ISTANBUL, Turkey - The head of a U.S. Greek Orthodox delegation accused Turkey Tuesday of treating Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, as a "second-class" citizen.
Anthony Limberakis, the national commander of the Order of St. Andrew, also said that Turkey must open the Halki Greek Orthodox Theological School, which was closed in 1971 by the Turkish government.
"It is an infringement of our rights as American citizens to worship in America when our own spiritual father cannot freely ... conduct his ministry ... and when we cannot educate our clergy at the Halki school," Limberakis said while visiting Halki.
"Quite frankly, we are tired of the Turkish government treating the spiritual father of 300 million Orthodox faithful as a second-class citizen," said Limberakis.
"There is great diversity and religious freedom in the U.S.," he said. "And we expect no less from the Turkish government."
Turkey refuses to recognize Bartholomew as the leader of Orthodox Christianity and instead considers him nothing more than the head of the country's tiny Greek Orthodox community.
The Turkish government, Bartholomew said, has asked him not to call himself the Ecumenical Patriarch.
Limberakis also expressed anger that Turkey has different laws for property owned by Muslims and religious minorities.
Many of today's Greek Orthodox leaders, including Bartholomew, were trained at the school, which was closed under a law that put military and religious education under state control
Bartholomew said that he "would like only to be remembered as the patriarch who was able to reopen Halki."
The U.S ambassador to Turkey, Robert Pearson, who accompanied the delegation to the seminary, said that Washington supported the reopening of Halki.
"The U.S. continues to encourage Turkey ... to let the light shine forth once again here from Halki," Pearson said.
The European Union, which Turkey aspires to join, has also called on Turkey to reopen the seminary.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul dates from the Orthodox Greek Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when the Muslim Ottoman Turks conquered the city in 1453. Istanbul, then called Constantinople, was the capital of the Byzantine empire, and thus the heart of Greek culture for more than 1,000 years.
Although few Greek Orthodox Christians remain in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey today, Bartholomew's patriarchate is still based in Istanbul and directly controls several Greek Orthodox churches around the world.