PERSECUTIONS OF THE GREEKS IN TURKEY SINCE THE ...

6 PERSECUTIONS OF THE GREEKS
" The Ministerial Council on the occasion of a dispute
about a piece of property of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem
in the Island of Chalke has decided to declare
public property all the monastic possessions on the
Island of Chalke which lie outside of the enclosure of
the Monasteries, and in accordance with this decision the
proper economical ephor has taken possession of these."
In addition to this, the tendency of the Germano-
Turks to confiscate the national property of the Greeks
is shown by the forced sale of the orphan asylum on
Princes Island for £3,000 instead of £30,000, its actual
value; the forcible seizure of the trade school in Chalke,
and in particular the decision of the Ministerial Council
taken in March, 1916, according to which the rights of
ownership of the Monasteries are recognized only as
covering the ground comprised within the walls surrounding
them, while all the property outside of the
walls which is claimed by them, whether this be forest
land or land of other nature, is regarded as public
property owned by the State. The application of such
a decision completely stripping the Patriarchate, the
Greek communities and the monasteries of their property,
which reached a total value of many million pounds,
could only have been stopped if the Greek Government
had threatened, as a retaliatory measure, to confiscate
the property belonging to the Turkish religious institutions
in Greece. Unfortunately, it was the epoch at
which, far from appreciating the importance of such a
loss of wealth, Greece seemed rather to be seeking to
make amends, as for instance in that famous decision
about the surrender of some disputed Turkish possessions,
of a value of twenty million drachmas and more.