ISTANBUL – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered officials to continue talks on reopening the Orthodox Christian Halkina seminary near Istanbul, after US President Donald Trump urged.
Metropolitan Emanuil of Chalcedon, whose diocese includes Istanbul, said that this issue entered a new phase after Erdogan instructed the Turkish Council for Higher Education to continue talks with the commission of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, reports Srna.
Although the deadline for the reopening of the school has not yet been determined, Metropolitan Emanuil said that for the Patriarchate, after decades of inactivity, this is a major breakthrough, indicating that institutional work has finally begun.
The Metropolitan added that both parties still have to complete the renovation work on the complex of buildings and agree on the legal and educational framework under which the institution will function.
Halkina Theological Seminary, founded in 1844 and closed by the decision of the Turkish state in 1971, played a key role in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the main theological school of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Generations of Orthodox clergy were educated there, including the current Patriarch Bartholomew, who reigns in Istanbul.
Trump raised this issue during a conversation with Erdogan in Washington last year.
Turkey, as a predominantly Muslim and secular country, has long been under pressure from Greece, the United States and the EU to reopen this theological school on the island of Hejbeliada near Istanbul.
