Venice Commission calls on Turkey to recognize Patriarchate as ‘ecumenical’

According to NTV, the Venice Commission report said the fact that religious minorities in Turkey cannot possess a legal personality is not in line with the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) concerning freedom of religion and conscience and freedom of association. As Turkey justifies its practice of not recognizing the legal personality of religious minorities based on the principle of secularism, the report says many secular European countries provide a legal ground to recognize religious minorities. The report uses France as an example, which allows religious minorities to join religious communities under “cultural foundations.”

A similar request to the Venice Commission was also filed last year in April by the PACE Monitoring Committee.

Stressing that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) views freedom of religion as not only an individual right, the Venice Commission emphasized that religious communities should also benefit from freedom of religion and conscience. For this reason, the report claimed, the scope of fundamental rights stemming from freedom of religion also embodies the recognition of religious minorities as legal personalities. “There is no legitimate basis for not recognizing religious communities as legal personalities,” according to the report.

The report, released by PACE in January, also urged Turkey to recognize the legal personality of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of İstanbul, the Armenian Patriarchate of İstanbul, the Armenian Catholic Archbishopric of İstanbul, the Bulgarian Orthodox Exarchate, the Chief Rabbinate and the Vicariate Apostolic of İstanbul. PACE also said in its report that Turkey needs to give the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate the freedom to choose to use the adjective “ecumenical.”

The Venice Commission’s new report also called on Turkey not to block the right of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of İstanbul to use the adjective ecumenical. Noting that it is not up to the Venice Commission to decide whether or not the patriarchate is ecumenical or not and that only the patriarchate can define itself as ecumenical, the report harshly criticized the Supreme Court of Appeals’ decision to block the patriarchate from calling itself ecumenical.

Not recognizing Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew’s international role as the spiritual leader of hundreds of millions of Orthodox Christians worldwide, Ankara rejects Bartholomew’s use of the title ecumenical, or universal, arguing instead that the patriarch is merely the spiritual leader of İstanbul’s dwindling Orthodox community. The Venice Commission stated that the decision of a local court on the status of a religious leader is worrying, adding that the court had violated the ECHR’s article on freedom of religion. The commission added that Turkey did not object to calling the İstanbul Patriarchate ecumenical in the Lausanne agreement.