By Murat Yıldız
Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said Friday, September 4, at the 90th Thessaloniki International Fair that Greece and Egypt had reached a "preliminary understanding" on a new regulatory status for Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, with the next decision now resting with the monastic community.
The arrangement, he said, would be the first structured attempt in the monastery's fifteen-century history to give it a special legal regime rather than treat it as an ordinary antiquity. At the same time, on Heybeliada, the Ecumenical Patriarchate expects the restored buildings of Halki Seminary to be inaugurated in September, although the theological school itself still has no settled legal form for reopening in Türkiye.
The Sinai dispute reached this point through property law.
On May 28, 2025, the Ismailia Court of Appeal ruled in a long-running case involving the monastery and the South Sinai Governorate. Reporting based on the judgment says the Egyptian state prevailed on ownership, while the monks retained rights of possession and religious use over the monastery and much of the disputed land. Mada Masr later reported that the ruling required the monks to leave 14 plots while leaving them use rights over another 57.
Cairo presented the judgment as protection rather than dispossession.
The Egyptian presidency said the ruling reinforced the monastery's "unique and sacred religious status." Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said it preserved the monks' right to use the monastery and associated religious sites and called for a regularization agreement between the monastery and local authorities. Egypt's State Information Service rejected reports that the monks would be expelled.
Athens read the same judgment differently. Greek church leaders warned that the monastery's historic property rights had been undermined, while the Ecumenical Patriarchate said its ownership status had been called into question.
Gerapetritis's September 4 account shows how far the language has moved since then. The dispute is no longer being described only in terms of ownership and use. Athens is now talking about a dedicated regulatory regime for an institution that has never had one under modern Egyptian law.
No official Egyptian text setting out the proposed settlement has been published.
Mada Masr reported in July, citing two sources close to Saint Catherine's, that an Egyptian proposal would recognize the monastery as an Egyptian religious legal entity while leaving ownership of the land with the state. The monks would receive possession and worship rights inside the religious complex, renewable three-year residence permits and long leases at nominal rents for surrounding gardens and agricultural land. The proposal would also prevent the settlement from being challenged again in court.
None of those provisions has been published by Egypt's foreign or justice ministries. The reported recognition of a separate Egyptian legal personality therefore remains a claim about the proposed settlement, not an established legal fact.
Symeon's civil status is also unresolved in the public record.
Egyptian authorities publicly deal with him in his ecclesiastical capacity, but Bosphorus News has not located a published Egyptian presidential decree formally recognizing his election or granting him Egyptian citizenship. Mada Masr's account of the proposal refers instead to renewable residence permits for the abbot and monks.
The court case is still unresolved. An August 23 Court of Cassation date was widely reported, but no ruling was publicly issued and Bosphorus News has not located an Egyptian court record showing what procedural step was taken or setting a new date.
Greece, meanwhile, changed its own law.
Law 5224/2025 created a legal entity under public law in Athens for the Greek Orthodox Sacred Royal Autonomous Monastery of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai in Greece. It operates under the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports and can represent the monastery in Greece, administer assets entrusted to it and support the monastery's activities.
Its five-member board includes the Archbishop and Abbot of Sinai, the monastery's Dean and its representative in Greece. Two lay members are formally appointed by the education minister on a reasoned recommendation from the Holy Sinai Brotherhood. Decisions concerning monastery assets or representation entrusted to the Greek entity require approval from the monastery itself.
Athens has given Saint Catherine's a legal vehicle in Greece while keeping ministerial supervision over that vehicle and preserving monastic participation in its governance.
On Heybeliada, Türkiye is dealing with a different legal question.
Education Minister Yusuf Tekin described it unusually plainly on February 28. The ultimate decision on reopening, he said, belongs to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Foreign Ministry and other relevant ministries. His own ministry had visited Heybeliada to determine what would follow if that political decision were taken.
The ministry prepared a report and a road map examining whether the institution could operate at secondary, university or postgraduate level and under which legal arrangements.
Tekin also separated the seminary from what legally exists at the site today. The theological school is closed, he said, while a high school remains open in law despite having no students: "legally, in terms of status, it is open."
The ministry put that position into writing five months later.
İYİ Party parliamentary group deputy chair Turhan Çömez submitted written question 7/46227 asking 24 questions about Halki, including its possible legal status, whether it would fall under the Ministry of National Education or the Council of Higher Education, who would approve its curriculum, whether its diplomas would be recognized and how foreign students could be admitted.
The July 28 reply did not answer those questions individually. Instead, the ministry recorded the institution currently recognized at the site: Heybeliada Greek Boys' High School. It said the school is not a religious education institution, remains registered as a private secondary school under Law No. 5580 and has no students.
That defines what exists today. It does not define what a reopened seminary would become.
The Patriarchate is preparing the physical site more quickly than the state is defining the institution that could operate inside it. Bartholomew has said renovation work will be completed in September. After his remarks were initially read as an announcement that the seminary itself would reopen, Patriarchate spokesman Nikos Papachristou clarified that the planned event concerns the inauguration of the restored buildings, not the resumption of theological education. No exact ceremony date has been announced.
Talks on reopening Halki were restarted in June after Erdoğan instructed officials to resume the process. Reuters reported at the time that the legal and educational structure still had to be agreed and that no reopening date had been set.
The Halki question also sits beside the legal status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate itself.
Türkiye does not recognize the Patriarchate itself as a separate legal person. Greek Orthodox community foundations, however, are legal entities and can own and administer property. Council of Europe bodies have identified the Patriarchate's lack of separate legal personality as affecting ownership rights, property management and access to legal remedies.
Western Thrace reverses the problem: there the dispute is over who gets to define a religious office and choose its leadership.
Greece regulates the muftiates through Law 4964/2022 and subsequent legislation. Athens defines the community under the Treaty of Lausanne as the Muslim minority and places the mufti selection and appointment process inside a statutory state framework. Türkiye and Turkish minority organizations call the community the Turkish minority and recognize community-elected muftis instead.
Türkiye formally protested in April after the process used to determine a state-appointed mufti in Didymoteicho was extended toward Rodopi and Xanthi. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said Greece was refusing to recognize the minority's elected religious leaders. Greece maintains its statutory appointment system.
These files do not create a useful reciprocity ledger. Saint Catherine's concerns Egyptian property law, archaeological administration and a monastic community. Halki concerns Türkiye's education law and clergy training. The Patriarchate raises legal-personality and property questions of its own. Western Thrace concerns the state's role in defining and appointing a religious office under a separate treaty and domestic legal structure.
The proposed Sinai formula would leave the land with the Egyptian state while protecting monastic use, if the reported terms survive into a final agreement. Greece has already gone further in its own jurisdiction by creating a public-law entity for Saint Catherine's, with ministerial supervision and monastic participation built into its governance.
Halki remains at an earlier stage: Türkiye knows which institution legally exists on Heybeliada today but has not decided what a reopened theological school would become. Western Thrace reverses the question again, because there the dispute is over how much authority the state should have in defining the leadership of an existing religious office.
Gerapetritis's phrase about Sinai gets closest to the issue. A living monastery cannot be adequately described as an ordinary antiquity.
Tekin's own account of Halki leads to an equally basic question. If the seminary returns, what exactly will it be in law?
The buildings can be restored before the category is.
Sources: Hellenic Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government Gazette of the Hellenic Republic, Egyptian Presidency, Egyptian State Information Service, Mada Masr, Türkiye Ministry of National Education, Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, Türkiye Foreign Ministry, Council of Europe, Reuters, Bosphorus News review and reporting.