Tag: minorities

  • Could Turkey’s Christians Wear Police Uniforms?

    Could Turkey’s Christians Wear Police Uniforms?

    Even though no such rule exists on the books, it so happens that not even one single non-Muslim army officer, policeman or judge exists in Turkey. Non-Muslims are absent not only from the security and judiciary establishment but from the public sector altogether. Why? Is it because of their small numbers?

    Turkey’s non-Muslim population today is estimated at about 100,000. According to figures by the London-based Minority Rights Group International, it includes 23,000 Jews, 3,000 Greeks, 60,000 Armenians and 15,000 Syriacs. In addition, there are Turkish converts to Protestant Christianity, estimated to number between 3,000 and 5,000.

    Could it be a coincidence that none of those 100,000-plus people are public servants? In an Aug. 8 article for Al-Monitor, I wrote about how non-Muslims are marked with secret codes in the birth registers. This practice became public knowledge by mere chance earlier this year when a woman, who applied to enroll her child in an Armenian school, received a reply from the Education Ministry which revealed that birth registration offices have been using ancestry codes to secretly mark citizens of Greek, Armenian, Jewish and Syriac origin.

    In any other country, such revelation would have sparked a huge outcry and long occupied the public agenda, but in Turkey it merited only short-lived media coverage before being forgotten. The coding practice, in fact, provides an indirect explanation of why non-Muslims fail to become public servants in Turkey, since birth registration offices appear to keep records of ethnic and religious origins even after people change names or convert, almost like a permanent “criminal record.” The practice suggests that whenever a non-Muslim applies to become a police or army officer, the “secret” information in birth registries instantly flows to the related institutions.

    The veto that non-Muslims face in the public sector came under the spotlight again this week through an intriguing incident. The spiritual leader of Turkey’s Syriacs, acting Patriarch Yusuf Cetin, gave an interview to the Milliyet daily, in which he questioned why “people of other faiths are not assigned posts in public administration, the military and the police.”

    The directorate-general of police responded in a message on its official Twitter feed: “Mr. Yusuf Cetin, the Istanbul Metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox Church, has made remarks asking why Syriac citizens are absent from the police department. All citizens of the Turkish Republic, regardless of religion, race and sect, are able to become police officers. We invite our Syriac citizens, too, to enter the exams of the police department and become police officers.”

    The Hurriyet Daily News reported that representatives of Turkey’s non-Muslim communities greeted the message with skepticism. They stressed that the problem cannot be resolved with just an appeal and that the discrimination non-Muslims face in the public sector under unwritten rules cannot be eradicated overnight.

    In a comprehensive article on the police department’s tweet, Armenian columnist Aris Nalci explained why the appeal was not as easy to heed as the police suggested it might be. The article, published on the T24 news website, drew attention to the “police oath” that officers are required to take before assuming duty. The text includes lines in which officers swear “to adhere faithfully to Turkish nationalism” and to “endorse” and “work for” the values of “the Turkish nation.”

    The oath, as Nalci points out, clearly shuts out those of non-Turkish ethnicity. In another intriguing paragraph, Nalci recounted his own experience when he dreamed of becoming an army officer and attempted to enroll in a military academy after high school.

    “It was 1997. I faint-heartedly telephoned the Air Force Academy. After the greeting, I asked about the enrollment procedure. They eagerly put me through to the enrollment officer — it seems not many people were calling that year. The first thing the clerk — or whoever he was — asked, was my name. It took him about five minutes to decipher my name and then the line went dead. I had already been nervous about whether I was being monitored. So I did not call back. But now when I remember that day, I believe he definitely hung up because of my name. … ‘Hi! I want to be a pilot. My name is Aris,’” Nalci wrote.

    I agree with Aris that the line went dead because his name indicated he was an Armenian. Set aside becoming army officers; we all know the many troubles and rampant discrimination that non-Muslims go through even when they do their military service, compulsory for all male citizens of the Turkish Republic.

    True, the police department’s public appeal on non-Muslims to apply is an encouraging sign. But a whole lot of far-reaching measures are needed to eradicate the discrimination religious minorities suffer and the policy to bar them from public service. First and foremost, the removal of ancestry codes from birth registers.

    Nonetheless, the police department’s statement inspires hope, even if a thin one. Who knows, maybe we will see Turkey’s Christians and Jews in uniform one day.

    By Orhan Kemal Cengiz

    AL Monitor

    via Could Turkey’s Christians Wear Police Uniforms?.

  • Turkey’s non-Muslims expect more than mere calls of return

    Turkey’s non-Muslims expect more than mere calls of return

    Laki Vingas (Photo: Sunday’s Zaman, Kürşat Bayhan)
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    24 March 2013 /YONCA POYRAZ DOĞAN, İSTANBUL
    Nikolaos Uzunoğlu and his family had to leave Turkey in 1974 in an environment of economic and political turmoil in which most non-Muslim communities faced injustices.

    The Uzunoğlu family, originally from Cappadocia, then started living in Greece. He is now making trips back to Turkey in hopes of finding homes for his fellow Greeks in the country that they had to leave in the past under bitter circumstances.

    “If you’d asked me five years ago about this possibility, I’d say no. But it seems more likely now,” said Uzunoğlu, a university professor in Athens.

    Now 62, he has been heading an organization, the Ecumenical Federation of Constantinopolitans, which is an umbrella body for 26 local associations of Greeks who were forced to leave their homes in İstanbul.

    “If the authorities are not just making gestures and if there are incentives to come back, there are Greeks who would like to move to Turkey,” he added in reference to Turkish officials’ calls on minorities who left Turkey in the past due to mistreatment to return to the country.

    At the beginning of March, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, in remarks made at a conference organized by the Institute of International and Intercultural Dialogue in the German Bundestag, recalled his government’s record of improving the lives of minorities in Turkey by expanding their rights. He also called on minorities to come back to the country.

    Then recently, Culture and Tourism Minister Ömer Çelik made statements in Moscow during an official visit where he also called on Christians and Jews who had to leave Turkey to return. “We tell them all, come back to your country,” he said.

    In contact with various ministries in Ankara, Uzunoğlu’s organization presented in September of last year a number of suggestions to Turkish officials to ease such returns. Those suggestions include granting quick Turkish citizenship to people who would like to come back, giving them orientation classes in order to help them open up small businesses and learn Turkish, providing them with easy credit and even opening research centers in Greek schools in Turkey with the contribution of well-known Greek professors.

    “We hope that we are moving toward a solution,” Uzunoğlu said. “The number of people who would like to return from Greece to Turkey will probably be quite small in the beginning but the important thing is that there should be an environment of peace; no more threats in Turkey. Then more people might be willing to come later.”

    Laki Vingas, the elected representative of non-Muslim foundations at the Council of the General Assembly of the Directorate General for Foundations (VGM), said the calls by Turkish officials are not coincidental but they are not enough.

    “Those calls are important and they are coming from important ministers. However, just mere calls are not enough,” he said, pointing out that there are still problems concerning non-Muslim minorities currently living in Turkey and most of this is due to the slow pace of bureaucracy.

    “The Syriac community has problems; their villages are now Kurdish villages. The Armenians have problems. The Greeks still have unsolved inheritance problems, problems related to their schools. The past injustices inflicted on minorities in Turkey are not only restricted to ethnic Greeks,” Vingas said.

    There is also the problem related to the Halki Seminary, which has been kept closed by the government since 1971. Without it, there are insufficient members of the clergy to hold religious masses.

    But Vingas said that even if Halki is reopened, there are still other issues. He also pointed out the sociological factors. “Communities should not feel like they are being pitted against each other. The injustices inflicted on minorities should be carefully explained to the people of the country,” he said.

    Large numbers of non-Muslims left their homelands in Anatolia starting from the upheaval of World War I and the ensuing Turkish War of Independence. In 1915 hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in the Ottoman Empire. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne gave Turkish minorities special education and property rights but various laws later passed discriminated against them.

    Then there were the unfortunate events of Sept. 6-7, 1955, which started after a newspaper headline said that the home of the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in Greece had been bombed by Greek militants. Fired up by the media, mobs killed and harassed non-Muslims and non-Turkish minorities in a massive campaign.

    Under a high court ruling in 1974, non-Muslim foundations lost thousands of properties. The laws on foundations have been altered several times, with new amendments following each other. In a more recent move, the government issued a decree to return properties confiscated from religious minorities since 1936, and in cases where the property belonging to such organizations had been sold by the state to third parties, the religious foundation would be paid the market value of the property by the Ministry of Finance. The process of return is ongoing.

    Non-Muslims now make up just a fraction of Turkey’s population of 75 million people. The number of Turkish citizens of Jewish and Syriac origin has been estimated to be around 20,000 each, while this number is around 2,500 for Turkish citizens of Greek origin. The Turkish-Armenian community is the largest of the minority groups in Turkey with a population of approximately 60,000, mostly in İstanbul.

    Hayko Bağdat, a civil society activist and a Turkish citizen from an ethnic Armenian background, said the officials deserve praise for their calls to minorities.

    “Those calls are very valuable. Now they need to be supported by action. For example, the Armenians of Syria can be given Turkish citizenship; after all, they are our own diaspora,” Bağdat said.

    Bağdat also mentioned the climate of unease among the Armenian community, giving the example of the murder of Sevag Balıkçı, a young man of Armenian descent who was killed while serving in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) as a conscripted private. His death was initially believed to be an accident but was likely the result of a hate crime. Balıkçı was shot dead on April 24, 2011 — the date the Armenian diaspora has chosen to commemorate the incidents of 1915.

    Complaining about growing anti-Semitism in Turkey, particularly in the media, İvo Molinas, the editor-in-chief of the Şalom newspaper, a daily published by Turkey’s Jewish community, suggested a need to erase fears of discrimination.

    “Jewish people of Turkey who live in Israel still speak Turkish and watch Turkish television. They still remember the smell of the Bosporus. We needed all these calls of return; this is very positive. If anti-Semitism simmers down, then returns can become a possibility,” he said.

    Non-Muslims are also weary of conflicting practices, one such example being the Mor Gabriel Monastery. Last year, the Supreme Court of Appeals threw out a petition by the monastery to re-examine a decision handed down by one of its chambers, which had ruled that the monastery was occupying state land even though it has been paying taxes on that land for decades. The ruling had come following a conflict that began in 2008 between the monastery and its surrounding villages. Many international organizations, including the EU, have expressed concern over the situation.

    “On one hand, there are calls of return, but on the other, the procedures tell us the opposite. Mor Gabriel is just the tip of the iceberg for the Syriac community. We have no recognition, no recognized legal rights,” said Tuma Çelik, editor-in-chief of Sabro, the first newspaper representing the Syriac community in Turkey.

    In regards to recent news reports that the government is currently trying to find a solution for the Mor Gabriel Monastery, which was seized from Mardin’s Syriac community in 2005, Çelik said they are unaware of such an effort, which might be about plans to temporarily return the monastery and its land on a lease plan.

    “If there is such a plan, how can it be possible that the government is planning to lease our own property to us?” he asked.

    In the last 10 years, about 60 Syriac families returned to live in Turkey, Çelik said, and he is among them.

    “It was not easy for us to leave our established lives. We came back to our own country where we have many problems. We are not regretful at all. We knew that we would face some problems, but not this many,” he said, adding that there are approximately 300,000 Syriacs of Turkish origin currently living in Europe.

    According to sociologist Ayhan Aktar, who specializes on minority issues, Turkish officials’ calls to return are “sympathetic but empty.”

    “What needs to be done is to pass a law and grant Turkish citizenship to non-Muslim minorities who had to leave Turkey for any reason. They should be granted dual citizenship to start with. And economic incentives should follow. The government is preoccupied with the process of making peace with Kurds at the moment. Maybe the government will have time for this issue as well.”

  • Turkey May Be More Tolerant of Some Non-Muslim Minorities Than Muslim Minorities

    Turkey May Be More Tolerant of Some Non-Muslim Minorities Than Muslim Minorities

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    Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

    The Greek Orthodox Halki Seminary on the island of Heybeliada on the Marmara Sea near Istanbul.

    ISTANBUL — The Princes’ Islands are a chain of volcanic droplets off the coast of Istanbul, famous for their grand Palladian-style wooden summer homes and sweet-smelling pine woods. From one of the hilltops of the second-largest, Heybeliada, “the saddle-bagged” island, the view across the water is of a metropolis in motion, growing higher and wider, eating into more and more green space every year. But on Heybeliada itself, the only distractions are the squawk of seagulls and the clip-clop of horse-drawn carriages (no cars allowed). There, it is easy to imagine that time has stood still.

    In a way, history has indeed been frozen on Heybeliada since 1971. This was the year when the Turkish government imposed a form of martial law and shut down educational institutions not under state control. The hilltop seminary, the Holy Theological School of Halki, which had since the mid-19th century trained generation after generation of Greek Orthodox priests, was closed. Later, some of its land was confiscated.

    The rest of Turkey has changed a lot in the intervening years. In 1999, twin earthquakes on either side of the Aegean Sea produced a rapprochement between Turks and Greeks, and much longstanding bitterness — the result of earlier conflicts in the Aegean and in Cyprus — dissipated.

    Turkey no longer argues that it should limit the rights of Turkish citizens who are Greek Orthodox, tit-for-tat, because the Greek government does the same. In any event, Athens has ceded far more rights to the Turkish Muslims of Thrace, lifting restrictions on the sale and repair of property.

    But the Halki seminary remains closed.

    Meanwhile, the die-hard, anti-Greek stance of Turkish officialdom has softened. Turkish courts have started returning land that had been seized — illegally, they say — from non-Muslim religious foundations, including land around the Halki seminary and the Greek Orthodox orphanage on the hilltop of the next island.

    The Turkish government itself seems eager to improve relations with the 3,000 Greek Orthodox and other non-Muslims who live in Turkey and their powerful lobbyists abroad. The Turkish foreign minister and minister of education say that Halki should reopen; the United States and the European Commission regularly push for the same.

    And yet the Halki seminary remains closed.

    Why? I think the explanation has nothing to do with vestigial resentment between Turks and Greeks and everything to do with the government’s care not to alienate mainstream Islam.

    The problem with reopening the Halki seminary is that if Greek Orthodox priests are allowed to be trained there again, in an institution outside the state’s control, the Turkish government could come under pressure to extend that right to Muslims.

    The current government very much represents the Sunni mainstream. Last week Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that the halls where Alevis — Turkey’s Shiites and 15 percent of the population — congregate are mere cultural centers, not places of worship.

    The implication is that real Muslims pray in mosques and under the government’s watchful eyes, like those of the powerful and well-funded Presidency of Religious Affairs, which licenses after-school Koranic courses, administers Turkey’s quota for sending pilgrims on the hajj and pays the clerics who prepare the weekly sermon.

    Turkey, formally a secular democracy, may want to become more liberal toward its religious minorities, but not at the risk of tolerating more diversity within the Muslim mainstream.

    And so the Halki seminary remains closed.

    Andrew Finkel has been a foreign correspondent in Istanbul for over 20 years, as well as a columnist for Turkish-language newspapers. He is the author of the book “Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

    via Turkey May Be More Tolerant of Some Non-Muslim Minorities Than Muslim Minorities – NYTimes.com.

  • Feast of St Paul in Istanbul

    Feast of St Paul in Istanbul

    The Catholic Bishop in Istanbul, Mgr Louis Pelatre, with Malta’s Consul General in Istanbul Reuben Gauci.

    The Consulate General of Malta in Istanbul celebrated the feast of St Paul’s Shipwreck on February 10 at the Franciscan Catholic church of St Anthony of Padua, located in Istiklal Caddesi, a famous avenue in the city of Istanbul.

    Consul General of Malta in Istanbul Reuben Gauci, accompanied by his family, attended Mass at St Anthony of Padua church, which was celebrated by the Catholic Bishop of Istanbul, Mgr Louis Pelatre.

    Mass was also attended by Maltese citizens and people of Maltese descent living in Turkey. A delegation from the AK Party, currently in government in Turkey, was also present.

    After Mass, Mr Gauci invited Beyoglu mayor Ahmet Misbah Demircan to open an exhibition on the veneration of St Paul in Malta. Mr Gauci said St Paul was born in the city of Tarsus, which today can be found in the Turkish Republic. He added that in Malta St Paul was regarded as a spiritual father of faith and that his shipwreck was celebrated with great piety.

    The director of the Franciscan Catholic church of St Anthony, Fr Iulian Pista, OFM Conv., was also among the guests.

    The exhibition will remain open for the next two weeks.

    via Feast of St Paul in Istanbul – timesofmalta.com.

  • Turkey Opposes Letting Greece Name Imams

    Turkey Opposes Letting Greece Name Imams

    Turkish officials have slammed legislation that will enable Greek authorities to appoint imams at state schools and mosques in Western Thrace.

    Turkish_schoolsThe amendment voted this week, which will allow religious teachers to teach the Quran, is expected to curb the influence of the Turkish Consulate, which has funded imams and the Quran teaching centers.

    “Greece has disregarded the legitimate demands of the Turkish minority in Western Thrace, taking an overbearing stance,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Athens only recognizes a Muslim minority.

    Foreign Ministry spokesman Grigoris Delavekouras rejected the allegations, saying the move is part of Greek efforts to improve the minority’s religious and cultural status.

    Tensions remain in Greece among the Muslim community which has been pressing the government to build them an official mosque instead of forcing them to worship in makeshift halls and basements.

    via Turkey Opposes Letting Greece Name Imams | Greece.GreekReporter.com Latest News from Greece.

  • Non-Muslims want equal funeral rights in Turkey

    Non-Muslims want equal funeral rights in Turkey

    Non-Muslims want equal funeral rights in Turkey

    ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

    The members of minority communities in Turkey demand contribution of municipalities to their funerals, similar to the sevices given to Muslim majority

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    This file photo shows the funeral of an Armenian-Turkish professor in Istanbul. Turkey’s non-Muslims are experiencing hard times over funeral services. AA photo

    Vercihan Ziflioğlu Vercihan Ziflioğlu vercihan.ziflioglu@hurriyet.com.tr

    Non-Muslim communities in Turkey have asked for municipal and state services at their funerals similar to the services given to the country’s Muslim citizens.

    Municipalities do not provide non-Muslim citizens with free services such as allocation of a funeral car. A graveyard plot costs little money for Muslims in municipal facilities, whereas a plot in minority graveyards that have limited spaces may cost a fortune.

    Speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News, authorities from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Cemeteries Directorate said even though they knew the cost of graves and funeral ceremonies for non-Muslim citizens is very high, they did not intervene. “[Non-Muslims] can afford organizing funerals in accordance with their religions and traditions. We do not interfere with them since we are not used to their traditions and ceremonies. Only if they prove their conversion to Islam with witnesses can we hold their funerals,” an official from the directorate said.

    Equal citizenship

    Burgazada Hagia Yanni and Samatya Hagia Nikola Greek Church Foundation head Andon Parisyanos said the Directorate of Religious Affairs must allocate funds to non-Muslim populations as a requirement of equal citizenship.

    “Forget about funerals, we even pay the utility bills for the churches by our own means. However, the Directorate of Religious Affairs meets the expenses of mosques,” Parisyanos said, adding that funeral organization companies should also be supervised.

    “Aid should be provided [to non-Muslims], but still it would be more convenient if we organized the funerals according to our traditions,” Parisyanos said.

    “Last week, an acquaintance of mine passed away at [Istanbul’s] Medipol Hospital. [The officials at the hospital] told me that they had come across a deceased Christian for the first time and did not know what to do,” Parisyanos said.

    Likewise, Garo Paylan, who is a member of the Yeşilköy Armenian School’s Executive Board, said the requirements of equal citizenship must be implemented. “The Directorate of Religious Affairs could allocate funds, which would be conveyed to the owners of the funeral homes through the Patriarchate,” Paylan said.

    Yeznik Bahçevanoğlu, owner of an organization company that holds funerals for non-Muslims, said the cost of funerals range from 2,000 to 8,000 Turkish Liras, adding that the prices might vary and increase according to the company. When asked about pricing policies, Bahçevanoğlu said the prices were determined according to the classes of the plots.

    “There is a standard price given by the Patriarchate; however, that price increases a lot when other expenses such as obituaries and coffins are added. If the Directorate of Religious Affairs could allocate resources, the prices would not be that high,” Bahçevanoğlu said, adding that some organization companies might exploit their clients.

    Vasgen Barın, the Armenian deputy mayor of Istanbul’s Şişli district, in which non-Muslims are densely populated, said municipalities were not responsible for holding funerals.

    “Some people may want to be buried in their hometowns; when they appeal to us, we provide them a bus in order to transfer the body,” Barın said.

    January/17/2013

    via RIGHTS – Non-Muslims want equal funeral rights in Turkey.