Have yourself a very Orthodox Christmas

Minus all the Western commercial hoopla of 25 December, 300 million members of the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrated its Christmas today. The day is celebrated on January 7 according to the old Julian calendar by the Russian, Serbian, Georgian and Jerusalem Orthodox Churches and Mount Athos monasteries commemorate the birth of Jesus 13 days after Western Christmas. Unlike the Catholic Church where the Pope in preeminent, there are 14 autocephalous churches in the Orthodox community, though the mother church is Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the “first among equals”. Photo: Orthodox priests lead a Christmas service at the Bosnian Orthodox Church in Sarajevo (Amel Emric / AP)

At the 1459 Council of Florence monks from the self-governing Mt Athos in Greece refused to let Catholic and Orthodox Churches in return for Western military help against the Turks. As a result Constantinople fell to the Ottomans but Orthodoxy survived doctrinally intact. In today’s Istanbul as in many places across southern and eastern Europe, Orthodox Christian worshippers plunged into chilly waters to retrieve crucifixes in ceremonies commemorating the baptism of Jesus. Hundreds from Istanbul's now tiny Greek Orthodox community and Greek tourists attended the Epiphany ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters. About 20 faithful leaped into the cold Golden Horn inlet to retrieve a wooden cross thrown by the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Apostolos Oikonomou, a 40-year-old Greek man, clinched the cross. "This year I was the lucky guy," he said. "I wish everybody peace and happy New Year."

Over 5,000 worshippers gathered at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ Our Saviour including outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called on the congregation to withstand the “cult of hasty lucre”. Archpriest Sergius Zvonarev of the Moscow Patriarchate said the day was both a solemn ritual and joyous celebration, Zvonarev said the Russian Orthodox Church remained loyal to the Julian calendar which regulated church life and traditions for centuries. “It reveres these traditions as the entire civilized world used to live by them in the past,” he said.

Orthodox Christians gathered in Bethlehem in front of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the Church of the Nativity. Barely days after a fight between various Christian sects over territorial rights in the church, the Mayor of Bethlehem Victor Batarseh said the theme of this year’s celebration was Palestine celebrates hope. “Our message in these days is love and peace to all especially in the Holy Land”, Batarseh said. Over 2,000 scouts from all over the West Bank held a parade through Bethlehem with their marching bands and bagpipes.

Many in Bethlehem say the best band is the Syriac Orthodox Scouts’ pipers. Bethlehem’s Syriac Orthodox community is proud to trace its roots to the ancient Aramean peoples and are among the few people left that speak the language of Jesus, Aramaic. The scouts were established in 1958 and became internationally successful in sports in the 60s and 70s. After the Oslo Accords, their pipers became President Yasser Arafat’s military band. One former band member said they were in Gaza playing the bagpipes for Arafat when the news of Rabin’s assassination was announced. “They thought it was a Palestinian who had killed him so they would not let us leave Gaza,” he said. Today they took centre stage in Manger Square.

In Egypt, Copts nervously celebrated the day as sectarian violence continued, the first Christmas in the post Hosni Mubarak era. US President Barack Obama used the occasion to call for the protection of Copts and other minorities. "I want to reaffirm the commitment of the US to work for the protection of Christian and other religious minorities around the world," he said. The call comes after the military rulers cracked down on a Coptic march in October. Coptic Pope Shenouda III commended Islamist leaders, who attended the Coptic Church service. "We all celebrate together as Egyptians,” Shenouda said.

Diary of an Istanbul haircut

A bit delayed, but worth relaying:
Monday 20 Oct 2008. We left Bindarme at 7.30am on the hydrofoil to Istanbul. The crowded port boasted ships registered in Panama, Monrovia and Valetta and there was also one from Moscow, a true fish out of water. The boat sped across the Sea of Marmara getting to Istanbul in just two hours.

Arriving at Yenikapi port in Istanbul, I was greeted by the usual plethora of men asking me if I wanted a “tacsi”. But I was determined to set out on foot. The line straight ahead was blocked by the railway to Europe so I headed east in the general direction of Asia. Eventually there is a pedestrian overpass which goes through to a narrow alley onto a busy looking street. It looks promising with signs for Internet and the all-important “otel” (after drawing a complete blank on that score in Izmir). The first two “otels” I try are completely booked out but a third can fit me in for two nights (I wanted four). I wondered if it was because of Arsenal fans in town for the Champions League game tomorrow night. I set out and barely ten doors down I found a barber. I had promised myself a haircut in Istanbul and despite a total lack of the Turkish tongue I figured the language of clippers can’t be too difficult to communicate.

As soon as I was sat in the barber’s chair I was offered a sweet. I looked twice at the offering before the second barber made the “eat” gesture. I had seen this confection barely minutes earlier on the street. It had the look, texture and taste of toffee. “Kurdish” said my new barber friend. “I am Kurdish” he went on. The Kurdish barber stopped cutting my hair to allow me digest the “toffee”. But given that could take some time, I urged him to continue clipping away. A bit of hairy Kurdish toffee couldn’t hurt.

The barbershop had the usual array of incongruous photos common to barbers the world over. Pictures of Istanbul and Pammukale were mixed in with a mural of a Canadian ski slopes.

When I advised the barber with a heavy grunt he had cut my hair to my satisfaction and the universally understood “ok”, he proceeded with the next step of the operation. I could barely believe my eyes as he reached for a cigarette lighter and proceeded to set alight both my ears – Twice! I kept my apprehension to myself, assuming this was some local rite and was surprised the operation was painless. I wondered if this was an effort to quick-dry my ears but as the next step was a hair wash that theory foundered. I assume it was either his way of burning off the hairs from my ear or else a way of taking the piss out of a stupid tourist. The wash felt like a massage and after 15 minutes in the chair I was totally relaxed – despite the earscorching. I walked away with the remains of my Kurdish toffee in my pocket for safe-keeping.

Never plain sailing in Byzantium

It is difficult to imagine Istanbul being any more chaotic than what hapens on the streets but the life in the news appears just as full as mayhem. There is a trial in swing of 46 people accused of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government and yesterday the judges announced they were refusing to grant them bail. The defendants, known as the Ergenekon network, all have high profiles and they include former army officers, journalists, and a retired university dean. All 46 have denied the charges and claim the trial was politically instigated by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government in order to censor its critics.

The Ergenekon trial is the topic of most conversations around the city and has sharply divided opinion into three camps. Firstly there are those who support the defendants and say the case is an excuse for the Islamist government to suppress its opponents. A second group of government supporters say the suppression of the secretive Ergenekon clique is a major step in the road to enhance Turkey's democracy. The third and most cautious camp consists of the intelligentsia who believe the trial will not result in any concrete gains for democracy as the indictment for the case is weak. But everyone has an opinion. The fact the indictees include generals, journalists, business leaders and an actress means that the case has enormous cachet on the streets.

And what incredibly noisy streets they are. Trams, cars, dolmus and buses compete for space with ever industrious trolley-boys, sackmen and slack-jawed tourists straining to capture the spirit of the place with yet another photograph. The central district of Sultanahmet is almost entirely surrounded by water. The Sea of Marmara lies to the south where an enormous queue of cargo boats awaits a spot to load and unload. East is the Bosporus and Asia across the water. A steady stream of ferries take the thousands home and abroad though the toll-spanned Bosporus Bridge is eating in to their traffic. North is the Haliç – the Golden Horn which splits the two European arms of Istanbul. Here the bridges are awash with fishermen and foodstalls and a clutter of noise and energy.

Napoleon reputedly once said that if the world had a capital then Istanbul would be it. And although it is not even the capital of its own country, the Corsican genius had a good point. Not only is the city's geography illustrious, so is its history. That history is most redolent in the three buildings that dominate Sultanahmet's Bosporus shoreline, the Blue Mosque, Aghia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace.

The Blue Mosque is the colloquial name for the Sultan Ahmed (Sultanahmet) mosque and is the country's national house of prayer. It was built in the 16th century by Ahmed as the first mosque of his massive Ottoman Empire which stretched from Morocco to Persia and from Ethiopia to the gates of Venice. The mosque earned its common name thanks to the blue tiles adorning the walls of its interior.

The Ottomans had inherited the great city of Constantinople two centuries earlier when it finally ended the thousand-year reign of the Eastern Roman Empire. Back in 532, its great emperor Justinian had also ordered the construction of a great building in Istanbul to honour his deities. That building was the Aghia Sophia, which would be the largest basilica in the world for a thousand years. When the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453, it was re-consecrated as a mosque still replete with Byzantine murals. Then in 1923 Turkey's great modern secular leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum as part of his move to abolish the caliphate.

Also now a museum is the next door Topkapi Palace. Topkapi was the home of the Ottoman emperors for 400 years. It was built after the capture of the city and is a complex structure divided into four courtyards each one leading into more restricted parts of the palace. By the mid 19th century, its Asiatic style was becoming tiresome to the more sophisticated tastes of the Europeanised sultanate. They abandoned it in 1853 and Kemal Ataturk transformed it into a national museum in the 1920s.

The ghost of Ataturk still haunts the city. His image appears on many Turkish flags branding by streetsellers and hangs from the windows and from portraits on the walls of shops. Erdogan's government may have the veneer of Islamism that provoked the ire of the plotters but a strong taint of capitalist secularism lines the streets. The merchants compete on equal terms with the muezzins. Money is the real religion here.