Two former Byzantine churches of Istanbul, the famed Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora, which served as museums for decades, have been converted to mosques in the space of a month. This has raised concerns. Istanbul’s Greek Orthodox community knows that more is at stake than these two monuments.
Istanbul’s Greek Orthodox, the Rum Polites, form the greater part of the flock of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the traditional centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Having been numerous and influential during Byzantine and Ottoman eras, they now constitute a small minority of merely 2,000.
The traumatic experiences they have suffered, including pogroms and expulsions, have caused them to become globally dispersed. But the Rum Polites continue to retain a strong connection to Istanbul and its Byzantine heritage, made palpable by architectural landmarks…