Dean Christakos

First, we stopped by one of the 11 other churches in the neighborhood of St. Kyriaki that had no liturgy that Sunday (only 1 Greek church in the neighborhood holds liturgy on a given Sunday, owing to the declining size of the community), a larger one called Panagia Elpida:

Then, crossing the Golden Horn into the Karakoy district of Beyoglu, there is a tiny Russian Orthodox Church called St. Panteleimon, on the top level of an office building. From the window of that church, you can see the domes of two other Russian Churches, presumably from competing jurisdictions still fighting over each other's legitimacy in the wake of the Bolsheivik Revolution:

Karakoy is another one of those neighborhoods, like the Phanar, suffering from a substantial amount of urban decay as buildings crumble due to lack of maintanence, particularly as their previous Greek and Armenian residents have moved away:

This next set of churches is where things get weird. Also in the Karakoy district, you can find a couple of churches referred to as "Turk Ortodox," like the church of St. Nicholas pictured here:

and this sign outside the Church of the Panagia:

What the heck is this, you might ask? It turns out that this church and another church are labeled "Turk Ortodox." They are reputed to have 5 members, no priest, and no existing services, so what's going on? Turns out this is an interesting story, bringing us back to the end of WWI. Right at this point Greece had been granted almost all of Eastern Thrace from the Ottoman Empire, along with the city of Smyrna. Istanbul had been granted to the Soviet Union, though Lenin rejected it, and the status of the city was up in the air, though the fact that the European part of the city was now surrounded by Greek territory got the hopes of the Greeks up that they would get it, to the point where the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the city started flying the Greek flag over its site. These hopes were dashed, however, when Greece and Turkey got mired in a war in the interior of Anatolia and Greece was badly defeated. As part of the peace settlement, Greece lost Eastern Thrace, Smyrna, and the Aegean Islands of Imvros and Tenedos to Turkey, borders which still exist today. Meanwhile, Greece and Turkey agreed to an exchange of populations in order to prevent either country from invading the other under the guise of "liberating" their fellow countryment. However, their "fellow countrymen" were defined as those sharing the same religion, rather than the same language, which brings us to the Karamanlides, a group which explains the existence of the above-mentioned churches. These were Turkish-speaking Christians who created a written language out of Greek characters, indicating that they were likely Greeks who maintained their religious traditions while adopting the Turkish language (or possibly Turkish settlers who converted to Christianity in Byzantine times and adopted the Greek alphabet for written communication).

Before the details of the population exchange were agreed upon, the Turkish Republic, wanting to ensure that all public entities adhered to all things Turkish, figured that the Karamanlides were the perfect group to head off any waves of Greek nationalism that might be fomented within the Greek Orthodox Church within the borders of the Turkish Republic. The government figured that they would swing support to a separate and rival "Turkish Orthodox Church" made up of the Karamanlides, celebrating the liturgy in Turkish (a group which never before was connected to any other bishops other than those of the Ecumenical Patriarch). Many details of the political manipulations behind that are described in an article covering the first ten years of the Patriarchate in the Turkish Republic. Suffice it to say, however, once the Karamanlides were deported to Greece, they quickly assimilated as Greeks and prevented any "Turkish Orthodox Church" from gaining any traction, since it had no members. The Turkish government, however, confiscated three Greek Orthodox Churches and gave them to the "Turkish Orthodox Church" which, as far as I can tell, consisted at that time of one priest and his immediate family. Their raison d'etre was to serve as a credible rival to the Ecumenical Patriarch. They still exist as an entity and are still given support by the government for the purposes of harassing the Ecumenical Patriarch even though this is an organization of less than half-a-dozen people. However, their legacy remains in Karakoy, an area in which churches of all types-- Russian, Armenian, and Greek-- still stand.