Turkish far-right protesters make the sign of the Gray Wolves (another name for the Nationalist Action Party or MHP) outside the headquarters of Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios in Istanbul’s Fanar district yesterday. Around 200 protesters, who reject the ecumenical nature of the patriarch’s role, called for him to ‘go back to Greece.’

Around 200 far-right Turks staged a protest in front of the headquarters of Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios in Istanbul yesterday, disputing the validity of the Orthodox patriarch’s title and calling for him to move to Greece.

Amid a heavy police presence, protesters chanted slogans such as “back to Greece with the patriarch,” waved the national flag of Turkey and of the extreme-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), and laid a black wreath at the door of the patriarchate.

“The patriarchate has stopped being just a religious institution and has become a political one,” a senior MHP spokesperson said. “It is trying to establish a religious state like the Vatican, demanding part of the Turkish state’s sovereignty.”

The protest, which ended peacefully, came a week after Vartholomaios told a conference in Istanbul that Turkey was preventing him from using his ecumenical title, which indicates his spiritual leadership of the world’s 250 million or so Orthodox faithful.