TURKEY OVERTURNS HISTORIC RELIGIOUS PROPERTY SEIZURES
Compass Direct News
Aug 30 2011
Christian and Jewish communities to reclaim state-confiscated
properties.
ISTANBUL, August 30 (CDN) – The Turkish government made a historic
U-turn in state policy this past weekend, issuing an official decree
inviting Turkey’s Christian and Jewish communities to reclaim their
long-confiscated religious properties.
Saturday’s (Aug. 27) decree comes 75 years after the Turkish government
seized hundreds of lands and buildings owned by its Greek, Armenian,
Syriac and Jewish communities.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the surprise
decision on Sunday evening (Aug. 28) in Istanbul, addressing a large
gathering of Istanbul’s non-Muslim religious leaders representing
161 minority foundations. Invited as the honored guest for an iftar
(breaking the fast) meal near the end of the Muslim month of Ramadan,
Erdogan declared, “The times when citizens in our country were
oppressed for their beliefs, their ethnic heritage or the way they
dressed is over.”
Acknowledging past injustices inflicted on those of different faith
groups, he vowed, “Those days are over. In our country, no citizen
is superior to another.”
Seated next to the prime minister at the dinner, Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church told the press afterwards
that the new decree represented “the restoration of an injustice.”
In a deliberate clarification the next day, Turkish Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu emphasized that the government’s formal decision was
“not a gesture toward minorities, but the return of the rights of
legally equal citizens.”
The landmark decree is a significant step toward eliminating decades
of unfair practices imposed by the Turkish state against its non-Muslim
citizens.
Within hours of the surprise announcement, the boards of Turkey’s
minority religious foundations in Istanbul were scrambling to review
the status of their confiscated immovable properties. They must apply
within the next 12 months to the General Foundations Board to recover
each individual property.
Their former holdings include schools, churches, cemeteries, stores,
hospitals, orphanages, houses, apartment buildings and factories
that were seized by the Turkish state and re-registered as public or
foundation properties. A number were later sold to third parties.
Previous changes in Turkish legislation enacted in 2003 and again in
2008 took only limited steps to correct a 1936 Declaration which had
officially registered an incomplete list of minority properties. A
further ruling in 1974 had prohibited non-Muslim communities from
acquiring new property.
The new decree states that owners of properties sold by the state
to third parties will be reimbursed at market value. According to
Radikal newspaper, the Ministry of Finance will determine the amount
of compensation for property that had been sold to third parties,
who will not be required to relinquish these lands or buildings back
to their original owners.
Significant Step to EU The return of these extensive properties to
their rightful owners has been a key demand of the European Union
(EU), to which Turkey is applying for full membership.
The unexpected government decree came after rising pressures from
the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which has slapped heavy
fines on Turkey in recent years for failing to return these seized
properties to their Christian and Jewish owners. Although the ECHR
has declared the expropriations a violation of both local property
rights and international law, Turkish nationalists had for decades
blocked any legal changes.
During July, both the EU and United States congressional leaders had
upped their rhetoric regarding the long unresolved issues of religious
freedom for Turkey’s non-Muslim citizens. In a statement on July 13,
EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule cited a number of legislative
issues on religious freedom that Turkey had not yet implemented:
lack of legal personality, restrictions on the training of clergy,
compulsory Islamic education, religious affiliation on identity cards,
and property ownership.
“Missionaries are widely perceived as a threat to the integrity of
the country and to the Muslim religion,” Fule added, observing that
the dialogue launched by the Turkish authorities with non-Muslim
religious communities “has yet to produce tangible results.”
That same month, Ankara reacted strongly to a measure passed by the
Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives calling
for Turkey to “return stolen Armenian and other Christian churches
to their rightful owners.” Still pending approval by both the House
and Senate, the amendment was attached to the State Department’s
Authorization Act for 2012.
In an EU statement yesterday, Fule called the decree “positive and
conducive to the respect of freedom of religion in practice.” He
cautioned, however, that the EU Commission would “monitor closely
the implementation of the new legislation, in contact with both the
Turkish authorities and the non-Muslim religious communities.”
Ironically, the Istanbul offices of the Secretariat General for
EU Affairs are situated in a former grade school building of the
Greek Orthodox Ayios Fokas Church in Ortakoy. A case to reclaim
this property, formerly owned by the church’s Mektepler Foundation,
is still before the ECHR.
The minority properties expected to be returned in Istanbul include
more than 50 large cemeteries; several properties of the Jewish
community in Kandilli, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus; and a
number of buildings owned by both the Surp Pirgic Armenian Hospital
Foundation and the Balikli Greek Hospital Foundation.
http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/turkey/article_116880.html