Turkey\u2019s Armenian community is facing difficulties in electing an administrative board for the \u00dc\u00e7 Horan Armenian Church Foundation, with some claiming society officials are guilty of discrimination.<\/p>\n
\u201cArmenians from [the Central Anatolian province of] Sivas are dominant in the administrative board, and they do not want Armenians from [the Southeast Anatolian province of \u015e\u0131rnak] and [the Black Sea province of] Sinop to have any influence whatsoever in the community foundations. They call them Kurds. Such discrimination is unacceptable in a 50,000-person community,\u201d \u00dc\u00e7 Horan Foundation chairman candidate Efrim Ba\u011f told the H\u00fcrriyet Daily News & Economic Review.<\/p>\n
Sarkis Elbe, a prominent member of the Armenian community in Turkey, said the election process has been \u201cpainful,\u201d adding that the elections should be open to all members of the Armenian community in Istanbul to prevent problems in future elections.<\/p>\n
Misak Hergel, president of the Istanbul-based Vak\u0131fl\u0131k\u00f6y Armenians Association, also believes that the elections should be open to public. \u201cA general election should be held not only for Beyo\u011flu but all foundations,\u201d said Hergel. \u201cMany foundations do not have a congregation and the current election process is not fair.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Turkish-Armenian community owns 42 foundations, all of them based in Istanbul. \u00dc\u00e7 Horan has the largest amount of revenue among them.<\/p>\n
In May 2009 the foundation applied to the General Directorate of Foundations to elect their administrative board. Some, however, said after the polls that the administrative board had conducted an unlawful election for its own ends. The election was canceled and the issue was taken to court.<\/p>\n
The General Directorate of Foundations demanded a new election, which was scheduled for Nov. 21 of this year. However, the same administrative board was found to have unlawfully prepared an election list and the election was postponed again, this time until February.<\/p>\n
The Turkish Armenian community in Istanbul wants the board elections to be open to participation by all members of the community. According to the community\u2019s attorneys, there is no legal impediment to that in the Turkish law for foundations.<\/p>\n
Ba\u011f further said the patriarch\u2019s word used to be considered a holy\u00a0order, but the lack of a proper patriarch at the moment has complicated the community\u2019s internal affairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe deputy patriarch invited all the parties to the Patriarchate to discuss the issue, but nobody went. This is openly denying the Patriarchate and its status,\u201d Ba\u011f said.<\/p>\n
Turkish Armenian Patriarch Mesrop II has developed frontal dementia, preventing him from fulfilling his duties. Following intervention by the Turkish Interior Ministry, Archbishop Aram Ate\u015fyan was appointed deputy patriarch.<\/p>\n
Because the current patriarch is still alive, a new patriarch cannot be elected, according to the canon of the Armenian Apostolic Church.<\/p>\n
The H\u00fcrriyet Daily News & Economic Review called the foundation board to ask for comment about the claims, but the board refused to answer its questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey\u2019s Armenian community is facing difficulties in electing an administrative board for the \u00dc\u00e7 Horan Armenian Church Foundation, with some claiming society officials are guilty of discrimination. \u201cArmenians from [the Central Anatolian province of] Sivas are dominant in the administrative board, and they do not want Armenians from [the Southeast Anatolian province of \u015e\u0131rnak] and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[4326,4247,4325],"class_list":["post-25835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","tag-armenian-church","tag-armenian-community","tag-armenians-in-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}