The Armenian civil servant conflict between the Patriarchy and the community

The Armenian civil servant conflict between the Patriarchy and the community

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Vercihan Ziflioğlu

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The Armenian community and its patriarchy are embroiled in a conflict over the patriarchy’s reported involvement in choosing a Turkish-born Armenian to work in the government’s EU Secretariat office. ‘The patriarchy should involve itself in matters of religion and its flock. It should avoid politics,’ says one Armenian scholar

Patriarch Mesrop II

The decision to appoint an Armenian to a civil service job looks to have created a rift rather than bring joy to Turkey’s Armenian community.

In recent months, there have been press reports that the EU General Secretariat plans to hire a civil servant of Armenian origin. The secretariat, affiliated to the office of State Minister Egemen Bağış, was to hire an expert consultant with screenings to be held by the Turkish Armenian patriarchy.

An announcement was then run on Lraper, the patriarchy’s official Internet site, indicating that Archbishop Aram Ateşyan had approved the matter. After the story appeared in the media, the secretariat immediately released a statement denying that the patriarchy was holding the screenings.
Patriarchy officials subsequently removed the announcement from the Web site despite receiving hundreds of applications. They also refused to make comments until Tuesday.

Reproachful statement from patriarchy

The primary reason behind the patriarchy’s desire to step in and conduct the screenings was to measure the candidates’ fluency in Armenian because no Turkish university has an Armenian language and literature department and instructors assigned to grammar and literature classes at Armenian schools are often limited to what they have learned from their families.

A news story by Sefa Kaplan was published on the front page of daily Hürriyet on Tuesday with the title “The first Armenian to work for the government outside a university,” putting the story on the agenda again.

According to Kaplan’s story, Leo Suren Halepli, who was born in Istanbul in 1981, passed the secretariat’s exam and is scheduled to be the first Turkish citizen of Armenian origin to become a civil servant outside an academic setting, provided he passes the security investigation by the National Intelligence Organization, or MIT.

Janet Donel from the Patriarchy said: “The screenings were started by the patriarchy two months ago, but we were excluded.”

Donel gave a vague reply to a question from the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review regarding whether the selected candidate had fit the criteria of the patriarchy. “We did not choose the mentioned candidate. That is all we can say.”

‘It is not like a priest would be hired for the patriarchy’

Pakrad Öztukyan, editor for the daily Agos and one of the community’s leading members, criticized the patriarchy’s stance. “It is not like a priest would be hired for the patriarchy and that they would get involved. It was absurd when it was announced that the patriarchy would handle the screenings two months ago because we are not an ecclesiastic community.”

Öztukyan also released background information on the events: “Bağış had visited the patriarchy and the topic came up during the conversation; that is all. Then patriarchy officials invented stories about it.”

Arsen Aşık, a retired scholar from Boğaziçi University also agreed with Öztukyan: “The patriarchy should involve itself in matters of religion and its flock. It should avoid politics.”

Criticizing the press

Aşık also criticized the stance of the Turkish media. “The story emphasizes that the candidate is to be investigated by MIT. In turn, it appears the media are trying to provoke a reaction against the candidate coming from a minority group. The matter is being presented to the public as if it is a state secret.”

Ara Koçunyan, owner of the daily Armenian newspaper of Istanbul, Jamang (Time), also made similar criticisms against the press.

“There were attempts to pull the patriarchy into the center of a polemic discussion.” However, unlike Öztukyan and Aşık, Koçunyan defended the patriarchy, saying, “Of course the patriarchy would choose the names from its community.

Koçunyan also said Halepli was one of the most likely to be selected.

What Deputy Mayor Barın says

Many people of Armenian origin were appointed to civil service positions in both the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey before 1968, after which the process was halted due to various reasons related to domestic politics.

A new process began when Vasken Barın was selected as deputy mayor of Şişli in the mid-1990s. Barın has been serving the public alongside Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül for more than 10 years.

Emphasizing the positive aspects of the developments, he said, “It is extremely positive that a young man from our community is to be assigned to such a position, but Halepli would not be the first Armenian in government service as is being said in the press.

“There were many deputies in Parliament during the Republican era, there are inspectors at the Education Ministry and there is me. If they are speaking in terms of the EU, then yes, Halepli is a first.”