US State Department Slams Turkey on Ecumenical Patriarchate, Hagia Sophia
” width=”696″>US Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed reporters on International Religious Freedom Day on Wednesday. Credit: US State Department
The US State Department slammed Turkey on its record on religious freedoms citing the pressures exerted on the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the 2020 International Religious Freedom Report released on Wednesday.
The report said that the Turkish government “continued to restrict efforts of minority religious groups to train their clergy,” and the Greek Orthodox Halki Seminary remained closed.
” width=”1080″>It added that it “continued not to recognize Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I as the leader of the world’s approximately 300 million Orthodox Christians, consistent with the government’s stance that there was no legal obligation for it to do so.”