The role of the Lausanne Peace Conference in the history of the Patriarchate of Constantinople as reflected in the 20th century Greek historiography: stereotypes and realities

Abstract

The authors analyze the attitudes of Greek scholars towards the role of the Lausanne Peace Conference held in 1922–1923 in determining the fate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Dealing with ecclesiastical as well as secular historiography, the authors single out a manifest tendency on the part of Greek historians towards subjectively viewing the historical data reconstructed by the authors of the present article on the basis of extant sources. The authors demonstrate that Greek scholarly literature abounds in assertions that the future fates of the Patriarchate were on the agenda of the Lausanne Conference from its very beginning, and that in the course of this Conference the terms upon which the Patriarchate could stay within Turkey and its new legal status were agreed upon; according to Greek scholars, the very fact of the Patriarchate issue emerging and being discussed during an international political conference claimed that this religious institution enjoyed a kind of international legal entity. The authors make it clear that the source of such attitudes is to be sought in the Greek government and in the stance of the leading hierarchs of the Greek Church who deemed it important to preserve at any cost the Greek ecclesiastical presence on the Turkish territory. It is precisely this goal that explains the attempt at raising the political weight of the Patriarchate of Constantinople using the authority of a major international event. In conclusion of their article, the authors cast doubts on the view that the Lausanne Peace Conference should be considered a chronological milestone in the history of the Church of Constantinople. Instead, they propose to postulate as such a milestone the emergence of the Turkish Republic and the concomitant transformation of political and religious institutions.