The World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Conference of the European Churches (CEC) have expressed solidarity with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and with His Holiness Bartholomew due to the attacks and the pressure of which they have been repeatedly the victims in Turkey. In a joint letter of support to Bartholomew I, WCC General Secretary Samuel Kobia and CEC General Secretary Keith Clements declare: “We write to express our profound sorrow at the reports we are receiving of new pressures and difficulties being brought upon the Ecumenical Patriarchate. We are pained to read of the public criticisms and attacks being made upon yourself and upon the Christian community in Turkey. Such hostility must be very hard to bear, with the added sense of isolation it brings”. The CEC has received from Turkey copious documentation on the repeated attacks suffered, also recently, by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. On 7 October, according to the Reuter’s agency, a bomb exploded within the church of St. George in Istanbul, while a despatch of the Associated Press on 3 December reported that some Turkish officials had expressed their displeasure about the invitation sent to Bartholomew to attend a reception at the US Embassy in Istanbul, and even advised him not to go. There are even those who challenge the Patriarch’s title “ecumenical” and would like to relegate his role as spiritual guide to Greek Turks alone. The bone of contention of the monastery of Halki, still closed, is unresolved. According to the WCC and CEC representatives, all these facts cast in question Turkey’s aspired-to membership of the European Union. Kobia and Clements, in their letter to Bartholomew, declare that whatever decision is taken by the heads of state and of government at the forthcoming summit of 17 December on the start of negotiations on Turkey’s membership of the EU, “we in the WCC and CEC will follow the process with the greatest attention”.
