The Pope and the Russian Patriarch to meet

[Crandar]

So, what do you propose?
Should they allow a foreigner occupy a position that gives his control over Turkish citizens? Nah, I wouldn't do that.

The Ecumenical Patriarch lost his power, because the churches of the independent Balkan states became autocephalous. Why? For the same reason that the Turks accept only Turkish citizens in the Patriarchal See. Because they didn't want their religious authorities being controlled by Ottoman citizens.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

So, what do you propose?
Should they allow a foreigner occupy a position that gives his control over Turkish citizens? Nah, I wouldn't do that.

The Ecumenical Patriarch lost his power, because the churches of the independent Balkan states became autocephalous. Why? For the same reason that the Turks accept only Turkish citizens in the Patriarchal See. Because they didn't want their religious authorities being controlled by Ottoman citizens.

You have it backwards.

The Greek-Turkish community is irrelevant, down to about 2,000 now - the population of one large village.

The Turkish Republic exercises control over the Patriarch today for what are, I think, a combinations of historical and (more recently) Muslim theological considerations. Turkey is, I think, the only developed country which exercises control over the head of a faith which is a minority within the country. In reality the majority of the Patriarch's flock are in the UK, Italy, Malta, the US and Australia.

There's no practical reason why the Turkish Government need have any connection to the Patriarchate other than hosting him in Constantinople/Istanbul, plenty of other countries host religious leaders.

If I had to guess I'd say that the reason for controlling the Patriarch so closely is to keep him weak. Even when the Republic was secular it was important that the majority of the population feel confident in their Muslim Turkish identity and not to encourage reflection on their Greco-Roman Christian past, this is (of course) why the great churches of Constantinople were defaced and then converted into Mosques.

It's still weird that this level of control was built into the Turkish Republic and then maintained over decades during a period when said Republic really was quite secular and progressive.