ANKARA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a rare meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of about 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, on Tuesday as hopes grow for the reopening of the Halki Seminary, a long-shuttered Orthodox theological school located on an island near Istanbul.The Turkish presidency did not disclose details of the discussions held during the meeting at the presidential complex in Ankara. Bartholomew, who is based in Istanbul, last met Erdogan during the pope’s visit to Turkey in November.The pair’s meeting came as the future of Halki has returned to the forefront in Turkey’s talks with the United States and amid broader tensions between Ankara and Athens over minority rights and maritime disputes in the Aegean.The seminary, located on Heybeliada island off Istanbul, was founded in 1844 and served for decades as the main theological school of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It trained generations of Orthodox clergy, including Bartholomew.The school has been closed since 1971, following a Turkish Constitutional Court ruling that private higher education institutions had to be placed under the government’s control. The Patriarchate has long sought its reopening, arguing that the closure has left it unable to train clergy in Turkey.The Trump factorBartholomew said last week that restoration work at the seminary building was expected to be completed in September, adding that he was waiting for Turkish authorities to allow the school to resume operations.“President Recep Tayyip Erdogan instructed Education Minister Yusuf Tekin in 2024 to examine the possibility of reopening our school,” Bartholomew told Turkey’s Hurriyet daily last week.He continued that Tekin visited the seminary in May of that year and that constructive talks had since begun among the Education Ministry, Turkey’s higher education board and the Patriarchate.The meeting also comes ahead of a NATO leaders’ summit to be held in Ankara on July 7-8, which is expected to be attended by US President Donald Trump.The reopening of the Halki Seminary was one of the few issues Trump raised when he hosted Erdogan at the White House in September 2025.“We are ready to do whatever is incumbent upon us on the Heybeliada school,” Erdogan told Trump at the time, adding that he would discuss the issue with Bartholomew after returning to Turkey.Turkish-Greek tensionsBartholomew’s meeting with Erdogan also comes as tensions between Turkey and its Aegean neighbor and NATO ally Greece have been rising over a Turkish draft law that would codify Turkey’s territorial waters at 6 nautical miles in the Aegean, where Ankara opposes any Greek extension beyond the current limit.Speaking last week, Bartholomew suggested that tensions between Ankara and Athens should not be projected onto minority communities in either country.Turkey’s Greek Orthodox citizens want to be treated equally and to feel like an integral part of the country, “not as second-class citizens,” he said. “I believe the same wish is shared by members of the minority in Greece.”Turkey has long tied the reopening of Halki to reciprocity with Greece, often linking the status of Turkey’s Greek Orthodox community to the rights of the Muslim Turkish minority in Greece’s Western Thrace region.Ankara has called on Greece to recognize the community’s Turkish identity, allow the election of Muslim religious leaders, known as muftis, and address disputes over minority schools and religious foundations.