Turkey’S Ugly Trap For Assyrians

Turkey’S Ugly Trap For Assyrians

By Dikran Ego

GMT 1-17-2013

Assyrian International News Agency

Stockholm (AINA) — Turkey’s permission to allow the Syrian
Orthodox community to build a church in Istanbul after 90 years of
the republican period did make a great splash in the Turkish press
recently. At first glance, this decision is seen as a positive signal
by everyone. But upon closer inspection the matter looks quite ugly
and filled with mischief.

For many years, Orthodox Assyrians (Turkish Suryani Kadim) living in
Istanbul were using other Christian communities’ churches to hold
their holy sermons. The only existing church in Tarlabasi could
understandably not accommodate the need of 17,000 people living
in the city. In recent years the Assyrians asked the authorities
to assign them a vacant lot to build a church in order to service
the parishioners.

Turkish authorities finally offered a lot of land to the administration
of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Istanbul. However, it became clear
that this land was seized by the government from the Latin Catholic
church in 1950 and is an old cemetery. The Latin Catholic church is
in a legal battle with the government to acquire its land.

The injustice done in 1950 to the Latin Catholic church is repeated
again today against the Monastery of St. Gabriel (full coverage) in Tur
Abdin, in southeasten of Turkey. Obviously, the high institutions of
the Turkish state, regardless of domestic laws and signed international
treaties, do not hesitate to confiscate minority properties based on
political expediency.

The Turkish authorities are trying to offer the usurped cemetery
of the Latin Catholic church to the Assyrians in Istanbul as if it
is state property. While the administration of the Syrian Orthodox
church expressed demonstrated some reservation about this ugly game of
the government, Assyrian intellectuals in Istanbul and Europe voiced
strong criticism.

Sait Susin, the chairman of the Syrian Orthodox Foundation in Istanbul,
stated in a recent interview with ACSA TV that the Latin Catholics are
aware of the land issue and that everything will be done with their
consent. However Nail Karatas, the Latin Catholic Church’s lawyer,
in a follow up ACSA TV interview disagreed with Sait Susin.

Karatas said that they are against a transfer of the stolen cemetery
lot to the Syrian Orthodox Church or to someone else and indicated
that the case will be handed to the judiciary.

Intellectuals within the community accuse the administration of the
Syrian Orthodox Church in Istanbul of demonstrating an unethical
approach to the subject, inconsistent with the righteous cause of St.

Gabriel, and would ultimately hurt it.

It remains to be seen how this action of the Turkish Republic, which
brings the Latin Catholic Church in opposition to the Syrian Orthodox
Church, will play out.

Dikran Ego is freelance Journalist living in Sweden; he regularly
writes on Assyrian matters and is a frequent guest commentator of
ACSA TV.

Translated from Turkish by AINA.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress