Glimmers of hope in Istanbul

Better Greek-Turkish relations have led some Greeks back to salvage relics of a fading community

The Greek priest and monk Pavlos Politis (right) and his assistant Seyda Cakmak work to restore an icon in Istanbul.

By James C. Helicke - The Associated Press

ISTANBUL - Pavlos Politis hunches over a 16th-century Orthodox icon of St John the Baptist and uses a swab to clear away the corrosion and cracks that the centuries have brought.

Peering through a microscope, the bushy-bearded monk slowly brushes streaks of brilliant gold and dark blue onto a blank spot on the head of St John.

«Icons are part of a living culture,» the art restorer says.

But like the 3-foot-high (90-centimeter-high) icon, Greek life in Istanbul has a faded look.

The city that was called Constantinople was the heart of Greek culture for more than 1,000 years. Now, dozens of churches stand empty, and a Greek population that numbered hundreds of thousands last century is down to less than 5,000, mostly old people.

The city, once the capital of the Greek Orthodox Byzantine empire, was captured by the Muslim Turks in 1453. The sixth-century Hagia Sophia, a famous Istanbul landmark and once Greek Orthodoxy's holiest shrine, was long ago converted to a mosque, then a museum.

Greeks fled Istanbul in the 1940s to escape heavy taxation. More left following a huge anti-Greek riot in 1955, and in 1964 Turkey expelled up to 40,000 of Istanbul's Greeks because of the dispute over Cyprus.

Nowadays, however, warmer relations between Turkey and Greece have encouraged a few determined Greeks, like Politis, to return to Istanbul. Greek businessmen have begun investing in the city and Greek citizens now staff some of the monasteries and churches which dot the skyline.

Musician Nikiforos Metaxas came more than a decade ago to perform classical Byzantine music and has two bands that regularly perform in Istanbul.

Politis, whose grandparents fled Istanbul, moved here from the Greek port of Thessaloniki in 1996. He has completely restored five churches and preserved some 500 icons throughout the city, including the extensive icon collection at Istanbul's Ecumenical Patriarchate - the spiritual center of the Orthodox world.

«I always believed new blood will come and give new life to Istanbul,» says Politis, 38. «I'm part of that new blood.» In fact his legal name, Constantinos Politis, is Greek for «Man of Constantinople.»

Politis, who heads a group called Restorers Without Frontiers, spends his days bent over icons, paintings, and Islamic calligraphy in a studio overlooking the Hagia Sophia.

In a sign of the improved relations with Greece, a private Turkish university has given him high-resolution microscopes, X-ray machines and special digital cameras for use in his work. His staff of 15 includes Turkish Muslims.

«If we don't help Turkey to preserve Orthodox culture, who will preserve it?» he asks. «We should encourage Turkish young people to love and protect that heritage.»

Across the Bosporus lies an island called Heybeli, Halki in Greek. Once the waters here were filled with Greek fishermen and boatmen. But islander Georges Leondiou Kara doubts the community can be revived. «The Greek community is dead,» Kara says. «It's like having full store windows, but empty shops.»

On Heybeli, a giant Greek theological school looms over a crowded neighborhood of wooden Greek-built homes that are now summer homes for Turks.

«There's not a single lady my age on all the islands,» says Kara, a 40-year-old bachelor.

The seminary, which trained generations of Greek Orthodox leaders, including Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios I, was closed by Turkish authorities in 1971 during a bout of Greek-Turkish tension. Istanbul was so central to Greek life for more than a millennium that many Greeks still affectionately refer to it simply as «the city.»