{"id":69141,"date":"2013-04-05T11:50:55","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T08:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=69141"},"modified":"2014-01-08T02:28:37","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T00:28:37","slug":"turkeys-non-muslims-expect-more-than-mere-calls-of-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/04\/05\/turkeys-non-muslims-expect-more-than-mere-calls-of-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey’s non-Muslims expect more than mere calls of return"},"content":{"rendered":"
Laki Vingas (Photo: Sunday\u2019s Zaman, K\u00fcr\u015fat Bayhan)<\/div>\n
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24 March 2013 \/YONCA POYRAZ DO\u011eAN, \u0130STANBUL<\/div>\n
Nikolaos Uzuno\u011flu 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.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The Uzuno\u011flu 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you’d asked me five years ago about this possibility, I’d say no. But it seems more likely now,\u201d said Uzuno\u011flu, a university professor in Athens.<\/p>\n

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 \u0130stanbul.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 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,\u201d he added in reference to Turkish officials’ calls on minorities who left Turkey in the past due to mistreatment to return to the country.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of March, Deputy Prime Minister B\u00fclent Ar\u0131n\u00e7, 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.<\/p>\n

Then recently, Culture and Tourism Minister \u00d6mer \u00c7elik made statements in Moscow during an official visit where he also called on Christians and Jews who had to leave Turkey to return. \u201cWe tell them all, come back to your country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In contact with various ministries in Ankara, Uzuno\u011flu’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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope that we are moving toward a solution,\u201d Uzuno\u011flu said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose calls are important and they are coming from important ministers. However, just mere calls are not enough,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d Vingas said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But Vingas said that even if Halki is reopened, there are still other issues. He also pointed out the sociological factors. \u201cCommunities 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 Atat\u00fcrk, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u0130stanbul.<\/p>\n

Hayko Ba\u011fdat, a civil society activist and a Turkish citizen from an ethnic Armenian background, said the officials deserve praise for their calls to minorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose 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,\u201d Ba\u011fdat said.<\/p>\n

Ba\u011fdat also mentioned the climate of unease among the Armenian community, giving the example of the murder of Sevag Bal\u0131k\u00e7\u0131, 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. Bal\u0131k\u00e7\u0131 was shot dead on April 24, 2011 — the date the Armenian diaspora has chosen to commemorate the incidents of 1915.<\/p>\n

Complaining about growing anti-Semitism in Turkey, particularly in the media, \u0130vo Molinas, the editor-in-chief of the \u015ealom newspaper, a daily published by Turkey’s Jewish community, suggested a need to erase fears of discrimination.<\/p>\n

\u201cJewish 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn 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,\u201d said Tuma \u00c7elik, editor-in-chief of Sabro, the first newspaper representing the Syriac community in Turkey.<\/p>\n

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, \u00c7elik 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is such a plan, how can it be possible that the government is planning to lease our own property to us?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

In the last 10 years, about 60 Syriac families returned to live in Turkey, \u00c7elik said, and he is among them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d he said, adding that there are approximately 300,000 Syriacs of Turkish origin currently living in Europe.<\/p>\n

According to sociologist Ayhan Aktar, who specializes on minority issues, Turkish officials’ calls to return are \u201csympathetic but empty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laki Vingas (Photo: Sunday\u2019s Zaman, K\u00fcr\u015fat Bayhan) 24 March 2013 \/YONCA POYRAZ DO\u011eAN, \u0130STANBUL Nikolaos Uzuno\u011flu 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 Uzuno\u011flu family, originally from Cappadocia, then started living in Greece. He is now making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":69142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[4808,8989],"class_list":["post-69141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-minorities","tag-non-muslims"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69141","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=69141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}