Before traveling to Turkey, I understood Greek-Turkish relations primarily through stories of conflict. Much of what I knew came from theology classes and conversations with a former professor who was himself a Greek Orthodox priest. Throughout this course, we discussed the population exchanges of the twentieth century and the changing identity of Hagia Sophia. Those conversations gave me an important historical foundation, but they also shaped the way I imagined the relationship between Greeks and Turks. I understood that Christians and Muslims had lived alongside one another for centuries, yet I assumed the wounds of history were too deep for genuine coexistence in the present.
When I arrived in Turkey, I quickly realized how limited that understanding was. Through studying the Ottoman millet system, meeting Peder Daniel Zafiris, and reflecting on places such as Hagia Sophia, I came to realize that coexistence does not require religious communities to erase their differences. Rather, it requires spaces where distinct identities can survive while still participating in a shared society.
The encounter that most transformed my understanding was meeting Peder Daniel Zafiris, a Greek Orthodox priest living and working in Turkey. I expected his discussion to focus primarily on the struggles of being a religious minority in a Muslim-majority country. Those struggles are real and should not be ignored. However, Peder Daniel did not speak only about what his community had lost. Instead, he spoke about what his community was preserving and building for the future. He described receiving a scholarship as a member of the Greek minority to pursue doctoral studies in Turkey. He explained that Greek minority schools continue to educate students and discussed his efforts to create religious education programs that allow Orthodox children to learn their faith and traditions.
Peder Daniel’s story demonstrated resilience rather than resignation. Although the Greek Orthodox population in Turkey has declined dramatically over the past century, the existence of churches, schools, and religious education programs reflects a remarkable continuity. The political structures surrounding minority communities have changed significantly since the Ottoman period, but the desire to preserve religious and cultural identity has remained constant. This encounter helped me reconsider the Ottoman millet system. I often thought about historical systems of religious organization in simple terms: either they represented tolerance or oppression. However, the millet system contained elements of both. It did not create equality according to modern democratic standards, but it provided a structure through which religious communities could maintain their own institutions, traditions, and identities.
As Thomas Madden explains regarding the organization of the Ottoman Empire, “As dictated by Muslim law (sharia), non-Muslims were forbidden to have weapons and forced to pay a special head tax.” They were also excluded from certain positions within the government. These restrictions reveal the unequal position occupied by Christian and Jewish communities under Ottoman rule. Yet Madden also explains the other side of this system when he writes, “Other than that, non-Muslims were allowed to live their lives and worship as they chose.”
The millet system did not make Muslims, Christians, and Jews equal citizens, and minority communities existed within a hierarchy that placed Muslims in a privileged legal position. At the same time, the system recognized that different religious communities could preserve many aspects of their own communal life. Greek Orthodox Christians maintained their churches, schools, religious leaders, and traditions for centuries.
David Fromkin’s discussion of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse helped me understand why these questions remain relevant today. In A Peace to End All Peace, Fromkin writes: “The continuing crisis in the Middle East in our time may prove to be nowhere near so profound or so long-lasting. But its issue is the same: how diverse peoples are to regroup to create new political identities for themselves after the collapse of an ages-old imperial order to which they had grown accustomed.”
Before this course, I often thought of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire primarily as a political event involving new borders and governments. However, Fromkin’s argument helped me see that the collapse was also a question of identity. For centuries, Muslims, Christians, and Jews had lived within one imperial structure while maintaining distinct communal identities. After that structure disappeared, new nation-states determined who belonged, what citizenship meant, and how minority communities would fit into national identities. Meeting Peder Daniel helped me understand that Fromkin’s question was not only about governments or political boundaries. It was also about ordinary people deciding how to preserve their identities after the systems that once organized society had changed.
After studying the Ottoman period and listening to Peder Daniel describe the continued existence of the Greek Orthodox community in Turkey, I found myself approaching Hagia Sophia differently. Instead of asking whether Hagia Sophia belonged to Christianity or Islam, I began asking how a single place could hold the memories and meanings of multiple communities. Standing inside Hagia Sophia, I realized I was searching for an answer that the building itself refused to provide. I wanted to categorize it as either a church or a mosque, but its history resisted that simple choice. The building’s Christian and Islamic histories were not competing layers where one had to replace the other. Instead, they were both embedded within its walls. The mosaics of Jesus and the Virgin Mary reflected its Byzantine Christian past, while the minarets, calligraphy, and centuries of Islamic worship reflected its Ottoman history.
In my daily journal, I wrote, “The more I learned, the harder it became to view the building as belonging exclusively to one faith or the other because both histories are deeply embedded within its walls.” Looking back on that reflection, I realize that Hagia Sophia represented the same lesson I learned from Peder Daniel. Identity does not always require choosing one history and rejecting another. Communities, like places, can carry multiple experiences at once.
Before this trip, I had unconsciously approached history as though different identities existed in competition with one another. I assumed that if a space was significant to Christians, then its Islamic history somehow diminished that meaning, or vice versa. Hagia Sophia challenged that assumption. Its history demonstrated that cultural and religious identities are not always separated by clear boundaries. Instead, they often overlap, influence one another, and exist together in ways that are complicated but meaningful.
This idea reminded me of Rumi’s poem “The Water Is Calling the Thirsty,” particularly his reflection: “Surely there is a window from heart to heart: they are not separate and far from each other. Though two earthenware lamps are not joined, their light mingles.”
These lines became the most fitting metaphor for what I learned throughout this course. The lamps remain separate. They are not combined into one object, and their differences are not erased. Likewise, the Greek Orthodox community has preserved its own traditions, schools, language, and religious practices. Turkish Muslims have maintained their own religious identity and traditions. Yet, as Rumi suggests, their light can still mingle.
Meeting Peder Daniel helped me understand this metaphor in a practical way. His commitment to preserving Orthodox identity did not come from a desire to separate completely from Turkish society. Instead, his work showed that maintaining one’s traditions and participating in a broader community are not opposites. Religious communities can preserve what makes them unique while still sharing a common society with others.
Another line from Rumi’s poem also remained with me: “No sound of clapping comes forth from only one hand.” Growing up, I often learned history through narratives of opposing sides: one group acted, another group suffered; one side was right, another side was wrong. While recognizing injustice and violence remains essential, my time in Turkey taught me that history is rarely that simple. The relationship between Greeks and Turks has included conflict, displacement, and political struggles, as well as coexistence, exchange, and mutual influence.
Acknowledging complexity does not mean ignoring suffering. The inequalities of the Ottoman millet system, the decline of the Greek Orthodox population, and the struggles faced by religious minorities in modern Turkey are real. However, focusing only on conflict creates an incomplete picture. It overlooks the ordinary people and communities who continued preserving their identities despite changing political circumstances.
My time in Turkey taught me that understanding another culture begins not by searching for evidence that confirms what we already believe, but by allowing our assumptions to be challenged. The greatest lesson I took from this experience was not simply about Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, or the Greek Orthodox community. It was about learning to see history and humanity with greater humility. People and places are rarely defined by only one story. Like Hagia Sophia itself, they are shaped by layers of memory, faith, and experience that continue to exist together.
Works Cited
Fromkin, David. A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern Middle East. NY: Holt Paperback, 1989.
Madden, Thomas F. Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World. NY: Penguin Books, 2016.
Helminski, Kabir (Ed.). The Pocket Rumi. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 2008.