The church of holy sepulchre in jerusalem: The ottoman legacy in the centre of christianity and the issue of status quo

Abstract

When the issue of “sharing sacred space”, which causes severe conflicts among the communities throughout the history, is considered, it is probably not possible to find a much clearer and more striking “case study” than the Church of Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. On the one hand, this sanctuary, as the universal centre in Christianity, brought different sects together, but on the other hand it has led to violent conflicts for centuries between groups, even if they were the members of the same sect. It is also known that these conflicts have brought highly critical problems to the international agenda. The Church of Holy Sepulchre which has always been the object of struggle for influence amongst Greek Orthodox and Catholics, Armenians, Copts, Abyssinians, Assyrians was ruled by the Ottoman State in accordance with the Islamic tradition emerged in the reign of the Caliph Umar bin al-Khattab (634-644 A.C.). These conflicts, which led to fights and mortalities from time to time, were sought to be settled according to a basic principle followed by the Ottoman administration in many other legal practices for centuries. This principle was “the rejection of any deviation from tradition” which represented the essence of Ottoman traditionalism. The “Status quo”, which was declared in 1852 regarding the holy places of Jerusalem including the Church of Holy Sepulchre, was the result of both this traditional approach and the desire to maintain a margin for compromise. The “Status quo” established by the Ottoman State has been in force till the present day, and approved in the Paris Peace Treaty of 1856, the Berlin Treaty of 1878, the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, in the decisions of the 1922 Palestinian Council of the British Mandate. In this study, the issue of status quo is to be evaluated by focusing on the Ottoman tradition and heritage concerning this sanctuary by using the archival documents obtained from the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Ministry, as primary sources. © 2019, Hacettepe University. All rights reserved.