16 - Sputnik international news-Russia

16 - Sputnik international news-Russia

Turkish-Greek Escalation Stems From Sovereignty Issues Rather Than Hydrocarbons’ Control 

MOSCOW, August 27, 2020 (Sputnik) - The Turkish-Greek escalation that reached a boiling point this month is sparked by their sovereignty issues, which have been simmering for a long time, rather than the actual control over hydrocarbons’ reserves in the Mediterranean, experts told Sputnik.

 The tensions between Athens and Ankara escalated earlier in August after Turkey's Oruc Reis research vessel began exploration drilling in the Greek-claimed waters in the eastern Mediterranean. Greece considers this territory to be its exclusive economic zone, has mobilized its armed forces to high alert, and vowed to protect its sovereign rights by all necessary means. 

The row has reached a dangerous point when both states have started to hold military drills in the contested maritime area. This week, Greece alongside Cyprus, France and Italy held a joint military exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean as part of the so-called Quartet Cooperation Initiative (QUAD), while the navies of Turkey and the United States have conducted joint drills in the same area.

 CONTROL OVER NATURAL RESOURCES DRIVES UP HISTORIC TENSIONS

 The Turkish-Greek relations have been shadowed by the disputes for years, but the discovery of hydrocarbon reserves in the maritime zone, claimed by both states, have escalated the tensions, bringing the historic conflict back into the spotlight, Dr. Zenonas Tziarras, the researcher with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Cyprus Centre, told Sputnik. 

"The biggest problem in the area is not energy resources, but traditional sovereignty issues pertaining to maritime zones. The discovery of hydrocarbons over the past years exacerbated these problems given that control over maritime space sometimes entails control over natural resources as well, among other things. At least since the early 2010s," Tziarras said. 

Turkey seeks to expand its control over maritime areas and natural resources through its "openly revisionist foreign policy," designed to elevate the country to the status of great power, the researcher noted.

 "The latest crisis is only one episode in a long series of episodes stirred by problematic relations and unresolved issues. The efforts for de-escalating this crisis might be successful sooner or later. However, the core of the problem will not go away unless gunboat diplomacy, especially by Turkey, is abandoned and the two countries engage in dialogue to resolve their bilateral issues. Without a breakthrough in this respect, more crises will follow," Tziarras said. 

COULD ESCALATION SPILL OVER INTO OPEN MILITARY CONFLICT? 

After Greece and Turkey have simultaneously launched military drills in the eastern Mediterranean, some have expressed fears that an open military confrontation between two NATO allies could happen by accident or deliberately.

 "There remains the small possibility of an accident that would lead to confrontation and also to the now unpredictable character of President Erdogan. Truly, Erdogan, after the failed attempt of 2016 to assassinate him, has become another man determined to take incredible risks that he would have never taken before July 2016," Prof. Dimitri Kitsikis, an expert in the Turkish-Greek relations, told Sputnik. 

However, "there is no intention whatsoever neither from Turkey nor from Greece to go to war in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean," Kitsikis, who serves as the professor emeritus with the University of Ottawa’s History Department, noted. 

The PRIO researcher is in agreement with Kitsikis that both Turkey and Greece do not seek a military confrontation.

 "The two countries do not want a military confrontation. However, when there are such tensions and military-naval mobilization, the possibility of an accident or a miscalculation is always a possibility, especially if the crisis is prolonged and the diplomatic efforts for de-escalation take a long time or are unsuccessful," Tziarras said.

 The rising tensions between Athens and Ankara negatively impact the unity with NATO, the expert noted. 

"The potential of a conflict between Greece and Turkey has always been a concern for NATO and the United States. For this reason, they have tried in the past to keep the peace between the two countries. Any crisis between Greece and Turkey hinders NATO's unity, regional cohesion and interests. Although Germany and the EU are playing a primary mediation role in de-escalating the crisis, the US and NATO are also believed to be trying to defuse tensions and prevent further escalation," Tziarras underlined. 

As for NATO's role in efforts to deescalate the tensions, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that he regularly maintains contact with both Turkey and Greece. 

FEARS OVER LOCAL CONFLICT BECOMING INTERNATIONAL

 France decision to send naval forces to the Eastern Mediterranean, which was welcomed by Greece, may add to tensions in the region, Panayotis Tsakonas, a professor of security studies at the University of Athens and the head of the Program on Security at Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), told Sputnik.

 "By implication, France has not been hesitant in supporting Greece in its conflict with Turkey by sending a strong message to Turkey — through the mobilization of its fleet — that this time Turkey went it too far. However, a note of caution should be added here — although Greece welcomes France's initiative aiming at deterring any further Turkish aggression this may also add up to an already heavily militarized region where the possibility of an accident is high," Tsakonas said.

 The expert also mentioned that Paris and Ankara have contradicting interests not only in the Eastern Mediterranean sea but also in Africa, adding that French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have "personal antipathy." 

"Based on the aforementioned reasons for France's military engagement in the region I strongly doubt there will be any other country willing to follow suit," Tsakonas added. When addressing the joint response by the European Union to Turkey over Ankara’s actions in the Eastern Mediterranean, the expert said that France and Germany do not "share the same views on how best to deal with Turkey." 

"France is more in favor of punishing Erdogan's aggressiveness through the adoption of direct punitive measures, i.e. sanctions while Germany — which now runs the EU Presidency — is more interested in not letting Turkey further distancing itself from the EU promoting thus Turkey's engagement with the EU," Tsakonas said.

 At the same time, the professor noted that NATO, unsurprisingly, is much more fragmented and divided over the issue with Turkey.

 "Indeed despite a series of strategic divides between Turkey and its NATO allies, the Atlantic Alliance is expected to remain a passive observer with regard to Turkey's behavior vis-a-vis Greece, another NATO member, given that for NATO Turkey remains too big, powerful and strategically important to allow for an open confrontation," Tsakonas said. 

The expert added that the current situation, if it is left unchecked, would have certain negative effects on the stability at the EU’s southern border and said that the EU and the United States should reset their relationship with Turkey "with a new one based on a balanced mixture of carrots and sticks and/or benefits and obligations" as soon as possible.

15 - Erdogan and the Rebirth of the Empire

15 - Erdogan and the Rebirth of the Empire

(Interview given to Gercek Hayat, Istanbul, special issue, 24-29 February 2020, pp. 32-34)

In 1453, the imperial succession passed from the Greeks to the Turks. In 1821, the Westerners through the Eastern Question started the dismantlement of the Empire by persuading the Greeks that the 1453 succession was made to their detriment and that they had to come back to the values of pre-Christian Greece.

The main result was double fold: to enslave the Greeks to the Frankish West and to destroy the Empire after a hundred year civil war (1822-1922) between the two brother nations that had formed the Ottoman Empire.

The extraordinary courage of the Turkish people and their leader Mustafa Kemal who refused to give up to Western imperialism led to the liberation of Anatolia but only after sacrificing the traditions of the Turkish people by throwing the Turkish cultural baby with the water of the bath tub i.e. Islam in the same way than Venizelos had thrown away the Greek cultural baby of Orthodox Christianity.

Since 2002, the extraordinary feat of Erdogan was to put back in place Islam in the heart of Turkish tradition without betraying Ataturk principles of independence of Anatolia while at the same time in Rumeli Greeks through Archbishop Christodoulos were coming back slowly to their Christian traditions.

The result of these evolutions on both sides of the Aegean was a revival of nostalgia for the greatness of the defunct Empire that had been destroyed in the 100 year Greek-Turkish civil war by the West.

On the Rumeli side, Kitsikis was the first Greek that through his numerous publications openly promoted the idea of the coming back of the Ottoman Empire, already in the 1960s while Erdogan followed on his path and on the path of Kitsikis’s spiritual son  Ozal, by promoting openly the rebirth of the Empire around its long time prestigious capital Istanbul.

Nevertheless such a political revival which Kitsikis called the Çamlica dream, referring to the hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus facing Istanbul as the center of the future federal capital, was considered by everybody an unattainable dream even though one should have known that only dreams make great history.

The seemingly unsurpassable difficulty for the realization of such a bold dream was the existence since the I5th century of the Russian candidate to the Istanbul throne as Third Rome and also the activity of the destroyers of the Empire through the Eastern Question represented by the Western imperialist Powers who wanted a free passage to their Asian colonies through Eastern Mediterranean, a passage that was permanently blocked by the Ecumenical Byzantine-Ottoman Empire.

Nevertheless, 2016 marked a decisive turning point. The coming to power of President Trump and the defeat of former President Obama who failed to assassinate Erdogan. Trump seemed as a present of God.

His seemingly chaotic foreign policy, in fact directed exclusively against China, reversing the century long Western policy of expansion from West to East through the Eastern Mediterranean to an East West expansion using the new Silk Road of Chinese conquest of Western Europe, gave to the Intermediate Region of Civilization which center had always been the Ecumenical Empire for the last 2500 years a new importance: it had to become a wall against China drive to the West.

So President Trump through his seemingly chaotic foreign policy had one and only aim: stop the Silk Road Western expansion by all means. This meant trying to form a chain of alliances with as many nations as possible in Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East and first and foremost with Russia to form a barrier against Chinese expansion.

The dismemberment of the Ecumenical Empire had to be stopped and even it had to be rebuilt. Turkey, since 2002, because of Erdogan, had become a stabilized geopolitical entity which could form this barrier by reviving the Ottoman Empire.

But this could not be done without the reunification of the two shores of the Aegean lake not by splitting it between Greece and Turkey but by reuniting it in the form of a Greek-Turkish Confederation.

I have many times compared the Aegean Sea to a human body with two lungs: the Rumeli lung and the Anatolia lung, with a trachea in the middle for the body to be able to breathe freely: the Aegean Sea. It is nonsense to cut the trachea in the middle: a Rumeli half and an Anatolia half. Because then the body of the Empire would suffocate. This happened in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 with the result to have created the present disputes between Greece and Turkey.

So, in order to reunite the Aegean lake the Lausanne treaties have to be revised, even abolished.  Unfortunately the terrible crime of the exchange of populations cannot be mended today. But why not? The Cretan Muslims could come back to Crete and the Karamanli Christian could go back to Cappadocia.

God gave Erdogan the mission to accomplish the dream. The dream of the revival of the Ottoman Empire, perhaps with the help of President Trump. Erdogan represents the forces of unification (Empire) againt the forces of division (Eastern Question). It is neither in the interest of Turkey to be dismembered between Kurds and Armenians nor in the interest of Greece to be dismembered between Thracians and Cretans

I, as an intellectual, I will continue with all my enthusiasm to promote the  reunification dream. Lets God accomplish  his scheme.

Dimitri Kitsikis                        29 February 2020

11 - ABOVE GÜLEN AND ERDOĞAN STANDS TURKEY

11  - ABOVE GÜLEN AND ERDOĞAN STANDS TURKEY

I reproduce below an article by Jennifer Campbell, editor of «Diplomat &  International Canada», a magazine established in Ottawa, in 1989. She writes that the Canada Gülen organization sponsored her visit to Athens in order to write the article below, published in the magazine's issue of October-November 2018.

Having been myself for some years a follower of the Fethullah Gülen organization in Ottawa and having published some articles and contributions in books on Gülen, as a professor of Geopolitics and International Relations at the University of Ottawa since 1970, as well as a specialist of Turkey and being myself a Greek, being well known in Greece and Turkey to have uttered the sentence, «The best Greeks are the Turks», I would like to give here some further information on the relations between these two eminent Turks.

Both have repeatedly expressed their admiration for late president of Turkey, Turgut Özal, who considered me, in his own words, his «spiritual father» in pursuing the dream of a Greek-Turkish Confederation. Even though Gülen is pro-Jewish as Sufi Muslim and Erdoğan is anti-Jewish as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood there are both supporters of the multi-religious structure of the late Ottoman Empire. Özal`s father was an Orthodox Christian Armenian and his mother was a Kurdish Nakshibendi Sufi. Erdoğan and Gülen are both supporters of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul.

Since the coming to power of Erdoğan, in 2003, himself as well as his supporters, in the Turkish population were Gülenists and pro-American. Only, after the 2016  July military coup in Turkey, engineered by the alleged previous American administration of President Obama, did  Erdoğan accuse Gülen and his supporters of wanting to replace him by Gülen himself as a Turkish Khomeini. The result was understandable. Erdoğan was hit like a bull in a Spanish bullfight arena and persuaded that the bullfighter was Gülen himself under American instructions, he cracked down on his former self and supporters. A sheer tragedy in which the West with its hypocritical human rights should abstain from taking sides.

So what about me? Should I choose between my two favorite men? We Greeks are presently favorably impressed by the seemingly independent policy of President Erdoğan towards Great Powers, as all third nations victimized by the West would be. Because above NATO and Russia, stands our Turkish brother and the Greek public thinks Turkey`s seemingly aggressive policy against Greece is directed by Great Power interests. Above Gülen and Erdoğan I choose my dream of a Greek-Turkish Confederation. In 1934, Venizelos just 12 years after the catastrophical defeat of his country by the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, proposed in a memorable letter to the Nobel Price organizers that they should give the Peace Nobel Price to his latter former foe!

Dimitri Kitsikis, Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, Ottawa, 28-X- 2018, www.idkf.gr

http://diplomatonline.com/mag/2018/10/fleeing-oppression-in-turkey/

10 - The Constantinople Patriarch Plays at Pope

                                                                    Christian Schism

(Whilst everyone sleeping in Greece, content with an Atheist, apostate Prime Minister and majority in the government, the Russians are enraged by Bartholomew and now attacking his dubious standing to be ecumenical Patriarch, representing only the very small and aged  local Greek community in Istanbul.

The Russian Patriarch is not alone here at all.  The Serbian Irinej is in agreement with Hilarion against Bartholomew.  Other Orthodox countries unlike Greece really care about these things.  

Geopolitically, Tsipras is facing imminent collapse of Prespes, Kotzias has resigned and  his anti-Russian expulsions of diplomats have gotten him nowhere.  But Bartholomew being a tool of the US State Department in their Ukrainian debacle with Nuland, etc. is a tremendous disappointment and blunder in my personal opinion.  I agree totally with the view of Irinej on this  matter.  His letter to Batholomew explains the ethnophylite heresy in detail and how it is used to destroy Orthodox Christianity. Diran)

https://www.unzcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/kiev-metropolitanate-1686.jpg

The Istanbul Patriarch Plays at Pope and Falls Under Anathema

ANATOLY KARLIN • OCTOBER 17, 2018  

Kiev Pechersk Lavra.

This is what Nicetas, Archbishop of Nicomedia, wrote in the 12th century about the Great Schism (1054) between Catholicism and Orthodoxy:

My dearest brother, we do not deny to the Roman Church the primacy amongst the five sister Patriarchates; and we recognize her right to the most honourable seat at an Ecumenical Council. But she has separated herself from us by her own deeds, when through pride she assumed a monarchy which does not belong to her office… How shall we accept decrees from her that have been issued without consulting us and even without our knowledge? If the Roman Pontiff, seated on the lofty throne of his glory, wishes to thunder at us and, so to speak, hurl his mandates at us from on high, and if he wishes to judge us and even to rule us and our Churches, not by taking counsel with us but at his own arbitrary pleasure, what kind of brotherhood, or even what kind of parenthood can this be? We should be the slaves, not the sons, of such a Church, and the Roman See would not be the pious mother of sons but a hard and imperious mistress of slaves.

Difference between then and now?

A millennium ago, the Vicar of Christ presided over a flock that was about as demographically predominant within Christendom as the Russian Orthodox Church is within Eastern Orthodox world today. As quasi-monarch of the European core, who could command European kings to crawl to him on their knees in penance, the Pope could afford to forget the “pares” part of “primus inter pares.” In contrast, Bartholomew I – His Most Divine All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch, not to mention reserve officer in the Turkish Army – is ensconced in an infidel country and presides over a local flock of a few hundred ageing Greeks.

Now to be sure, even one man is a majority when God is on his side. Even so, when he is in such a precarious position, it pays to be extra careful to make sure that’s indeed the case.

This is something that Bartholomew I has patently ignored with his disastrous decision to enter communion with Ukrainian schismatics.

Its basis is a revocation of the Synodal letter of 1686, which granted the Patriarch of Moscow the right to ordain the Metropolitan of Kiev. Constantinople’s stated ultimate intention is to grant autocephaly (self-governance) to the Church of Ukraine; since the officially recognized Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Patriarchate of Moscow has neither asked for it nor will take it, this means it could only apply to schismatic Ukrainian churches, such as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Patriarchate of Kiev and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. At that point, Ukrainian nationalists will proceed to seize Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Patriarchate of Moscow churches.

This revocation is illegal and outrageous on account of a whole host of factors.

Historically, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has consistently insisted on one church in the lands of Rus’ (amusingly, the earliest example of ecclesiastical separatism came in the late 12th century from a region in modern day Russia, when Andrey Bogolyubsky attempted to take the Metropolitanate of Vladimir out of the jurisdiction of Kiev – an attempt that was rebuffed by Constantinople). After the Mongol invasions of 1237-40, the Metropolitanate of Kiev and All-Russia – a title it held until the 16th century – would gradually migrate over to Vladimir and Moscow – first in the 1250s, in response to the Uniate tendencies of Daniil Galitsky in Volhynia-Rus; and permanently so in 1299. Constantinople did recognize a Metropolitanate in part of the modern-day western Ukraine in 1301, but clarified that “Microrussia” (της Γαλίτζες της Μικράς Ρωσίας) was a daughter church of All-Russia. The Kiev Metropolitanate was canceled and reintroduced several times on account of nakedly political factors – namely, Polish and Lithuanian demands on Constantinople to avoid ordaining Orthodox hierarchies on those territories that looked to Moscow, on pain of the region’s forceful Latinization.

In the event, this eventually proved unavoidable. The latest Metropolitanate of Kiev, created in 1458, would eventually accept papal authority and transition into Uniatism in 1596 at the Union of Brest. While this church had been under the tutelage of Constantinople, that did not translate into a splintering of the Russian church; in 1516, the Patriarch Theoleptus I of Constantinople would continue to call the Metropolitan of Moscow Varlaam the “Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia.” Meanwhile, the confirmation of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1589 implied its control over all the canonical territory of the Russian church. In 1620, Constantinople re-established Orthodox dioceses under the Metropolitan of Kiev for the Orthodox population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Metropolitan held the title of “exarch”, a title that signified Constantinople’s acceptance that it was not acting within its canonical territory and that its representative was a temporary placeholder, meant to provide Orthodox services to the faithful while the Poles remained in control of Kiev and were not about to accept a Moscow-appointed Metropolitan. Although the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus had full canonical rights over Kiev (the city being part of Rus) it did enter into negotiations with Constantinople to avoid any ill will once Kiev reverted to Moscow’s control for good in 1686. This was granted by the Patriarch Dionysius, who wrote that the Metropolitan of Kiev would henceforth owe “submission” to the Patriarch of Moscow and made no reference to or hint of the (as now claimed) temporary nature of that decision.

KP: Kiev Metropolitanate in 1686.

In any case, even if Constantinople had the right to reverse its decision – which it doesn’t – then it would only apply to the seven eparchies under its jurisdiction before 1686 (Kiev, Chernigov, Lutsk, Lvov, Przemyśl, Polotsk, and Mogilev), which constitute west and central Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Belorussia, today. It would not apply to Kharkov, which was already within the Russian Empire; or to Novorossiya, which would only be incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 18th century and to which Constantinople has no more rights to than Primorye.

That this is outrageous and unprecedented is backed up by the fact that none of the other Patriarchates appear to be going along with Bartholomew I’s adventurism. This apparently includes all the other ancient Patriarchates (Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem), as well as Serbia and Georgia. This is not so much because they really like Russia, or even oppose Ukrainian autocephaly as such – that is hardly plausible in the case of Georgia – but because of Bartholomew I’s chutzpah in basically proclaiming himself to have the powers of a Pope, ignoring the wishes of canonical Churches, reassigning canonical territories, and cancelling ancient treaties at will. What makes Bartholomew I’s actions all the more astounding is that in the past he has also vetoed Moscow’s attempts to give autocephaly to the Orthodox churches in America, China, and Japan. This has had directly negative effects on the spread of the Orthodox faith – China in particular doesn’t tolerate religious institutions headed from abroad, and some Russian Orthodox missionaries have been intimidated from preaching due to the threat of excommunication by Constantinople.

Granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church is just one more example of anti-Orthodox sabotage, seeing as its supporters read like a who’s who of anti-Orthodox bigots.

First, this includes Ukrainian politicians, including Petro Poroshenko, who has toldthe Washington Post, “Shortly, we will have an independent Ukrainian church as part of an independent Ukraine. This will create a spiritual independence from Russia.” They conflate the nation with the Church, and as such propound ethnophyletism, which was declared a heresy in Constantinople itself in 1872.

Second, as Arkady Maler points out, while Russian liberals love to condemn Russians propounding Orthodoxy – screeching “Caesaropapism,” “imperialism,” “pan-Slavism,” “political Orthodoxy,” etc. – as soon as there appears an anti-Russian project such as Ukrainian autocephaly, they change their tune and wax lyrical about the “theology of the Maidan,” “Kiev’s special mission,” “an independent nation needs an independent church,” “Putin is the anti-Christ,” etc. Meanwhile, they have recently discovered a new appreciation for the “universal Patriarch” of the “New Rome”, taking a short break from their prior rants about “Greek pride,” “Byzantine arrogance,” “Eastern barbarity,” etc. But this is just a short respite from their customary anti-Orthodoxy.

Third, many of the biggest supporters of Ukrainian autocephaly in the West are for all intents and purposes SJWs. The website Orthodoxy in Dialogue, for instance, wants Orthodoxy to get with the times and start sanctifying gay marriage:

We pray for the day when we can meet our future partner in church, or bring our partner to church.

We pray for the day when our lifelong, monogamous commitment to our partner can be blessed and sanctified in and by the Church.

We pray for the day when we can explore as Church, without condemnation, how we Orthodox Christians can best live our life in Christ in the pursuit of holiness, chastity, and perfect love of God and neighbour.

We pray for the day when our priests no longer travel around the world to condemn us and mock us and use us as a punching bag.

We pray for the day when the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ ceases to be our loneliest closet.

In another recent powerful take, they advised Kavanaugh to apologize to every woman he has hurt – even if he can’t remember it.

Consider going to every woman who claims that you have assaulted or otherwise harmed her in the past—or against whom you even suspect that you might have transgressed—and say, “I’m sorry. I may not remember the incident, but clearly I hurt you. Please forgive me. In every contact I have with others, and especially with women, I will try to do better in the future.”

Apparently, lying is now a Christian virtue. Even Lindsey Graham is more basedthan this.

Finally, former US diplomat James Jatras notes that all the usual Atlanticists support Ukrainian ethnophyletism for nakedly geopolitical reasons.

The Western proponents are as crassly honest about the political aspects as the Ukrainian politicians. The German ambassador in Kiev, not known to have any particular theological acuity, opined in July, that autocephaly would strengthen Ukrainian statehood. The hyper-establishment Atlantic Council, which hosted Denysenko on a recent visit to Washington, notes: “With the Russian Orthodox Church as the last source of Putin’s soft power now gone, Ukraine’s movement out of Russia’s orbit is irreversible.”

This is the same logic – encapsulated in the drive to create West-friendly Orthodox structures – that governed Polish and Lithuanian relations towards Orthodoxy in the current Ukraine during the late medieval and early modern era.

Likewise the US State Department, after a short period of appropriately declaring that “any decision on autocephaly is an internal church matter,” last week reversed its position and issued a formal statement: “The United States respects the ability of Ukraine’s Orthodox religious leaders and followers to pursue autocephaly according to their beliefs. We respect the Ecumenical Patriarch as a voice of religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue.”

While avoiding a direct call for autocephaly, the statement gives the unmistakable impression of such endorsement, which is exactly how it was reported in the media, for example, “US backs Ukrainian Church bid for autocephaly.” The State Department’s praise for the Ecumenical Patriarchate reinforces that clearly intended impression.

Quite apart from its active efforts to spread the poz all around the world, US State Department is responsible for more Christian martyrs in the 21st century than any other entity apart from Islamic State. Thanks to its destruction of Iraq and opposition to Syria’s legitimate government, it has contributed greatly to the greatly accelerated extinction of Orthodox Christianity in the Middle East. In Christian terms, it would not be an exaggeration to call it a servant of Satan.

So this makes the question of why Bartholomew I has come out against most of the rest of the Orthodox world, including its largest and richest Patriarchate, in favor of heretics and blasphemers such as Ukrainian ethnophyletists, God-hating Russian liberals, “Orthodox” gay marriage activists, and virulently anti-Christian foreign Powers all the more puzzling.

James Jatras has a plausible, if depressingly banal, explanation: Money.

There may be more to the State Department’s position than meets the eye, however. According to an unconfirmed report originating with the members of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (an autonomous New York-based jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate), in July of this year State Department officials (possibly including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo personally) warned the Greek Orthodox archdiocese (also based in New York but part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate) that the US government is aware of the theft of a large amount of money, about $10 million, from the budget for the construction of the Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas in New York (This is explained further below).

The warning also reportedly noted that federal prosecutors have documentary evidence confirming the withdrawal of these funds abroad on the orders of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. It was suggested that Secretary Pompeo would “close his eyes” to this theft in exchange for movement by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in favor of Ukrainian autocephaly, which helped set Patriarch Bartholomew on his current course.

The Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas was the only non-World Trade Center building to be destroyed in the 9/11 attacks (along with a priceless collection of icons and relics donated to it by Nicholas II). After lengthy legal battles, the Port Authority agreed to its reconstruction in 2011; by the end of 2017, almost $37 million had been donated. But in December 2017, all that money vanished, and construction came to a halt; the results of an audit ordered by the archdiocese was inconclusive. This opens up some possibilities:

If the State Department wanted to find the right button to push to spur Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to move on the question of autocephaly, the Greek archdiocese in the US is it. Let’s keep in mind that in his home country, Turkey, Patriarch Bartholomew has virtually no local flock – only a few hundred mostly elderly Greeks left huddled in Istanbul’s Fener district. Whatever funds the Patriarchate derives from other sources (the Greek government, the Vatican, the World Council of Churches), the financial lifeline is Greeks (including this writer) in what is still quaintly called the “Diaspora” in places like America, Australia, and New Zealand. And of these, the biggest cash cow is the Greek-Americans… It’s an open question how much the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s shaking down the Greeks in the US to pay for extravagant boondoggles like the 2016 “Council” contributed to the financial mess at the New York archdiocese, which in turn may have opened them up to pressure from the State Department to get moving on Ukraine.

It would be an exceedingly sad and ignominious end to see the lingering remnant of a glorious empire do give in to blackmail and foreign pressure. We can only hope that God will not punish them as severely as for the Council of Florence.

In the meantime, the Russian Orthodox Church has decided on a strong response, having already suspended Eucharistic communion with Constantinople. It is fully within its rights to do so. By supporting schism, Constantinople has entered dialogue with anathema, and as such has fallen under anathema itself. Now is the perfect time for Russia to reemerge as the Third Rome and take leadership of Orthodox Christendom.

5 - What Americans think of Greece today

5 - What Americans think of Greece today

 (Below is in my opinion a very good analysis of today's Greece's position in Eastern Mediterranean compared to its neighbors, by an American friend - 27 October 2017 - Dimitri Kitsikis)

Israel would have made a good model for Greece to follow when it was still a healthy, emerging market economy until the shame of 1974 and the miserable political class, who took over the leadership and ran the country into the ground and made it into an EU German protectorate.

All this on the idiocy that somehow big brother Brussels is a protection from Turkey.  In Simitis times, they even thought that they could convince Turkey to put itself in the same cage, but the Turks, respecting their succession from the Byzantines and more Greek than the Elladites, were not foolish enough to fall into such a trap. Instead of the present regime in Greece which has not even achieved the level of Turkish GDP back in 1974 – despite the transfer money, loans, etc. – Turkey successfully restructured with the IMF with Kemal Dervis and have a achieved a GDP many times the size of Greece GDP with industry and exports.  Russia is now their major trading partner and they have moved to a partial Russian alignment after the failed US coup.

I think that Erdogan and Putin could achieve a tremendous event for the Orthodox faith with a Russian Patriarch like Kyrillos of Moscow to replace Bartholomeus.   Instead of social events with the Greek elite for society marriages and baptisms, it would transform the Ecumenical Patriarch to something truly vibrant and worthy of its two thousand year heritage, just as it is growing in Russia despite 70 years of attempted eradication and forced Westernization by the Bolsheviks..   The Russians have every excuse to do this given Greece’s current atheist government and a Parliament who are hypocrites with no respect for the Orthodox faith again in favor the present forced Frankokratia here under Greek Bolsheviks. 

The Americans would go crazy with a Russian Patriarch!!!   Already they do not what to do with Erdogan and Putin….   It would be a just punishment for the EU, too.

Greece has valuable resources and human capital and a large Diaspora.  The political elite who rule Greece are totally incapable of harnessing this energy.  They only know how to negotiate bail out loans and cajole  EU transfer money.  Israel a smaller country exports twice what Greece does and with much higher added value.

As for Turkish relations – sometimes good and sometimes bad – but there is mutual respect between Turkey and Israel.  When Ergdogan tried slyly via Flotilla to violate their borders, the Israeli sent three or four Turks back to Turkey in caskets…..  They were not likely to play around with Israel again in these matters.

I met with Nicholas Burnes, former US Ambassador to Greece, recently at a Credit Suisse event.  He sees Macron and Koulis as saviors for France and Greece respectively.  He was cursing Trump every other sentence despite being a former US Diplomat.  I was thinking to myself how many average American voter would support his policies…..  Not many since Trump is now POTUS!

Frankly I do not see elections here until 2019.  Political life in Greece at present has as much interest as it did under Ioannis Rallis and German occupation…..

Diran

27 October 2017