![\"Civilian](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/turkish-armenian-community-suing-turkey-for-belated-patriarch-election-2010-12-01_l.jpg\" "\\"Civilian")
Civilian representatives of the Armenian community have formed an initiative to lobby for their right to select their own patriarch. DAILY NEWS photo, Hasan ALTINI\u015eIK<\/p>\n
The Turkish Armenian community has filled two lawsuits against the Turkish government, including one to get permission to go ahead with a long-delayed election to select their own new patriarch.<\/p>\n
\u201cA committee composed of civilian representatives from the community filed two lawsuits,\u201d the community\u2019s attorney Sebuh Aslangil told the H\u00fcrriyet Daily News & Economic Review. \u201cThe first one is to make the government allow an election for a patriarch to take place, and the second is for canceling the substitute patriarch\u2019s post.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aslangil told the Daily News that such a post does not exist in the rules of the Armenian Apostolic Church.<\/p>\n
Civilian representatives of the community, who have formed an initiative to lobby for their rights to select their own patriarch, meanwhile held a meeting Wednesday in Istanbul. The initiative previously organized a petition campaign that gathered 6,000 signatures from Armenians in Istanbul demanding that the election be allowed to take place.<\/p>\n
Previous patriarch Mesrop II stepped down due to dementia. After his resignation, the Armenian community applied to the Interior Ministry; the first was made by the patriarchate\u2019s spiritual committee to elect a co-patriarch and the second was made by the civilian committee to elect a new patriarch.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Daily News, initiative spokesman Garo Paylan said the fact that there were two applications posed a problem, but that this should \u201cnot get the Interior Ministry off the hook for what they have done.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the ministry invented the post of \u201csubstitute patriarch\u201d in order to see the person they wanted installed in the patriarch\u2019s place.\u00a0\u201cThe Turkish state needs to give the Armenian community what they are entitled to and should not impede the election process,\u201d Paylan said. \u201cIt is our most deserved right to be able to elect our patriarch. In no time in history has the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul been persecuted to this extent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Secret meeting at the palace<\/p>\n
In November, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan held a secret meeting with Archbishop Aram Ate\u015fyan and a few prominent businessmen from the Armenian community. The participants made no statement about what was discussed at the meeting.<\/p>\n
In subsequent months, Ate\u015fyan was assigned as substitute patriarch through the intervention of the Interior Ministry.<\/p>\n
According to Paylan, some prominent people from the community had an interesting meeting with Interior Minister Be\u015fir Atalay last week. \u201cAtalay told us he was given information by Ate\u015fyan concerning the election procedure,\u201d the spokesman said. \u201cWe do not know what is happening behind closed doors, but we know there is a post that has been left unfilled for three years and that is the post of the community\u2019s spiritual leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paylan said the election must take place as soon as possible and that it does not matter whether it selects a co-patriarch or a new patriarch.<\/p>\n
\u201cAte\u015fyan imitates the Turkish government\u2019s official discourse wherever he goes and says we have no problems with the Turkish state,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want someone who is not afraid to speak his mind and who could represent our community in a way that is true to reality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VERC\u0130HAN Z\u0130FL\u0130O\u011eLU ISTANBUL – H\u00fcrriyet Daily News Civilian representatives of the Armenian community have formed an initiative to lobby for their right to select their own patriarch. DAILY NEWS photo, Hasan ALTINI\u015eIK The Turkish Armenian community has filled two lawsuits against the Turkish government, including one to get permission to go ahead with a long-delayed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":27608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[4325,4660],"class_list":["post-27606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-armenians-in-turkey","tag-turkish-armenian-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27606","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=27606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}