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Dealing with the climate crisis, promoting religious freedom around the world, and effective and socially equitable management of the pandemic were some of the topics on the agenda of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew's meetings with US President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. The meetings took place in a very good atmosphere, while as church circles underlined, they were not ceremonial contacts, as the two meetings took place with enlarged delegations and with the participation of senior officials of the White House and the State Department.

Situation in Turkey and pressure on the Halki Theological School

From the side of the patriarchal delegation, it was stressed that the current situation with the Theological School of Halki can not continue. As it was underlined, Turkey is trying to put the issue on the basis of reciprocity with Greece and is asking for unreasonable trade-offs, which of course cannot be accepted by Athens. In this light, the patriarchal mission requested that the issue of the Halki Theological School be removed from the agenda of Greek-Turkish relations. For this reason, they called on the United States to upgrade the issue politically and take an additional step that goes beyond the level of rhetoric. As has been characteristically said, Washington must change its tactics, as its policy has not yielded any results for Halki. As for the situation in Turkey, Joe Biden expressed the feeling that President Erdogan is particularly cramped, as his country's economy is in dire straits, and appeared curious about how he would react from now on.

U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and James Lankford (R-Okla.) led Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Angus King (I-Maine), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in a letter urging President Biden to hold Turkey’s President Erdogan accountable for his recent efforts to disenfranchise Turkey’s Kurdish population, undercut political pluralism in the country, and tighten his grip on power through anti-democratic means.