. In 1924, Papa Eftim established the “Autocephalous Turkish Patriarchate” and became its first “patriarch,” while remaining a married man. This “patriarchate” became a family business. The head of it now is Papa Eftim IV. One of the churches controlled by this small group is the sixteenth-century church of Our Lady of Caffa (today Feodosia in Crimea), built with the money of the sixteenth-century Russian merchant Tifon Korobeinikov. Sources: Monk Benjamin (Gomarteli), “Letopis’ tserkovnykh sobytii Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi nachinaia s 1917 goda” [Timeline of the Events in the History of the Orthodox Church Beginning in 1917], Part 1, Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad. Misha Glenny, The Balkans (London, 1999). Patrick Viscuso, A Quest for Reform of the Orthodox Church: the 1923 Pan-Orthodox Congress (Berkley, CA: 2006). |
