ISTANBUL — When Ahmet Sik was jailed last year on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, he had little doubt that a secretive movement linked to a reclusive imam living in the United States was behind his arrest.

Pupils at a school in Istanbul run by the Gulen movement sang Turkey’s national anthem recently. The movement has millions of followers and schools in 140 countries.

“If you touch them you get burned,” a gaunt and defiant Mr. Sik said in an interview in March at his apartment here, just days after being released from more than a year in jail. “Whether you are a journalist, an intellectual or a human rights activist, if you dare to criticize them you are accused of being a drug dealer or a terrorist.”

Mr. Sik’s transgression, he said, was to write a book, “The Army of the Imam.” It chronicles how the followers of the imam, Fethullah Gulen, have proliferated within the police and the judiciary, working behind the scenes to become one of Turkey’s most powerful political forces — and, he contends, one of its most ruthless, smearing opponents and silencing dissenters.

The case quickly became among the most prominent of dozens of prosecutions that critics say are being driven by the followers of Mr. Gulen, 70, a charismatic preacher who leads one of the most influential Islamic movements in the world, with millions of followers and schools in 140 countries. He has long advocated tolerance, peace and interfaith dialogue, drawing on the traditions of Sufism, a mystical strain of Islam generally viewed as being moderate.

But the movement’s stealthy expansion of power — as well as its tactics and lack of transparency — is now drawing accusations that Mr. Gulen’s supporters are using their influence in Turkey’s courts and police and intelligence services to engage in witch hunts against opponents with the aim of creating a more conservative Islamic Turkey. Critics say the agenda is threatening the government’s democratic credentials just as Turkey steps forward as a regional power.

“We are troubled by the secretive nature of the Gulen movement, all the smoke and mirrors,” said a senior American official, who requested anonymity to avoid breaching diplomatic protocol. “It is clear they want influence and power. We are concerned there is a hidden agenda to challenge secular Turkey and guide the country in a more Islamic direction.”

The movement has strong affiliations or sympathy in powerful parts of Turkey’s news media, including the country’s largest daily newspaper, Zaman, and, Turkish analysts say, among at least several dozen members of its 550-seat Parliament, with support extending to the highest levels of government.

With its extensive influence in the media and a small army of grass-roots supporters, the Gulen movement has provided indispensable support to the conservative, Islam-inspired government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Some officials and analysts suspect that some elements within the Gulen movement have served as a stalking-horse for the government, which has benefited, too, as the Gulen-affiliated media have attacked common opponents and backed trials that Mr. Erdogan has publicly supported.

But the relationship between Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Gulen has sometimes been tense, with the prime minster, a mercurial and populist leader, sensitive to any challenges to his authority. Analysts say that in recent months Mr. Erdogan and other members of his Justice and Development Party have grown increasingly wary, as high-profile arrests of critics of the Gulen movement have embarrassed the government. There is growing talk of a power struggle.

A culture of fear surrounding the so-called Gulenists, however exaggerated, is so endemic that few here will talk openly about them on the telephone, fearing that their conversations are being recorded and that there will be reprisals.

Ayse Bohurler, a founding member of the Justice and Development Party, said that the lack of transparency and clear organizational structure made it impossible to hold the group accountable. “There is no reference point; they are kicking in the shadows,” Ms. Bohurler said. “They are everywhere and nowhere.”

Mr. Gulen rarely gives interviews, and he declined a request for this article. But Mustafa Yesil, president of the Journalists and Writers Foundation, a group based in Istanbul that is affiliated with the movement, described the Gulenists as a “civic movement” with no political aspirations. If sympathizers of the movement are well represented in Turkey’s state bureaucracy and the police, Mr. Yesil said, their presence is based on merit.

“The old guard feel squeezed because their space is getting smaller, and they are sending the bill to the movement,” Mr. Yesil said.

His words were reinforced by a rare public statement posted on a leading Gulen community Web site this month. The statement said it was a “violation of human rights” to accuse Gulenists in the state bureaucracy of “infiltration” when they were actually upholding the rule of law and serving their country.

The movement is well known for running a network of schools lauded for their academic rigor and commitment to spreading Turkish language and culture. Gulen followers have been involved in starting one of the largest collections of charter schools in the United States. With their neatly trimmed mustaches, suits and ties, and their missionary zeal, supporters here convey the earnestness of Mormon missionaries or Muslim Peace Corps volunteers. Their eyes moisten at the mention of Mr. Gulen’s name, which is invoked with utmost reverence.

Sympathizers say the notion of Mr. Gulen as a cultish puppet master is a malicious caricature. The group consists of an informal network of followers and has no formal organization or official membership, they say. Mr. Gulen communicates in essays and videotaped sermons, which are posted on the Internet and appear in other Gulen-related media outlets.

His sympathizers say his goal is the creation of a “golden generation” that would embrace humanism, science and Islam and serve the Turkish state. He has publicly affirmed the importance of complying with Turkey’s secular laws, and mathematics and science competitions at Gulen schools overshadow religious expression, which takes place quietly in “relaxation rooms” that double as prayer spaces.

But some critics say that outward appearances belie the true agenda of a movement working behind the scenes to expand the role of Islam in Turkey. They say that, ultimately, the community aims to bring Mr. Gulen, who is ailing, back to Turkey. Supporters say Mr. Gulen has resisted returning home, mindful that he could polarize the country.

Mr. Sik, the author, accused Mr. Gulen’s followers of misusing their positions of power. Once arrested, he was accused of links to a shadowy network called Ergenekon, which prosecutors contend planned to engage in civil unrest, assassinations and terrorism to create chaos for Mr. Erdogan’s Muslim-inspired government as a prelude for a coup by the military, which has long regarded itself as the guardian of the secular state.

Even some of Mr. Sik’s staunchest critics say the charges against him appeared ludicrous. A longtime critic of the military, he had written a book on the Ergenekon case arguing about ways prosecutors could better investigate the coup plot he is now accused of abetting.

The Ergenekon trials have been a watershed for Turkey, as prosecution of the matter has swept up dozens of journalists, intellectuals and current and former military service members.

The ascent of Mr. Erdogan’s government since 2002 has radically shifted the balance of power, and analysts say the Gulenists have seized the opportunity to settle old scores and tame their former rivals, including the military.

“Hard-core activists within the Gulen movement are driving the arrests,” said Gareth Jenkins, an expert on Turkey at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. “It is revenge for the 1990s, when the military oppressed Muslim conservatives.”

Gulen supporters argue that the Ergenekon trials are a long-overdue historical reckoning aimed at bringing to account a murky group of ultranationalist operatives, linked to the military, that has fought against perceived enemies of the state, including pro-Islamists.

Few here doubt that there is some truth to the conspiracy: the police say they have uncovered stashes of weapons linked to retired officers, and the military has intervened four times to overthrow democratically elected governments.

Mr. Gulen lives in self-imposed exile on a 25-acre haven in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. In 1999, he fled Turkey amid accusations of plotting to overthrow the secular government. Around that time, a taped sermon emerged in the media in which Mr. Gulen was heard advising his followers to “move within the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers.”

He has said his words were manipulated, and he was acquitted of all charges in 2008.

Mr. Gulen, who has preached openly against fundamentalism and terrorism, was embraced in Washington after Sept. 11, 2001, as a welcome face of moderate Islam, analysts say. His green card application shows that his request to remain in the United States was endorsed by a former official of the Central Intelligence Agency. His movement’s events have been attended by luminaries like former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general.

A 2009 cable by the United States ambassador to Turkey at the time, James F. Jeffrey, made public by WikiLeaks, noted that the Gulen movement was strong within the police force and in conflict with the military. It said that the assertion that the Turkish national police is controlled by Gulenists “is impossible to confirm, but we have found no one who disputes it.”

The cable goes on to say that the Gulen-controlled media are supporting the investigation into Ergenekon and have helped put many opponents of the governing Justice and Development Party behind bars.

But the interests of the movement and the government appear increasingly to be diverging, as prosecutions of opponents widen.

In February a prosecutor asked the leader of the National Intelligence Agency, Hakan Fidan, a close ally of Mr. Erdogan, to testify in a court case widely backed by Gulen supporters over secret links between the agency and the P.K.K., a Kurdish group that Turkey, the United States and the European Union classify as a terrorist organization. The government moved swiftly to block the questioning, and the prosecutor was removed from the case.

It was not the first case in which tensions with the government have surfaced, or the first case of allegations with murky origins.

In September 2010, Hanefi Avci, a former police chief and Gulen sympathizer, was arrested and accused of being part of the Ergenekon plot after publishing a book alleging that a network of Gulenists in the police was manipulating judicial processes.

In another case, in 2009, three noncommissioned officers confessed to planting forged documents implicating the commander of their air force base in the central city of Kayseri, according to Serkan Gunel, a lawyer familiar with the case. One of the documents asked army personnel to assist an officer jailed on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.

The officers told investigators they had planted the forged documents at the request of their Gulenist mentor. Soon afterward, articles appeared in the Gulen-affiliated media saying that their confessions had been extracted with the use of hypnosis. The military prosecutor who carried out the investigation, Col. Ahmet Zeki Ucok, was accused of cavorting with Russian prostitutes as part of a smear campaign, the lawyer said.

The officers recanted their confessions and were restored to their posts. A forensic medical report, obtained 18 months after the officers were interviewed, said they could have been hypnotized. Colonel Ucok was convicted April 17 on charges of torture related to his questioning of the officers and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

Mr. Sik, who remains out of prison, pending trial, has not been silenced. The police seized the manuscript to his book, but it was nevertheless published by a group of supporters on the Internet. Mr. Sik says he hopes to return to writing books, assuming he is not put back in jail.

“My only wish is for my children to read about these events as dirt from the past,” he said. “I want it to be buried.”

Yasemin Ergin

ISTANBUL — Two years ago, Turkish businesswoman Arzuhan Dogan Yalcindag was riding high on success when she was asked to do what most believed was impossible: save the family business.

Yalcindag’s father, media tycoon Aydin Dogan, had just stepped down from his position as CEO of the Dogan Business and Media Groups in early 2010. The company was one of Turkey’s leading industrial and media conglomerates, but had come under fire for tax evasion after a spat with Turkey’s leadership.

Dogan appointed Yalcindag — his eldest daughter — to run the company.

“It was complete chaos – many people thought the holding would not survive the crisis it was in,” she said in a recent interview.

Yalcindag was hardly a novice businesswoman, with an MBA from the UK and years of experience at the company. At the time, she was serving a second term as the first chairwoman of the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association.

But the challenge was immense: yanking the multibillion dollar empire from the brink of bankruptcy.

That a woman would rise to top positions in such a patriarchal society may seem remarkable. But in Turkey’s leading family enterprises, it’s quite common.

Women are active on the boards of most major family-controlled holdings, and the largest industrial and financial conglomerate in Turkey, Sabanci Holding, is run by a woman, Guler Sabanci. Wealthy secular families have long supported their daughters’ education in Turkey, in part because they are able to pay tuition for all of their children. Poorer Turkish families tend to educate their sons if they can’t afford tuition for all of their children.

“For women who are lucky enough to be born into a privileged class, there is no problem, no glass ceiling whatsoever,“ said Yalcindag, “It’s in the middle and lower classes where equal opportunities for women seriously lag behind.”

Born in Istanbul in 1965, Yalcindag was immersed in the business world growing up. Her father was a self-made-entrepreneur who founded his first business in 1958 and became one of Turkey’s richest and most influential men over the years. “For him, two things in his life were essential – his family and his work,” she said. “So he always shared his working life with us.”

Yalcindag studied sociology at Bosphorus University in Istanbul, and received her MBA at the American University in London.

By the time she returned to Turkey in 1990, Dogan had expanded into a massive empire, invested in energy, trade, insurance, tourism, and a media group, Dogan Media Holdings, that had become the largest media enterprise in Turkey. At times, he would be labeled the country’s third most influential man — after the prime minister and the chief of the armed forces of Turkey.

Yalcindag jumped into the family business right away — partly due to interest, but also a sense of obligation.

“Our society is still more patriarchic than Western societies and people are much more reluctant to revolt against their parents and choose individual career paths,” she said. “No matter how much economic independence and professional success we acquire, there is a certain hierarchy and respect toward elders, which has helped Turkish family companies to remain intact over the years.”

Her first accomplishment was founding Milpa Co., one of Turkey’s first mail-order companies. Then she worked on establishing Alternatif Bank, a bank specifically designed to meet the needs of mid-sized companies, and finally moved on to manage one of the group’s newspapers. She later initiated a partnership between CNN International and Doğan Media Holding, which resulted in one of Turkey’s first news channels, CNN Türk in 2000.

As Yalcindag gained national prominence, and even global recognition — she made Forbes’ list of youngest women billionaires in 2008 — her father became embroiled in a bitter power struggle with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Having orchestrated government-friendly coverage in his newspapers for years, the tide turned when Doğan lost out on some profitable public contracts. Suddenly the most influential Doğan papers were harshly criticizing Erdoğan. The Turkish leader struck back.

In 2009, Erdogan unleashed tax investigators on his archenemy. They found evidence of $2.3 billion in unpaid — a sum that would ruin even a huge enterprise like Dogan. He conceded defeat, and replaced his harshest editors-in-chief and columnists. In early 2010, he resigned as chief executive, and left his eldest daughter to fix the situation.

In some ways, Yalcindag was the perfect choice for the position. She hadn’t been involved in the political manipulations that had made her father so powerful, and her establishment of CNN Türk had gained her a reputation of valuing respectable journalism.

Yalcindag sold some of the group’s most critical newspapers and a private news and entertainment channel Star TV. She also pulled the company temporarily from the energy sector, a highly competitive industry that usually brought business and government into conflict, managing to soften Erdogan’s rage and rehabilitate the family business.

Today the holding is slowly steering back towards growth, with the company’s assets growing from $8 billion in 2012 to $8.7 billion last year.

“My father’s management style was very patriarchic, which is normal in the first generation of a family business,” she said. “He made all decisions and didn’t like people interfering with them. But the change of leadership inevitably led to a much more modern, transparent and pluralist corporate culture.”

*This story appeared in the Spring 2012 print edition of Greek America Magazine and has been provided exclusively for digital publication in the Pappas Post. Greek America Magazine is published by the Greek America Foundation. To get Greek America Magazine, visit here and become a member today.

A century of oppression has nearly wiped out a religious minority group with historic ties to the region. Improved politics offer a new ray of hope. But with their numbers dwindling, Turkey’s Greek Orthodox Christians are fighting for survival.

In the spring of 2011, two young journalism students flew to Istanbul, Turkey with a mission to shed light on a pressing violation of religious freedom and human rights. One of them, Tania Karas, a Greek American and 2011 graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, received a global research grant to spend three weeks documenting the daily lives and demographic strength of the country’s last Greek Orthodox Christians. She interviewed 20 community leaders, young people and government officials on the challenges of living within a community whose population is in decline.

The trip culminated in a meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s 250 million-plus Orthodox Christians whose Holy See has been in Istanbul for 1,700 years. Upon her return to the U.S., Tania tracked the community over the next 12 months. She found that despite marked improvement in relations between Turkey and its minorities, many challenges remain. What follow are the stories of Greek resilience and pride she discovered.

ISTANBUL’S Kadıköy Greek Primary School lies a few kilometers east of the Bosphorus Strait, on the Asian side of the ancient city. Imposing Doric pillars bolster the mint green building’s entryway, suggesting occupancy far more significant than its present student body.

Fourth-grader Valantis Mihailidis was the school’s sole student last year. The 10-year-old completed two grade levels alone, without peers to distract him in class or kick a ball with at recess. The fourth grade classroom contained just two desks, pupil and teacher. Handwritten essays tacked to the bulletin board all shared the same author.

Decades ago, Valantis’ school – and other Greek academies nearby, now closed – overflowed with children from hundreds of Greek families residing in the area. Now just a few Greeks remain. The rest were forced out by Turkish officials (or fled voluntarily, out of fear) in times of hostility between Turkey and Greece.

More than a dozen Greek Orthodox Christian churches still dot Kadıköy and its surrounding hillside neighborhoods. Though well maintained, most have no congregations and are open just a few Sundays annually.

Tucked between Kadıköy’s Turkish teahouses sits a lone block of Greek restaurants, their cheerful blue and white awnings beckoning visitors. In a place that was once a Greek stronghold, these shops are the last ones standing. Even the neighborhood’s original Greek name, Chalkedon, has been Turkified.

Yorgo Istefanopulos, chairman of Kadıköy’s small Greek community, graduated from Kadıköy Primary himself in 1962, in a class of more than 70 students. After Valantis, the school may never issue another diploma.

“Sadly this is the truth about our Greek community, not only in Kadıköy but in the entire city of Istanbul,” Istefanopulos says. “We are all getting older and there are very few young kids.”

Kadıköy is a microcosm for the fate of Istanbul’s – and greater Turkey’s – Greek Orthodox Christians. After a century of bloody pogroms, forced deportations and sanctioned discrimination by the Turkish government, uncertainty permeates their tight-knit group.

The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate, the spiritual center of the Orthodox Christian Church globally, as well as the focal point of Turkey’s Greek Orthodox community, suffers from lack of means to train new clerics and religious leaders; the Turkish government shut down its theological school in 1971. Turkey, an Islamic state, has yet to allow its reopening.

Historically, Turkey’s Greeks have been hostages of bitter tensions between rival neighbor nations, complicating their national allegiances: Greece, a country whose citizens share their ethnic heritage and religious identity, versus Turkey, the country of their citizenship and the only homeland they have ever known.

Without urgent, comprehensive intervention, Turkey’s remaining Greek population may disappear in the next few decades. They number around 1,700 today, down from estimates around 1.8 million at the start of the 20th century – more than a 99 percent reduction over 112 years. With an average age over 65, the group is dying out. Young adults move to Greece in search of love. Schools without students must close. Sunday liturgies are sparsely attended.

Some reforms are on the way, thanks to more than a decade of advocacy by hardworking community leaders who have demanded equal treatment and protections for Turkey’s religious minorities. Still, it may be too late. By the time their goals are achieved, there may be no Greeks left in Turkey to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Says Istefanopulos, “We are like a species nearing extinction that we have to save.”

THE ROAD TO 1,700

It wasn’t always this way. Ethnic Greeks once thrived in the region. They have lived in what is now Turkey since antiquity, long before Alexander the Great captured Asia Minor from the Persians around 300 B.C. Anatolia, the peninsula that makes up most of modern-day Turkey, was the birthplace of such ancient Greek titans as Homer and Saint Nicholas. Scholars and philosophers like Pythagorus and Aristotle wandered Anatolia’s lands throughout their lives.

The Greeks of Asia Minor have seen the rise and fall of two empires, Byzantine and Ottoman. Today, their future is not guaranteed. Punitive government policies targeting religious minorities – such as crippling taxes on their wealth, laws making it nearly impossible for them to buy or sell property, and lack of state funding for their schools and services – have all but stamped them out, threatening to end a continuous, unbroken chapter of Greek history in the region spanning two millennia.

Despite present demographic realities, many of Turkey’s Greeks refuse to believe this is the end of the road. Instead, they press on, instilling religious and cultural traditions in the next generation without acknowledging the possibility of defeat. In an interview last spring, Valantis’ principal and teacher Hristo Pestemalcioglu swung between hope and resignation, unsure what his sole pupil’s looming graduation or transfer might mean.

“What could happen to our school next year? I don’t know,” he said. He did not know of any ethnic Greek children in the Kadıköy area other than Valantis. “If there are children they are welcome here. If there aren’t any children…we don’t know what will happen.”

And what of the cost to ensure one boy received a traditional, Rum education? $2,300 in school operating fees per month, plus salaries for two teachers. For Pestemalcioglu and Valantis’ family, it was worth it.

Turkey’s Greek Orthodox Christians call themselves Rums (pronounced “rooms”). It comes from the word Romoi, or Romans. Their roots go back more than 2,000 years in Tin Poli, or The City. It’s shorthand for Constantinople, as the Rums, and many Greeks internationally, still refer to the former Byzantine city. The Patriarchate was established there in the fourth century. Its head, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, is the spiritual leader of more than 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide – and de facto representative for the local, dwindling sliver of Greeks.

The modern drop in Rums’ numbers has its origins in the Greek and Armenian genocides of the early 1900s, when reformist Ottomans killed hundreds of thousands in a large-scale ethnic cleansing campaign driven by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s – the founder of the Turkish republic – desire to create an ethnically pure “Turkey for the Turks.” A full-fledged war broke out in Asia Minor between Greece and Turkey in 1919.  Smyrna, once a majority-Greek city known for its harmony among ethnic groups, burned to the ground, smoldering for weeks. Anatolia would never be the same.

Most present-day Rums live in Istanbul or two islands in the Aegean Sea, Gökçeada and Bozcaada (formerly Imbros and Tenedos). Greeks living in those three areas were exempted from a compulsory population exchange in 1923: under terms of a peace treaty to end the Greco-Turkish War, Greece expelled half a million of its Muslims, and Turkey ousted more than 1.5 million Greek Orthodox Christians from Anatolia. Only 200,000 Rums were allowed to stay put. The Lausanne Treaty, as it was called, also gave way for the establishment of the modern Turkish state.

Three catastrophic events over the next decades caused the emptying of Rum classrooms and neighborhoods: the Turkish government-organized “September Riots” of 1955 where at least a dozen Rums were massacred and hundreds of homes, shops and churches vandalized; the forced Rum expulsions in 1964, when Greek-Turkish tensions flared over Cyprus; and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

Tens of thousands of Rums – especially families with young children – sought refuge in Greece with each attack on their community. They abandoned their homes and businesses. Turkish officials banned those who remained from speaking Greek in their own schools and in the streets. By the turn of the 21st century, the Rum population had declined to its current 1,700.

More recently, some Rums express hope their old enclaves will be filled again as a flourishing economy in Istanbul – and full-blown financial crisis in Greece – might re-attract those who were expelled decades ago. Rums point to a trend in unemployed Greek nationals immigrating to Istanbul to find work.

But the Greek Consulate in Turkey says their numbers are insignificant, just a handful annually. And it’s too early to tell whether immigrants from Greece will stay long-term, filling the ranks of a thinning Rum community. True reversal of their downward population spiral requires a far greater injection of new members.

A RUM REVIVAL

Perhaps no one is more confident about the Rums’ future than one man. Laki Vingas is the first non-Muslim elected to a seat in a national assembly governing minority land ownership. He’s a prominent government link for the Rums, who have traditionally been pushed to the fringe by the Turkish majority.

A Greek businessman who grew up in Istanbul, Vingas smiles easily and speaks with poetic conviction about a Rum revival.

“What we have is a big tree with very deep roots,” Vingas says. “But instead of letting this tree disappear with history, we have to protect it and feed it and provide new possibilities to give it new branches.”

Vingas works on behalf of minority groups to take back properties confiscated by the state, splitting his time between Istanbul and Ankara. Presently Turkey’s non-Muslim communities suffer from lack of corporate legal status. As a constitutionally secular state, Turkey does not recognize religious bodies like the Patriarchate as legal entities. This makes it hard for them to buy, maintain or transfer property – restrictions that have been a main vehicle for state control over its minorities.

By law, religious communities like Kadıköy’s are divided into “foundations,” pods of three to five revenue-sharing properties such as churches, schools and hospitals. Turkey devised the “foundation law” in 1936. It limits non-Muslims from acquiring new land and makes it easy for the state to seize their existing properties at will. Ownership and financial problems stemming from the foundation system have plagued minorities since it was implemented.

In addition to a few thousand Rums, Turkey’s population of 79 million includes 65,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians and 23,000 Jews. Though Rums are the smallest group, they hold a disproportionate share of real estate: 76 foundations compared with Armenians’ 52 and Jews’ 19. (Other religious minorities within Turkey do not fall under the foundation law.)

According to the Patriarchate, Turkish authorities have confiscated 24 additional Rum foundations, plus 990 individually owned properties, since 1936. In many cases, properties were destroyed or sold to new owners – although Rums still hold many of the original deeds, invalid in the government’s eyes. In one 2007 instance, a former Rum school in the courtyard of St. George church in Edirnekapı was taken and resold as a billiard hall.

Since he was first elected to his position in 2009, Vingas has secured the return of a handful of seized properties to their owners. He has seen drastic improvements in relations between Turkey and its minorities in his role as a liaison.

“There has been a lot of support from the state authorities to dialogue with the heads of churches, with the religious institutions, with the leaders, to have dinners together, to work together, to have meetings together, to cooperate,” he says. “We are eliminating the existing problems. We still have a list of demands, but the way we are today is comparably better than the way we were ten years ago.”

Last August, at an interfaith dinner attended by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the Turkish government would give religious minorities back hundreds of properties seized by the state since 1936.

“Times that a citizen of ours would be oppressed due to his religion, ethnic origin or different way of life are over,” Erdogan said at the dinner. In addition, he said, foundations would receive compensation for properties that were confiscated and sold. So far at least one building has been given back.

LACK OF REAL CHANGE

A popular tourism slogan for Turkey declares, ‘Turkey: Where East Meets West.’ The country is situated at a geopolitical crossroad between the Western world and Middle East, though its diplomacy sights have been set on the West for the past decade. When Erdogan swept to power in 2002, his overriding goal was Turkish entry into the European Union. The result? Improvements in minority rights and free speech as Turkey aligned itself with Western ideals.

The Rums – along with Turkey’s Jews, Assyrians and Armenians – stood to benefit. Erdogan’s Muslim-inspired Justice and Development Party invoked democratic principles and promoted religious freedom to gain legitimacy in a country that, on paper, is strictly secular.

Last fall, Erdogan touted the 99 percent Muslim country as “a secular state where all religions are equal.” Such statements are a dramatic departure from the threatening, oppressive tone past administrations have taken toward the country’s religious minority communities.

But improved rhetoric has not brought legislative or constitutional guarantees of equality for non-Muslims. Annual reports by international human rights groups show Turkey is a repeat offender in stifling minority rights and free speech.

In a report released in March, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended the State Department designate Turkey as a “country of particular concern” because of its “systematic and egregious violations of religious freedom.”

The Patriarch is fighting back. His All-Holiness, the honorific title the faithful call him, has emerged as a world-renowned champion of human rights. In the past two decades, he has waged a high-profile political battle on behalf of Turkey’s religious minorities. With his slight build, long white beard and calm, even manner of speaking, Patriarch Bartholomew does not intimidate. But he has claimed several recent political and judicial victories.

Two years ago, the Patriarchate won a landmark ruling from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to regain rightful ownership of a boys’ orphanage. The abandoned, historically significant structure on the island of Büyükada was opened by the Patriarchate in 1902. Turkish authorities confiscated it in 1997, saying the building had no owner because they refuse to recognize the Patriarchate’s legal status.

The most monumental struggle for Rum survival has unfolded on the island of Heybeliada, home to a historic Greek Orthodox seminary overlooking the Sea of Marmara. The Theological School of Halki was a global training ground for Eastern Orthodox priests until Turkish authorities forced its closure in 1971. That year, a constitutional court ruled that all private institutions must be affiliated with a state university; as a seminary, Halki did not meet strict secularity requirements for state-run schools.

Many current Orthodox archbishops throughout the world were trained at Halki, as were all the Patriarchs in recent history. But since Turkish law also requires the Ecumenical Patriarch be a Turkish citizen, it is unclear who might lead the church after 72-year-old Bartholomew passes on.

In the past year, Erdogan has stepped up his promises to reopen Halki at the behest of U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In late March, following a meeting with Erdogan, Obama indicated the reopening was forthcoming.

“I expressed my congratulations to the prime minister for his efforts to protect the rights of religious minorities,” Obama said in a statement. “I am very pleased to hear his decision to reopen the Halki Seminary on Heybeliada.”

Despite all of this talk, no actions have been taken. A reopening date has not been set. In general, say experts, Turkish officials are dragging their feet on numerous religious freedom issues. And in the case of a diminishing, aging minority group, if they ignore them long enough, they will disappear.

Can the Rums fight hard enough to change their fate? Dr. Elizabeth Prodromou, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, says they are at a critical tipping point, with a small window of opportunity to bring their community back from the brink of extinction.

“The political climate is noticeably improved, and that has created the possibility for improvement in the social climate for the Rums,” she says. “The real question is, does that translate into the kind of practical changes that can reverse the precipitous decline of this community? More than anything else, time is against the sustainability of the Rum minority. And the Turkish government knows that. It’s a waiting game, and time is not on their side.”

THE NEXT GENERATION

Reminders of the Turkish upper hand are pervasive throughout Rum life. The marble bust of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk beneath spotlights greets students at the entrance of Zografyon Rum middle school. The first president of Turkey is credited as the founder of Turkish nationalism following the Ottoman Empire’s decline after World War I.

Each morning schoolchildren recite a pledge of allegiance to their country that begins, “I am a Turk.” Even in Rum schools, some lessons are in Turkish, though hallway chatter is primarily Greek. The school curriculum is controlled under the Ministry of National Education’s strict rules for  secularity. Though all Zografyon’s students are Orthodox Christians, the law forbids mention of their faith in school. Like other minority schools, Zografyon does not receive government funding.

Zografyon, which counts Patriarch Bartholomew himself among its alumni, is located in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu neighborhood near Taksim Square, the heart of the city. Lessons are interrupted by the Islamic muezzin’s call to prayer five times daily. Sometimes, the bells of Agia Triada church nearby can be heard, too, ever so faintly.

On a clear sunny day, one can stand on Zografyon’s rooftop promenade and see across the Golden Horn to the famed Agia Sophia, once a Greek Orthodox church, and its neighboring Blue Mosque. The Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I erected the Muslim house of worship in 1609 to rival Agia Sophia’s grandeur.

For young Rums, these religious juxtapositions are a fact of life in Tin Poli. They are evidence of their own deep roots in these lands and the clash of civilizations their people surmounted throughout history. If not for their ancestors’ proud, resilient spirit, they would not be here.

With just 40 students spread across five floors, an eerie quiet falls over Zografyon’s halls in the five-minute breaks between classes. Enrollment is down from its peak of more than 800 in the early 1960s. “In 1962 we didn’t fit in this building,” says chemistry teacher Aristotelis Çokonas. “We added two more floors because of the overflow of students. But two years later they were not needed anymore. Everyone started leaving because of the events of 1964.”

That year, escalating tensions between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus led Turkish officials to deport all Rums with Greek citizenship. This shrank their community by another 40,000. Expelled Rums were allowed to take with them only 20 kg in personal belongings and $22 in cash. The state seized homes and businesses they left behind and froze their bank accounts.

Zografyon’s former headmaster remembers well the fear that gripped Rums in those days. The hunched, 84-year-old Dimitris Fragkoplos lives just two doors down from the school, around the corner from Istiklal Caddesi, Istanbul’s main avenue.

From his third-floor walk-up apartment, he takes the pulse of the Rum community by meticulously tracking an important measure: grammar school enrollment. His cramped office is lined with bookcases of blue three-inch binders bursting with school registration papers from the last century.

For the 2010 to 2011 year, 223 students were enrolled in seven Rum schools (this included Kadıköy Primary with its one pupil). More than a third of those children are not Greek at all. They’re Arab Antiochian Orthodox Christians, a minority within a minority, bound to their peers by a common religion ignored in academic settings. It is unclear how many Arab Christians make up the 1,700 usually cited as the number of Rums left in Turkey. Many regard themselves as Rums, fueling the demographic confusion.

Fragkoplos, who grew up on the Turkish island of Büyükada, recalls a time when Rum neighborhoods were plentiful throughout Turkey. As a boy he attended Istanbul’s prestigious Great School of the Nation, better known as Megali Tou Genous Scholi, established in 1454. The imposing, intricately designed red building overlooks the Patriarchate itself, with stunning views of the Golden Horn. When Fragkoplos was a child, hundreds of children hiked up the steep hillside daily to reach their school.

The makeup of his neighborhood transformed as friends and relatives fled to Greece in droves with each new attack on their community – in 1955, in 1964, and again in 1974. Those were years where one never spoke Greek in the streets; to wear one’s Orthodox Christian baptismal cross in public was unthinkable. And while Fragkoplos was tempted to leave as well, he decided as a young schoolteacher to stay behind and set a good example for his students.

“Through the years our numbers have been lowered slowly, slowly,” he says. “For example, when it snows you play with snowballs. The warmth of your body makes the snowball melt and melt and melt and melt. And that way we remain, just 2,000 Greeks in the city.”

THE ECUMENICAL PROTECTOR

The Rums’ foremost beacon of hope lies within a neighborhood midway up the Golden Horn. The Fener – which borrows its name from the Greek word fanari, or beacon– is home to the Patriarchate, the Eastern Orthodox Church’s center of operations.

Tens of thousands from around the world make annual pilgrimages to the Patriarchate’s Church of St. George, especially around Holy Week each spring. On Easter, the nave and surrounding balconies are standing room-only.

Patriarch Bartholomew keeps a framed photo of himself speaking with President Obama beside his desk at the humble church headquarters. His mahogany desktop is buried beneath mounds of written correspondence from influential leaders spread throughout the world. In addition to leading the Eastern Orthodox Church, Patriarch Bartholomew is admired internationally as a promoter of interfaith harmony and environmental conservation.

Despite this, the strictly secular Turkish government does not recognize Patriarch Bartholomew’s ecumenical title. Instead, they only see him as the lay leader of Turkey’s tiny group of Rums. The Turkish government also retains the power to install a new Patriarch at their will. Further complicating matters, Turkish law restricts work permits for foreigners hoping to work at the Patriarchate, sometimes leaving the organization short-staffed.

The front gate of the Patriarchal compound has been bolted shut for almost 200 years as a constant reminder of the state’s heavy hand in the church’s affairs: on Easter Sunday in 1821, Patriarch Gregory V was pulled from a church service by the Ottoman Sultan Mahmut II and hung at the main gate. The gruesome killing was his punishment for failing to suppress a revolutionary uprising in neighboring Greece. The gate was bolted shut in his memory, and visitors to the Patriarchate have entered through a side door ever since.

In an interview last March, Patriarch Bartholomew chose careful words to commend the Turkish government for its improved treatment of Rums.

“In Istanbul there is a spirit of reorganization in our community,” the Patriarch said. “We live under better conditions from a political point of view. Mr. Erdogan’s government is helpful and attentive towards the minorities. We are very happy with his administration.”

In 2010, Orthodox Christians were allowed to hold their first religious service in 88 years at Sümela Monastery in northern Turkey. Stripped of its official religious status by Turkish officials in 1923, the Byzantine-era, cliffside monastery will now open for a once-yearly worship on August 15, the Dormition of the Virgin Mary feast day. The Turkish government also granted Turkish passports and dual citizenship to 17 foreign, senior Greek Orthodox clerics in 2010, widening the pool of eligible candidates to succeed Patriarch Bartholomew one day.

Though he is thankful for the improved rhetoric surrounding minority rights since Erdogan took office, Patriarch Bartholomew also says Turkey needs to change how it views the Patriarchate. He compared the centuries-old church headquarters to the Catholic Vatican, calling it a cultural asset to the country.

“Turkey should be proud to have the center of worldwide Orthodoxy on its soil,” he said. “It is a center accepted, admired, respected by many. It is a privilege for Turkey to have this institution on its soil. We are not a threat. We are not something dangerous. On the contrary, we work for peace, we work for reconciliation, we promote dialogues. We contribute to culture and civilization. How many countries would wish to have such an institution with 17 centuries of history behind it for themselves?”

In February, Patriarch Bartholomew spoke before the Turkish Parliament – a historic first – demanding guarantees of equal treatment for minorities within the new constitution now being drafted. During the closed-door meeting, he also called for recognition of the Patriarchate as a legal entity, the reopening of Halki, and an equal share of public funds for non-Muslim religious and educational organizations.

“We don’t want to be second-class citizens,” Bartholomew said to reporters after the meeting. “Unfortunately there have been injustices in the past. These are all slowly being corrected and changed. A new Turkey is being born.”

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

There is no question Patriarch Bartholomew has successfully leveraged his prominence on the world stage to call attention to the Rums at a critical moment. But time is running out. The community’s rapid shrinking confirms an inconvenient truth: without comprehensive intervention – and fast – their disappearance is imminent.

“Every day that passes without legal and constitutional changes that can allow for the sustainability of this community is another day lost,” says Prodromou, the religious freedom commission vice chair. The elderly average age of the Rum population and protracted delays between rhetoric and reform do not bode well for the group’s future, she says.

Beyond the Fener’s walls, there are few faithful left to attend Sunday services at Greek Orthodox churches throughout the city. Seats stamped with numbers linger from the days when local families paid to reserve prime vantage spots for church services. Today, churchgoers are surprised to find themselves in company when they attend liturgies.

Due to their lack of congregations, Turkey’s 100+ Greek Orthodox churches share fifty priests. Sometimes a priest performs several liturgies in multiple churches throughout the week, often with no one else present. This demonstrates that the churches are still in use so that Turkish officials will not label them abandoned and confiscate them.

The circumstance begs a philosophical, if-a-tree-falls-in-the-woods question: If a prayer service is held daily with never a single witness, does anybody benefit? And if icons are shined, hymnbooks dusted off, and ceiling cracks repaired for a congregation that will likely never return, is the time and energy worth it?

Of course it is, say many Rums. “It would be a treason to let them fall into disrepair,” says Yorgo Istefanopulos, the chairman of Kadıköy’s Rum foundation. He oversees five beautiful, recently renovated Rum churches, and three have no parishioners. “Those churches and buildings have been given to us, passed on to us by our ancestors, who worked hard to build them. We have a duty to our ancestors to care for them.”

Like the churches, the city’s schools are suffering the same fate. This was the case with Valantis Mihailidis, the sole student at his school in Kadıköy mentioned at the beginning of this story. In September, Valantis’ family moved him to another Rum school in Istanbul’s downtown. After two years alone, it was time for an academic setting with more children. With no students left to teach, Kadıköy Primary closed its doors for good. The soaring four-story building remains, lovely and yet empty.

As seen in Valantis’ case, the last remaining Greeks of Istanbul will fight their one-sided battle with demography to the very end, especially with regard to their children’s education. In January, the Turkish Ministry of Education announced it would permit a Greek school on the island of Gökçeada, closed in 1936, to reopen. Five families with children have said they will relocate so that the school will have pupils. It is these situations that showcase the Rums’ resilience.

Istanbul – or rather, Constantinople, and Byzantium before it – is one of the cradles of Hellenism. No matter how hard Istanbul tries to adopt a more Western, secular, or distinctly Turkish identity, the modern-day city can never be rid of its Hellenic DNA.

For many, in the Greek psyche, it is far more emotional to see the Agia Sophia cathedral in Istanbul than the Parthenon in Athens. Agia Sophia’s architectural hodgepodge of religious symbolism – Christianity meets Islam, East meets West, all beneath a grandiose dome surrounded by minarets – represents all the challenges Rums have overcome in the past two millennia.

The next few decades may stand as a bookend for a Hellenic history in the region that began with medieval Christianity, climaxed with the rise of the Byzantine empire, fell from grace with oppressive Ottoman rule, and slowed to a trickle under secular, nationalistic modern-day Turkey. Ifiyenia Miranko, a math teacher at Zografyon school, explains that despite living her entire life in a place where her religious and ethnic identity are stifled, as a Rum she will forever feel an allegiance to the city she will only ever call Constantinople.

“We were born here, we have the Patriarchate here, and we feel a connection to the city,” Miranko says. “There are so many churches, and all of them belong to us. It’s a deep heritage – our roots are embedded. Maybe I can take out my own root and go somewhere else, but the Patriarchate, the churches and history, those cannot be erased.”

It is obvious that better days are just on the horizon for the Rums. What is not so obvious is that a decade of calls for reform may have been in vain. The next generation might not be large enough to sustain itself going forward.

The Patriarchate, the fanari of Orthodox Christianity, will undoubtedly remain the one light that continues to burn if the rest of the Rum community goes dark.

One thousand, seven hundred Greeks left in a nation of 79 million. After more than two thousand years of a continuous presence and rich history, unless urgent restorative actions are taken, this may be the end.

The Turkish deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc his opening speech of the ongoing Turkey-Africa forum, in the Turkish Capital, Ankara; said that Africa holds a special relationship of brotherhood and business in the heart of Turkey.

“We are committed to do business with Africans on an equal footing. We are opening up ourselves for Africa than any other Western country. Contrary to colonist powers, Turkish investors try to process resources of Africa within the respective African countries” Arinc added.

The forum is being attended by journalists and delegates from 54 countries.

Turkey, he said, has massively grown its trade, industry and construction sector in the previous years on the African continent. He also applauded Ugandans for their hospitality; a spirit the deputy premier said, “Will help Turkey increase its investments in Uganda.”

“Alongside business, we will also help establish peace and stability on the continent,” he added. Turkish personnel, he said, and financial aid, are deployed in six nations in Africa.

By the end of the 2012, there will be 33 Turkish embassies in Africa, with several more to open in the coming years. Turkish Airlines now has regular flights to Addis Ababa, Dakar, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Lagos, seeking to turn Istanbul into a major hub for African travelers.

Turkey’s trade with Africa has recently exceeded the US$ 10 billion mark – slightly less than one tenth of China-Africa trade, but a tenfold increase since 2000 nonetheless.

The recent African Economic Outlook report shows that Turkey is massively extending its fronts in construction and trade on the African continent.

It has joined hands with the other economic super powers to account for about 39 percent of Africa’s trade in merchandize in 2009; up from 23 percent a decade earlier, partly reads the report.

The findings are in the report produced by the African Development Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Development Programme and the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

China accounted for 13.9 percent of Africa’s total trade of $629 billion in 2009, while India accounted for 5.1 percent, South Korea 2.6 percent, Brazil 2.5 percent, Turkey 2.4 percent and Thailand 1.1 percent, according to the outlook.

Africa’s new trading partners may also help it reduce its reliance on exports of raw materials. While 85 percent of foreign direct investment flows from traditional investors go into resource-rich countries, the ratio for emerging partners is closer to 70 percent.

Turkey-Uganda relations are on the rise both socially and economically as part of Turkey’s outreach to African countries to support stability and security, and fixing poverty related issues. Of late, they have also crossed into the road construction sector.

High-level visits, forums, investment and trade delegations between the countries are broadening each country’s knowledge. Of recent a top Government delegation was on an official visit in Uganda.

Education was Turkey’s first investment in Uganda followed by the opening of the Turkish Airlines in June this year. Turkish foreign ministry made a declaration in 2005 to turn Africa into the country’s investment hub and her airline’s most valuable destination.

Of late, the East African Community started considering a non-binding trade and investment deals proposed by Turkey, according to Bloomberg News.

The community may in future consider entering similar accords with other emerging economies including India and China. The East African Community comprises Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

First established in 1967, the community was re-established in 2000 after it was dissolved in 1977, according to its official website. South Sudan and Somalia have applied to become full members of the community.

Usman Bugaje one of the top researchers and publishers from Nigeria says that there is nothing wrong from Turkey picking a few lessons from what other countries like China and India have done. He strongly believes that Turkey will be a great force on the African continent.

Rabeb Aloui a political and economic news analyst in Tunisia says that Turkey has a great future since it has already made a massive penetration on the African continent. “It just requires all of us to be strong and work together as a continent to sort out the demands of our societies; taking advantage of the available opportunities of development partners,” Aloui says.

Prof. Dr. Hailemicheal Aberra, the former Academic President for Addis Ababa University for the last 15 years says that, “We should handle ethnicity diversity through inclusion to ensure political stability, if we are to protect the gain attained in the continent’s development.”

“We should speak about the problems that affect the country openly and ethnic conflicts must be handled well to avoid continuous strife,” he adds.

Prof. Dr. Ahmet Kavas believes that Africans are very talented, intelligent and hardworking people. “There is no continent which can survive without the support of the African continent’s people. But there should be a way Africans must exploit this potential, get together and flourish,” he adds.

via allAfrica.com: East Africa: Turkey Turns to Region – Follows China.

Armenian elementary school in Turkey is facing a risk to be closed. Levon Vartuhyan school in Topkap block, Istanbul is 200 years old, the school challenges some financial shortcomings that put it at risk.

“Ermenihaber.am” says the school where some 100 children are studying is in extremely critical conditions.

“We don’t want the school to be closed. Schools should not be closed, more schools should be open,” Monik Ergan, president of St Nikoghayos Armenian Church fund said.

It’s said that Turkish organization “Kizilai” promised to provide food and clothes to the school.

Source: Panorama.am

via Armenian school in Istanbul at closing risk – Society – Panorama | Armenian news.

In describing a phenomenon she calls “consumer jihad,” Izberk-Bilgin explores consumer boycotts of brands associated with Western influences and policies. The author conducted an ethnographic study of low-income Muslim consumers in Turkey. Her informants were shantytown dwellers who had migrated to Istanbul for employment. Many of her interviewees had traditional upbringings and faced economic hardships and culture shock when they arrived in Istanbul’s urban setting. “These informants embraced Islam not just as a matter of faith and a normative system, but also as a political and social model,” the author writes. “As a result, this Islamist view reflected on their consumption choices.”

Although study participants named Western multinational corporations as examples of infidel brands, some informants also named reputable Turkish brands as infidels. “This suggests that what fosters the infidel critique is not simply an anti-Western sentiment. Rather, it is the complex interplay of many socio-historical factors such as the informants’ discontent with uneven economic globalization, the growing influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in domestic policies, the elite-led modernization project in Turkey, and the stigmatized ‘backward’ social position of Islamists that fuel the infidel critique,” Izberk-Bilgin writes.

Instead of merely rejecting Western values or modern market systems, Islamists engage in consumer activism as a way to “moralize the market” and embrace products (like gender-segregated resorts and alcohol-free perfumes) that reflect their values, Izberk-Bilgin concludes.

More information: Elif Izberk-Bilgin. “Infidel Brands: Unveiling Alternative Meanings of Global Brands at the Nexus of Globalization, Consumer Culture, and Islamism.” Journal of Consumer Research: December 2012. http://ejcr.org/

Provided by University of Chicago (news : web)

via Muslim consumers: How do global brands become ‘infidels’?.

The document belongs to Michael Critovoulos, a Greek politician, scholar and historian, who lived between 1410 and 1470. His birth-name was Kritopoulos, but he changed it to sound more ancient Greek-like.

He experienced the Siege and Fall of Constantinople and wrote about Mehmed II the Conqueror.

The discovery sheds light on issues, such as taxation during the Fall, relationships between Greeks and Ottomans, the contention between Venetians and Genoese.

Critovoulos refers also to the construction of the Rumeli Hisari fortress, which was the knockout blow for the Byzantine Istanbul. The chronicle of destruction and looting of the city by the Ottomans, in order to make it their capital, is also mentioned.

His book, according to the Turkish website Hubermonitor.com, was printed with the contribution of the Pavlos and Alexandra Kanellopoulos Foundation. This will be a bilingual issue, having the original manuscript and the Turkish translation by Aris Tsokonas on the one page and the colourful photocopy of the text on the other.

The book will be presented at Pera Museum, located in Istanbul, on May 21.

via Manuscript of Great Historic Importance Found in Istanbul | Greek Reporter Europe.

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey is showing renewed interest in reviving its stalled bid to join the European Union, now that one of its key opponents is no longer the president of France.

Turkey began its EU accession negotiations in 2005 but made little progress in its candidacy, thanks to a dispute with EU-member Cyprus and opposition from French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Turkey’s membership. Sarkozy argued that the predominantly Muslim country is not a part of Europe and wanted Turkey to accept some kind of a special partnership with the EU instead of full membership — an offer Turkey rejected.

Now that Socialist Francois Hollande has replaced the conservative Sarkozy as France’s president, Turkey hopes he will be more sympathetic to the candidacy of a country that has one of the world’s fastest growing economies and is becoming a regional diplomatic player.

“With the coming to power of Mr. Francois Hollande, we are all hoping that a new course in the Turkish-EU relations will gain momentum,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said this week, during a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

Little is known about Hollande’s stand regarding Turkey’s EU membership, apart from a comment he made on France-2 television on April 12 during his campaign for the presidency. During it, he said France has long accepted the principle of Turkish accession to the EU but that major conditions have not been met and that may not happen for several years to come.

On Thursday, Turkey and the EU are to open talks aimed at bringing Turkey’s membership bid back on track, and the Turkish government announced this week that its Parliament will soon vote on a series of draft laws designed to help advance its bid.

The EU Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fuele is scheduled will visit Ankara, the capital, to announce the start of those informal technical discussions with Turkey on eight policy areas. The goal is to bring Turkey closer to joining the 27-member bloc when some member states’ objections to Turkey’s accession are lifted.

Fuele’s office said Wednesday the new discussions also will aim to bring Turkish legislation closer to that of the EU, and to forge closer cooperation with Turkey in foreign affairs, including issues such as the uprising in Syria.

In a sign that Turkey is happy to resurrect the talks, its government this week sent a set of draft bills geared toward the EU bid to Parliament, including measures to improve human rights in the country.

When negotiations began seven years ago, Turkey was seen as a country whose dynamic population would enrich the EU culturally and economically, and would serve as a bridge to the Muslim world. But economic troubles in Europe and a lack of enthusiasm for the EU to expand further resulted in mounting opposition to Turkey’s bid. Frustrated, Turkey slowed down reforms and concentrated efforts toward carving out a leadership role in the Middle East.

Only one out of some three-dozen policy areas, or chapters, in EU membership negotiations has been concluded so far. Eight policy issues have been frozen by the bloc over Turkey’s refusal to allow ships and planes from the divided island of Cyprus to enter its ports and airspace. France has held up Turkey’s membership negotiations in five policy areas.

“Turkey is changing, the EU is changing and the new Europe cannot be without Turkey,” Egemen Bagis, the Turkish minister in charge of EU affairs said this week. “Until now, all countries that have started negotiations with the EU have become full members. Turkey will not be the first exception.”

Turkish President Abdullah Gul is expected to hold talks with Hollande during a NATO summit in Chicago next week, Turkish officials said.

via With Sarkozy gone, Turkey shows renewed interest in EU membership bid – The Washington Post.

AHH… historic Istanbul! This crosses my mind the moment I lay my eyes on classic Ottoman buildings and the architecturally European-flavoured ones set along the shores of the Golden Horn.

I am on a boat cruise along the waters of the Golden Horn, a natural estuary of the Bosphorus Strait that divides this capital of Turkey into two continents — Asia in the east and Europe in the west.

That boat cruise is a surreal yet amazing voyage between the two continents.

The Golden Horn is a 7.5km- long, narrow estuary that forms a protected natural harbour.

For thousands of years, it has been a port of call for ships from the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman.

Here was where the city once began and here is where I begin my journey in historic Istanbul.

ANCIENT DOMES AND TOWERS

Looking at the city skyline from where I am on the boat, I can already feel the historic aura. First, I clearly see the domes and towers of Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and Blue Mosque which date from the year 530 to 1600.

As the boat cruises along the coast, one cannot help feeling impressed at the sight of Dolmabahce Palace, (1856), and Beylerbeyi Palace, a summer palace completed in 1865.

And there are many hundreds of years-old wooden villas and mansions along the shores that will make anyone envious of their owners.

Then comes the Rumeli Hasari or Rumeli Fortress that will leave you awestruck by its sheer supreme look. It was the largest fortress built by Sultan Mehmed Istanbul II in 1451 to control the sea routes of the Bosphorus to prevent aid from the Black Sea reaching the Turkish Siege of Constantinople in 1453.

Constantinople is the Byzantine name for Istanbul. It was under siege many times before Mehmet The Conqueror took the city in 1453 and made it the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Before that, it was the capital of powerful Roman and Byzantine Empire.

These ancient empires left these symbols of their past glories and best of all, these remnants are not scattered ruins of dull grey stones but large buildings which have defied the ravages of time. All these can now still be seen in the Sultan Ahmed District.

ROYAL DISTRICT

The Sultan Ahmed District is the heart of historic Old Istanbul. It is located on the peninsula bounded by bodies of water to north, east and south — the Golden Horn, Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara, respectively. The area was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1985.

This is where Constantinople was located at the southern bank of the Golden Horn and parts of the defence wall of the old city still remain at the coast. Located on the European side of Istanbul, the old city is the best base for sightseeing in Istanbul.

As the most historic part of Istanbul, Sultan Ahmet District is where all the city’s significant landmarks like Hippodrome, Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia and Topkapi Palace are located. Making it a complete tourist destination, the area has a number of good restaurants and hotels too.

HIPPODROME OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Though public transport is easily accessible, going on foot is the best choice to explore the old city. You should not miss going to Sultan Ahmed Square, actually the Hippodrome of Constantinople, the sporting and social centre of the city during the Byzantium era where horse or chariot racings were held.

Today, several fragments of the original structure that adorned the square during its glorious time are still standing. They are the monuments of the Spiral Column, Thutmosis Obelisk and Walled Obelisk.

The most recent addition to the square is the German Fountain, which is an octagonal domed fountain in neo-Byzantine style, constructed by the German government in 1900 to mark the German Emperor Wilhelm II’s visit to Istanbul in 1898.

THE BLUE MOSQUE

Adjacent to the Hippodrome is the Blue Mosque, or its official name, Sultan Ahmed Mosque. Built from 1609 to 1617, it is called the Blue Mosque for the blue tiles that adorn the walls of its interior. However, the tiles are mostly on the upper level, which is difficult to see.

Coming from the Hippodrome, I walk through a grand doorway on the western side to go to its inner courtyard.

Its architecture is better appreciated from the outside, especially under the bright sunlight from the Sultan Ahmed Garden at the northern side.

This grand building of Ottoman architecture with six minarets and cascading layers of domes is a sight to behold.

HAGIA SOPHIA

As you admire the Blue Mosque and praise its architect, Sadefkar Mehmet Aga, tribute should also be given to Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, the architects of neighbouring Hagia Sophia.

They designed Hagia Sophia 1,000 years before Mehmet Aga was born. History goes that Sultan Ahmed 1, the Sultan of Ottoman ordered the Blue Mosque to be built to rival Hagia Sophia. And the result is two great architectural achievements standing next to each other in Istanbul’s main square.

Hagia Sofia or Aya Sofia in Turkish which means Church Of Holy Wisdom, was built from year 532 to 537.

At that time, its wide, flat dome was considered a daring engineering feat and became the world’s most impressive building and made it the greatest church in Christendom.

It then was turned into a mosque when Ottoman conquered the city in 1453 and continued to serve as Istanbul’s most revered mosque until 1935 when Kamal Ataturk turned it into a museum as we see it today.

Unlike the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia is best admired from the inside, especially from the mezzanine level. From this floor, the view of the prayer hall is the most impressive. The natural light is slightly dimmed under its massive dome but gloriously lit by the glittering gold from the 30 million pieces of tiny golden tiles.

These tiny pieces of tiles are mosaic images of the Virgin Mother, Jesus, saints, emperors and empresses, as well as geometric patterns.

As it was once a mosque, the wall has Islamic calligraphy arts that inscribe religious names including that of the first four caliphs Abu Bakar, Umar, Uthman and Ali.

It is under this great dome of Hagia Sophia that I find a perfect mix of both Ottoman and Byzantium, or Islamic and Christian.

These are the characteristics of two different cultures from two great empires that have affected present Istanbul.
TOPKAPI PALACE

Next to Hagia Sophia is Topkapi Palace, home of Ottoman Sultan for 400 years and the heart of Ottoman Empire.

The initial construction began in 1459 but after that, over centuries,  the Palace Complex expanded to cover 80 hectares! This centuries-long construction included the major renovation after the 1509 earthquake and 1665 fire.

At its peak, the palace is home to 4,000 people but it is now the Topkapi Palace Museum housing many collections of historic objects from all over the Ottoman Empire and precious heirlooms that once belonged to Ottoman Sultans themselves.

A short visit to this palace will not do justice to it for it is a huge complex, made of four main courtyards and many smaller buildings.

The assortment of small buildings is fine architecture on its own. They are a result of the directives by many previous Ottoman Sultans who individually added and changed various structures and elements in the palace.

But the finest of all is the Fourth Courtyard or Imperial Sofa, the innermost private sanctuary of the Sultan and his family and has a number of pavilions, kiosks, gardens and terraces.

Here also is the special chamber called Chamber of the Sacred Relic, which includes the Pavilion of the Holy Mantle.

The pavilion houses what are considered the most sacred relics of the Muslim world, including the cloak of the Prophet Muhammad, two swords, a bow, one tooth, hairs of his beard, his battle sabres, autographed letters and other relics.

Several other sacred objects are also on display, such as the swords of the first four Caliphs, the staff of Moses, the turban of Joseph and a carpet belonging to Muhammad’s daughter.

The upper terrace has the Iftar Kiosk and Baghdad Kiosk where the Sultan customarily breaks fast during Ramadan with the view of the Golden Horn in the background. This is the best place to end the tour in Topkapi Palace.
GRAND BAZAAR

For a city that is proud of its heritage and culture inherited from two major empires, there is life in this city that stubbornly clings on to its old world ambience. That is the Grand Bazaar.

The oldest and one of the world’s largest covered bazaars, the bazaar spreads over 61 covered streets with more than 3,000 shops. Record has it that the bazaar attracts between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily.

It offers an excellent shopping experience especially for souvenir hunting, from Turkish carpets, glazed tiles and pottery, copper and brassware, apparel made of leather, cotton and wool, music instrument to all sorts of other things.

Thanks to the ambience, I can’t help but feel like entering Aladdin’s cave in some shops selling antiques.

This is the place to hone bargaining skills, which usually involves prospective clients having tea with the traders while bargaining for the right price.

Shopping in the Grand Bazaar is what many visitors list as among the things to do when visiting Istanbul. But for a more sizzling time, have a fine dinner with a belly dancing show thrown in.

By ADAM ENTOUS And JOE PARKINSON

ULUDERE, Turkey—After winding along a narrow mountain ridge, a caravan of 38 men and mules paused on the Turkish-Iraqi border. Then they heard the propellers overhead. Minutes later, Turkish military aircraft dropped bombs that killed all but four of the men.

The strike in late December was meant to knock out Kurdish separatist fighters. Instead it killed civilians smuggling gasoline, a tragic blunder in Turkey’s nearly three-decade campaign against the guerrillas. The killings ignited protests across the country and prompted wide-ranging official inquiries.

The civilian toll also set off alarms at the Pentagon: It was a U.S. Predator drone that spotted the men and pack animals, officials said, and American officers alerted Turkey.

A Turkish strike to knock out Kurdish separatist fighters instead killed civilians smuggling gasoline. The blunder has been linked to intelligence from U.S. drones in the region and raised questions about their value. WSJ’s Joe Parkinson reports. Photo: WSJ

The U.S. drone flew away after reporting the caravan’s movements, leaving the Turkish military to decide whether to attack, according to an internal assessment by the U.S. Defense Department, described to The Wall Street Journal. “The Turks made the call,” a senior U.S. defense official said. “It wasn’t an American decision.”

The U.S. role, which hasn’t previously been reported, revealed the risks in a new strategy for extending American influence around the globe. It raises an outstanding question for the White House and Congress: How far do we entrust allies with our deadly drone technology?

After a decade of troop-intensive land wars, the Obama administration is promoting advanced drones, elite special forces and intelligence resources as a more nimble, and less expensive, source of military power. The strategy relies heavily on close cooperation with regional allies, in part to reduce the need for American troops on the ground.

In Pakistan and Somalia, where local authorities can’t or won’t act against militants, the U.S. employs armed drones and special-operations teams to track and kill suspected terrorists. In Yemen, the U.S. carries out drone strikes with the government’s approval. In Turkey—a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member that has a modern air force—the U.S. helps provide intelligence for operations but plays no direct role in any strikes.

The downside to such arrangements, say current and former U.S. officials, is that countries can use U.S. intelligence in ways the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency can’t control. Allies have varying standards for deciding who is a justified target. And these partnerships can embroil the U.S. in local disputes with only slender links to the security of Americans.

“What happens if this information gets to the [foreign] government and they do something wrong with it, or it gets into the hands of someone who does something wrong with it?” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who didn’t know specific details of the attack.

At the Pentagon, press secretary George Little said when asked about the strike, “Without commenting on matters of intelligence, the United States strongly values its enduring military relationship with Turkey.”

The conflict between Turkish security forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has taken an estimated 40,000 lives since violence first flared in the 1980s. Ethnic Kurds, about 18% of Turkey’s population, have long sought a degree of political autonomy and the right to public education in their native tongue. Tensions have risen since Turkey last fall intensified its campaign against the PKK, which the U.S. and European Union designate a terrorist group.

U.S. drone flights in support of Turkey date from November 2007, when the Bush administration set up what is called a Combined Intelligence Fusion Cell in Ankara, part of an effort to nurture ties with the government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. U.S. and Turkish officers sit side by side in the dimly lighted complex monitoring real-time video feeds from Predator drones.

The Obama administration has moved to expand cooperation—by stepping up intelligence sharing and by supporting Turkey’s request to buy armed and unarmed U.S. drones to give the Turks full control.

The issue is sensitive for both sides. Turkey doesn’t want to be seen as reliant on the U.S. And selling drones to Turkey faces opposition from key members of Congress, who worry about spreading the technology, as well as Turkey’s standards for deciding when to launch a strike.

While the White House is moving forward with plans to provide Italy with arms for its drones, proposals to sell or lease drones to Turkey face resistance in Congress, which reviews such sales in advance. Proponents argue they build long-term military relations with close allies, as well as give U.S. companies better access to the fast-growing global market.

The caravan strike is illustrative of the dangers. Servet Encu, 42 years old, said he had made the journey across the mountainous border separating Turkey and Iraq several times a month since he was a teenager, smuggling all kinds of goods.

In his and other impoverished Kurdish villages of southeastern Turkey, smuggling is a trade made profitable by differences between the two countries, including taxes and currency values. Fuel costs twice as much in Turkey as in Iraq, a substantial oil producer, rewarding smugglers who ferry jugs of gasoline through the mountains. The Turkish military usually doesn’t bother villagers crossing the border, as long as they aren’t smuggling weapons or drugs. But PKK militants also cross the border in the region.

The convoy, laden with food and gasoline, was returning to Turkey on Dec. 28. They were less than an hour from home after hiking along barren, icy ridges for more than four hours, Mr. Encu said in an interview.

Mr. Encu called his Kurdish village by cellphone for help picking a route to avoid Turkish soldiers who might confiscate their cargo, he recalled.

Above and out of sight, a U.S. Predator drone loitered. It was on a routine patrol when U.S. personnel monitoring its video feeds spotted the caravan just inside Iraq and moving toward the Turkish border, according to U.S. officials and the Pentagon’s assessment of the fatal strike.

U.S. military officers at the Fusion Cell in Ankara couldn’t tell whether the men, bundled in heavy jackets, were civilians or guerrilla fighters. But their location in an area frequented by guerrilla fighters raised suspicions. The Americans alerted their Turkish counterparts.

U.S. officials said additional surveillance from the Predator might have helped the Turks better identify the convoy. But, they said, Turkish officers instead directed the Americans who were remotely piloting the drone to fly it somewhere else. U.S. officials said compliance with the Turks’ request was standard procedure.

As darkness fell, Mr. Encu said, the men in the caravan heard the dull hum of Herons—the Israeli-made surveillance aircraft used by Turkey and less sophisticated than U.S. drones.

Then Turkish warplanes appeared. “It was like a lightning bolt,” Mr. Encu said. “I saw a bright light and the force of the explosion threw me to the ground…When I turned my head I could see bodies on fire and some were missing their heads.”

The strikes lasted for about 40 minutes, survivors said. Of the 34 men killed, 11 were members of Mr. Encu’s extended family. It was the largest number of Kurdish civilians killed in a single attack in Turkey’s long conflict with the region’s militants.

Rescuers dug for corpses under a collapsed mountain ridge. They wrapped body parts and loaded them on a trailer that was towed to the nearest village, according to accounts of residents and local officials.

The killings sparked clashes between hundreds of stone-throwing protesters and the police in Kurdish parts of Turkey. In the town of Uludere, Mayor Fehmi Yaman charged that the attack marked the latest in a series of government efforts to intimidate the local population, much of which supports Kurdish militancy.

“The military knew these people were civilians. It was a deliberate attack,” he said. “The government has tried all means of suppression, which have failed, and now they tried this.”

The Turkish military initially said it ordered the strike because the convoy moved along a pathway frequently used as a staging point for attacks by the PKK. Turkey’s government and its armed forces both have open investigations into the matter.

Turkey’s military didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment for this article. Turkey’s Prime Ministry, Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry said they would neither comment on the incident nor on questions over the scale of military cooperation between Turkey and the U.S.

The killings threaten to spoil efforts to forge a Turkish-Kurdish consensus for a planned new constitution expected to partly address the issue of rights for the Kurdish minority.

A former senior U.S. military official, involved in sharing intelligence with Turkey before the December attack, said he and fellow officers were sometimes troubled by Turkish standards for selecting targets. The former official said Turkish officers sometimes picked targets based on a notion of “guilt by association” with the PKK.

A current U.S. intelligence official defended the partnership. “That is going to be the exception. It is a horrible exception. It’s a tragic exception,” he said of the caravan strike. “But the vast majority of efforts to expand our information sharing and to work with our partners and allies around the world are going to have positive outcomes.”

U.S. personnel work in the Ankara Fusion Cell, in part, to monitor Turkey’s use of U.S. intelligence, U.S. officials said.

Turkish officials have assured the U.S. of their measures to avoid civilian casualties. They say privately that Predator drones help reduce attacks on the PKK using less precise weapons, such as artillery.

But U.S. officials say such mistakes are feeding a debate within the intelligence community and the Defense Department about setting better guidelines for sharing of U.S. intelligence.

Intelligence officials are divided on the issue. Some say the U.S. should withhold intelligence if it believes an ally might abuse the information. Others warn new rules could slow intelligence sharing during emergencies.

In Uludere, December’s events continue to reverberate. Local men have reduced cross-border smuggling trips, slowing the local economy.

Monuments to the dead have sprung up in villages. In Gulyazi, home to 13 of those killed, a 30-foot-high tent shelters a memorial where residents left handwritten messages next to portraits of the dead.

On the outskirts of one village, widows and bereaved mothers gather regularly. One day last month, scores of women marched along a dirt track to a makeshift cemetery where many of the dead were buried.

Fatma Encu, a cousin of Servet Encu, clutched a framed portrait of her eldest son, Huseyin, who was killed at age 19. “I don’t want compensation,” she said. “I just want the murderers to be found and punished.”

Chief of the Turkish general staff, Necdet Ozel, said the military was sharing information with prosecutors, according to a Turkish news agency. “We are not hiding anything,” he said.

—Ayla Albayrak and Siobhan Gorman contributed to this article.

Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com and Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@dowjones.com

A version of this article appeared May 16, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Turkey’s Attack on Civilians Tied to U.S. Military Drone.