ARMENIAN ASSEMBLY STATEMENT ON TURKISH GOVERNMENT’S ANNOUNCEMENT TO RETURN CONFISCATED MINORITY PROPERTIES
AZG DAILY
03-09-2011
The Turkish government’s announcement of its decision to abide
by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights to return
long-ago confiscated properties of minorities comes as a step in the
right direction. While it remains to be seen how the government will
implement this new measure, the policy holds the promise of restoring
the rule of law for minorities long discriminated against in Turkey.
The announcement comes in the wake of a series of developments in
Turkey resulting in increasing civilian oversight of several branches
of the Turkish government previously controlled by the military. Some
of these reforms stem from Turkey’s aspirations for membership in
the European Union.
However, with the increasingly Islamist policies of Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party and a recent
turnabout for the worse in its relations with the Kurdish population
in Turkey, we hope the timing is not just another effort to burnish
the government’s image as a reform-minded administration.
The timing of Erdogan’s new policy on minority properties also
coincides with the fact that the Turkish Parliament failed to act on
the Armenia-Turkey protocols to establish diplomatic relations and
open the border, despite its international commitments to do so.
Turkey’s failure to enact the protocols reflects a continued pattern
of nonperformance, including its existing obligations under the
Treaties of Kars and Moscow guaranteeing Armenia access to the Black
Sea. Instead, Turkey, in solidarity with Azerbaijan, maintains its
illegal blockade of Armenia and seeks to isolate Armenia and Nagorno
Karabakh.
As far as the Armenian minority in Turkey is concerned – after a
century of violent persecution, official discrimination, and public
racism – the decree to return some of the confiscated properties is a
welcomed development, but cannot begin to redress the magnitude of the
damage inflicted. This indirect admission that Turkey discriminated
against minorities for over three quarters of a century does nothing
to reverse the lasting consequences of the Armenian Genocide. Turkey
has shown no evidence that it is prepared to deal with the legacy of
the Armenian Genocide.
Designed to undermine the remaining minority institutions in Turkey,
the confiscation of properties mostly deeded to minority endowment
dates to the 1930s when Turkey ramped up its discriminatory practices
under the influence of Nazi racial policies. These practices of the
Kemalist regime followed upon the earlier policies of the Young Turk
Committee responsible for the Armenian Genocide and continued with
punishing taxation policies specifically targeting the Armenian,
Jewish, and Greek minorities remaining in Turkey.
Turkey never redressed the result of its official policies dating from
that era. Instead, it sustained pressure on minority communities by
continuously denying or depriving community-based institutions and
endowments that support schools and churches from legally registering
the donation of properties. The policy, as a result, succeeded
in reducing the presence of minority groups to a mere fraction of
their former numbers. In a country with a population of 78 million,
the total minority presence of Christians and Jews in Turkey numbers
less than 100,000.
The decree also does nothing to protect the Armenian architectural
heritage in Turkey represented in countless monuments, many
of a religious nature, that have been subjected to vandalism,
deliberate neglect, if not outright destruction. The sorry state of
the antiquities in the historic city of Ani that sits astride the
border with the Republic of Armenia remains a constant testament
to offenses committed in denying the Armenian Genocide as Turkish
officials continue to drag their feet about salvaging what little
remains of the medieval capital city.
After 75 years, the announcement demonstrates the need for Congress
to adopt the Royce-Berman legislation calling for the safeguarding
of the Christian heritage in Turkey. It was precisely these issues
that noted Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink raised publicly
for the first time in Turkey, and as it turned out tragically, at
the cost of his life. Much more can and should be done to address
the concerns of minorities in Turkey.