City Theaters’ ex-head castigates regulations
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - Vercihan Ziflioğlu
Ayşenil Şamlıoğlu, former general art director of the Istanbul City Theaters, says those who think differently from management have been marginalized and portrayed as people estranged from their own values and society. ‘A revolution is slowly coming to pass in every sense,’ according to Şamlıoğlu
Istanbul Municipal Theaters’ former general art director Ayşenil Şamlıoğlu has bitterly criticized the recent overhaul of the regulations governing the theaters, breaking her silence on the issue for the first time since her resignation.
“This intervention cut off not only my own oxygen line, but Turkey’s. A revolution is slowly coming to pass in every sense. A new structure synthesizing the East and the West is being woven,” Şamlıoğlu, whose career in art spans a total of 38 years, told the Hürriyet Daily News. Every field in Turkey is being subjected to a transformation, Şamlıoğlu said, adding that this process of “revolution” will ultimately reach fruition. “What kind of a Turkey will we see when this process reaches completion? It scares me,” she said.
Şamlıoğlu also denied that there was any possibility that she might resist the new changes, because she has been completely ignored. Making art under such circumstances is impossible, she said. “When I took office [as art director], I suggested a study of the regulations. It did not even make it onto anyone’s agenda. A law on the theater would have been the most ideal [option]. We are still governed by the constitution [devised by] the 1982 coup,” she said, adding that the new regulations had come about very abruptly.
Former administrators became target
The former administrators of the City Theaters became targets of the right-wing press when they instituted a minimum age of 16 to attend certain plays, according to Şamlıoğlu. “They ran headlines reading ‘Immoral plays.’ They depicted [us] as targets. There have been no explicit [scenes] on stage, no pornographic works. Our repertoire was not like that. I do not understand what they take us for. We have been accused of immorality.”
Şamlıoğlu also said those who think differently from the management are being marginalized, and they have been portrayed as people estranged from their own values and society. “Are they the sole owners of this country’s culture and values? Not us? What has carried me to the present is the strength I gather from my values.”
Previously the Finance Ministry’s approval was required for all staff recruitment at the City Theaters, but recently a change had been made requiring only the approval of the municipal council, Şamlıoğlu explained. “Just as we were thinking we would be cut some slack on many issues, [they] dropped this new [set of] regulations on us. How was I to know those who were watching us dreamed of ruling over us instead?” said Şamlıoğlu.
According to the new regulations, the general art director, the theater manager, a department head, a civil servant and three members appointed by the mayor will together constitute a literary council that will determine the plays to be staged in the City Theaters, and the general art director will stage a repertoire based on this council’s choices. Under the former regulations this council was defined solely as an advisory body to the management council.
Taking charge of archive
“If they truly want to take charge of something, then they ought to take charge of the theater’s archives. They have destroyed a 98-year-old tradition. Part of the archives was sent to SEKA [Turkey’s Cellulose and Paper Mills Inc.] while the rest was plundered and is being sold in second-hand bookstores. Even the resumés of deceased or retired artists have not been archived. Everyone in civilized countries works within their own field of expertise. That is why they are civilized.”
April/28/2012
30 Nisan 2012 Pazartesi
27 Nisan 2012 Cuma
Armenian, Turkish locals in court over land rights
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - Vercihan Ziflioğlu
An Armenian community mounts a legal battle to retrieve their land in the eastern province of Batman, saying the land was illegaly given to others. However, the new locals of the land claim they bought the land
An Armenian community that was forced to vacate their villages in the southeastern province of Batman 25 years ago due to politically motivated violence in the region has mounted a legal battle to retrieve disputed land.
“They could not retrieve their homes and land when they decided to return back. The Directorate of Land and Cadastre has forged illegal documents on behalf of those who occupied [the properties],” lawyer Şeyhmus Kabaday, who represents the villagers in court, told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Acar village headman M. Şirin Ekmen claimed otherwise, however, when speaking on the occupant villagers’ behalf.
“We, too, are in possession of documents, and we will also present them to the court. The [inhabitants of] Acar bought 1,300 acres of territory from İsa Demirci, a prominent Armenian villager, in 1986. We have the documents,” Ekmen said.
Some 3,000 acres of territory are at stake in the lawsuit filed by the villagers, who left their land and homes behind to emigrate to Istanbul in 1987 due to the regional violence spurred by clashes between government forces and militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), unsolved murders and the Kurdish issue.
“They say they have deeds, [but] the signatures are fake, and there are no originals. They are all photocopies. My clients, on the other hand, are still in possession of their title deeds, and we have presented them to court,” lawyer Kabaday said.
The next hearing is scheduled for May 4 at the cadastre court in Batman’s Sason district for the lands located in the villages of Acar, Heybetli, Balbaşı and Çağıl.
‘Rights to be retrieved’
Speaking to the Daily News, a high-ranking state offcer said beneficiaries would retrieve their rights if they filed a suit.
“[The Directorate of] Land and Cadastre entered places where it held no authority. We have been pursuing the matter for the past three years,” he said.
“If such repression existed as claimed, then these people would not have continued living here. People emigrated due to concerns about terrorism. Now we are collecting input for the archives,” he said.
Some of the Armenians who left their land currently live under Muslim identities, the official added.
The damages incurred on people who abandoned their villages due to fear of terrorism will be
compensated in accordance with Article 5233, which was legislated in 2004, if their claims can be verified, he said, adding that villagers from Acar had already appealed to them. “We are the aggrieved party. We [the inhabitants of] 38 households hit the road due to fear for our lives, and we could never return back. We want to return back to our village, but we are concerned about our security,” Osman (Hovsep) Demirci, one of the litigants, told the Daily News.
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - Vercihan Ziflioğlu
An Armenian community mounts a legal battle to retrieve their land in the eastern province of Batman, saying the land was illegaly given to others. However, the new locals of the land claim they bought the land
An Armenian community that was forced to vacate their villages in the southeastern province of Batman 25 years ago due to politically motivated violence in the region has mounted a legal battle to retrieve disputed land.
“They could not retrieve their homes and land when they decided to return back. The Directorate of Land and Cadastre has forged illegal documents on behalf of those who occupied [the properties],” lawyer Şeyhmus Kabaday, who represents the villagers in court, told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Acar village headman M. Şirin Ekmen claimed otherwise, however, when speaking on the occupant villagers’ behalf.
“We, too, are in possession of documents, and we will also present them to the court. The [inhabitants of] Acar bought 1,300 acres of territory from İsa Demirci, a prominent Armenian villager, in 1986. We have the documents,” Ekmen said.
Some 3,000 acres of territory are at stake in the lawsuit filed by the villagers, who left their land and homes behind to emigrate to Istanbul in 1987 due to the regional violence spurred by clashes between government forces and militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), unsolved murders and the Kurdish issue.
“They say they have deeds, [but] the signatures are fake, and there are no originals. They are all photocopies. My clients, on the other hand, are still in possession of their title deeds, and we have presented them to court,” lawyer Kabaday said.
The next hearing is scheduled for May 4 at the cadastre court in Batman’s Sason district for the lands located in the villages of Acar, Heybetli, Balbaşı and Çağıl.
‘Rights to be retrieved’
Speaking to the Daily News, a high-ranking state offcer said beneficiaries would retrieve their rights if they filed a suit.
“[The Directorate of] Land and Cadastre entered places where it held no authority. We have been pursuing the matter for the past three years,” he said.
“If such repression existed as claimed, then these people would not have continued living here. People emigrated due to concerns about terrorism. Now we are collecting input for the archives,” he said.
Some of the Armenians who left their land currently live under Muslim identities, the official added.
The damages incurred on people who abandoned their villages due to fear of terrorism will be
compensated in accordance with Article 5233, which was legislated in 2004, if their claims can be verified, he said, adding that villagers from Acar had already appealed to them. “We are the aggrieved party. We [the inhabitants of] 38 households hit the road due to fear for our lives, and we could never return back. We want to return back to our village, but we are concerned about our security,” Osman (Hovsep) Demirci, one of the litigants, told the Daily News.
19 Nisan 2012 Perşembe
Armenians regain historical school in Istanbul
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News / Vercihan Ziflioğlu
Turkey’s Foundations General Directorate made a landmark decision to return the Armenian Surp Haç Tıbrevank Foundation in Istanbul’s Üsküdar district back to the Armenian community yesterday.
“We managed to ensure the foundation’s return after a very long struggle. We are very happy. Tıbrevank will now freely continue where it had left off,” Laki Vingas, a council member of the Foundations Directorate General, told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Surp Haç Tıbrevank’s clerical school was shut down in 1940. It then lost its foundation status in 1985.
The Surp Haç High School’s headmaster Hayk Nişan told the Daily News the re-opening of the clerical school was not on their agenda.
“Our only goal is to educate our students as is necessary. This school faithfully abided by the [regulations] of the Education Ministry until this [day],” said Nişan.
The decision was made right after a meeting held in the Foundations General Council yesterday.
“We are grateful to our prime minister and the Foundations General Directorate for their decisions,” Nişan added.
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News / Vercihan Ziflioğlu
Turkey’s Foundations General Directorate made a landmark decision to return the Armenian Surp Haç Tıbrevank Foundation in Istanbul’s Üsküdar district back to the Armenian community yesterday.
“We managed to ensure the foundation’s return after a very long struggle. We are very happy. Tıbrevank will now freely continue where it had left off,” Laki Vingas, a council member of the Foundations Directorate General, told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Surp Haç Tıbrevank’s clerical school was shut down in 1940. It then lost its foundation status in 1985.
The Surp Haç High School’s headmaster Hayk Nişan told the Daily News the re-opening of the clerical school was not on their agenda.
“Our only goal is to educate our students as is necessary. This school faithfully abided by the [regulations] of the Education Ministry until this [day],” said Nişan.
The decision was made right after a meeting held in the Foundations General Council yesterday.
“We are grateful to our prime minister and the Foundations General Directorate for their decisions,” Nişan added.
18 Nisan 2012 Çarşamba
Catholics hopeful over meeting on constitution
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - VERCIHAN ZIFLIOĞLU
A delegation composed of Turkey’s Catholic leaders will today speak with Parliament’s Constitutional Commission to voice their demands in the new charter, including legal status for their instutitions in Turkey
A Catholic Episcopalian spokesperson has expressed hope ahead of a groundbreaking meeting between representatives of Turkey’s Catholic community and Parliament’s Constitution Commission.
“We have had problems with every government until the AKP [Justice and Development Party],” Rinaldo Marmara, the press spokesperson and cultural attaché for the Catholic Episcopalian Council of Turkey, recently told the Hürriyet Daily News. “Everything was taken away from us, but now there is a favorable attitude. I believe our problems will be resolved. We were always perceived as foreigners.
For that reason we never had the right to establish foundations like other minority communities.”
A delegation composed of Turkey’s Catholic leaders were invited to Ankara to speak with Parliament’s Constitutional Commission as part of efforts to pen a new constitution, marking a first in Turkey’s republican history. Representatives of the country’s Catholic community will request legal status for their institutions at the meeting.
“We, the Catholics living in Turkey, have an entirely foreign status. Our institutions bear no legal identity,” said Marmara, who is also a historian and the director of Caritas Turkey.
The Catholic community owns around 200 properties in Anatolia besides its estates in Istanbul, even though they hold no rights over them, Marmara said.
“We bear no legal identity or status. For that reason, our churches have been registered to clerics or the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ and the saints. When the clerics die, [ownership of] our churches can pass onto their heirs,” he said.
Marmara also said they had informed the Vatican of recent developments pertaining to their scheduled meeting with the commission and that it was very well received there. “Minority foundations were registered in a 1936 declaration, whereas we were left with a treaty signed in 1913 between Sait Halim Paşa and the Vatican [during the Ottoman period],” he added. Turkey’s minority communities handed over a declaration detailing their real properties in 1936 upon the government’s request. Over the years, however, many of these properties did not remain registered under the foundations’ names and some were even sold to third parties.
April/16/2012
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - VERCIHAN ZIFLIOĞLU
A delegation composed of Turkey’s Catholic leaders will today speak with Parliament’s Constitutional Commission to voice their demands in the new charter, including legal status for their instutitions in Turkey
A Catholic Episcopalian spokesperson has expressed hope ahead of a groundbreaking meeting between representatives of Turkey’s Catholic community and Parliament’s Constitution Commission.
“We have had problems with every government until the AKP [Justice and Development Party],” Rinaldo Marmara, the press spokesperson and cultural attaché for the Catholic Episcopalian Council of Turkey, recently told the Hürriyet Daily News. “Everything was taken away from us, but now there is a favorable attitude. I believe our problems will be resolved. We were always perceived as foreigners.
For that reason we never had the right to establish foundations like other minority communities.”
A delegation composed of Turkey’s Catholic leaders were invited to Ankara to speak with Parliament’s Constitutional Commission as part of efforts to pen a new constitution, marking a first in Turkey’s republican history. Representatives of the country’s Catholic community will request legal status for their institutions at the meeting.
“We, the Catholics living in Turkey, have an entirely foreign status. Our institutions bear no legal identity,” said Marmara, who is also a historian and the director of Caritas Turkey.
The Catholic community owns around 200 properties in Anatolia besides its estates in Istanbul, even though they hold no rights over them, Marmara said.
“We bear no legal identity or status. For that reason, our churches have been registered to clerics or the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ and the saints. When the clerics die, [ownership of] our churches can pass onto their heirs,” he said.
Marmara also said they had informed the Vatican of recent developments pertaining to their scheduled meeting with the commission and that it was very well received there. “Minority foundations were registered in a 1936 declaration, whereas we were left with a treaty signed in 1913 between Sait Halim Paşa and the Vatican [during the Ottoman period],” he added. Turkey’s minority communities handed over a declaration detailing their real properties in 1936 upon the government’s request. Over the years, however, many of these properties did not remain registered under the foundations’ names and some were even sold to third parties.
April/16/2012
Turkey's minority schools’ problems inquired
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - VERCIHAN ZIFLIOĞLU
A group of academics, spearheaded by the History Foundation, have launched an initiative to investigate the problems faced by 23 minority schools across Istanbul.
While 15 of the schools belong to the Armenian community, five are Greek and one is a Jewish school, officials said. Among the major problems are the status of guest students, the lack of class material and teachers, and regulations regarding who can attend which school.
“We want to show how [these] problems came about. They are all artificial problems that have to do with foreign politics and the [prevalent] attitude toward minorities,” legal expert Nurcan Kaya, the project’s researcher and writer, told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Rum (Anatolian Greek) schools are permitted to bring in teachers and class materials from Greece in accordance with a cultural agreement signed between Turkey and Greece, Kaya explained.
“This [arrangement,] however, turned into a means to mutually inflict cruelty on schools at various times due to the Cyprus problem in the past. There is also the problem of western Thrace,” she said.
The Jewish school, on the other hand, has the same status as Turkish Anatolian high schools and its
language of instruction is both Turkish and English, Kaya said, adding that the school offered Hebrew classes as well.
“Armenian schools have to meet all their needs by themselves, unlike the other schools. They have no departments to train Armenian language teachers and have to acquire their education material on their own,” Kaya said.
Regulations concerning private schools in Turkey and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne allow only Turkish citizens to attend minority schools. However, the clause stipulating that only children holding Turkish citizenship can attend their own minority community’s schools was recently scrapped, in new regulations that appeared in the Official Gazette on March 20. The new regulations lead to perplexity among some educators.
“It is an important step, but with no practical consequences. Children from Armenia and Greece still cannot go to school,” said Kaya.
Despite the hopes raised by the amendment to the regulations, the children of Greek citizens and illegal Armenian immigrants residing in Istanbul still have only restricted access to education in minority schools, which they can attend only as “guest students.”
April/17/2012
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - VERCIHAN ZIFLIOĞLU
A group of academics, spearheaded by the History Foundation, have launched an initiative to investigate the problems faced by 23 minority schools across Istanbul.
While 15 of the schools belong to the Armenian community, five are Greek and one is a Jewish school, officials said. Among the major problems are the status of guest students, the lack of class material and teachers, and regulations regarding who can attend which school.
“We want to show how [these] problems came about. They are all artificial problems that have to do with foreign politics and the [prevalent] attitude toward minorities,” legal expert Nurcan Kaya, the project’s researcher and writer, told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Rum (Anatolian Greek) schools are permitted to bring in teachers and class materials from Greece in accordance with a cultural agreement signed between Turkey and Greece, Kaya explained.
“This [arrangement,] however, turned into a means to mutually inflict cruelty on schools at various times due to the Cyprus problem in the past. There is also the problem of western Thrace,” she said.
The Jewish school, on the other hand, has the same status as Turkish Anatolian high schools and its
language of instruction is both Turkish and English, Kaya said, adding that the school offered Hebrew classes as well.
“Armenian schools have to meet all their needs by themselves, unlike the other schools. They have no departments to train Armenian language teachers and have to acquire their education material on their own,” Kaya said.
Regulations concerning private schools in Turkey and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne allow only Turkish citizens to attend minority schools. However, the clause stipulating that only children holding Turkish citizenship can attend their own minority community’s schools was recently scrapped, in new regulations that appeared in the Official Gazette on March 20. The new regulations lead to perplexity among some educators.
“It is an important step, but with no practical consequences. Children from Armenia and Greece still cannot go to school,” said Kaya.
Despite the hopes raised by the amendment to the regulations, the children of Greek citizens and illegal Armenian immigrants residing in Istanbul still have only restricted access to education in minority schools, which they can attend only as “guest students.”
April/17/2012
10 Nisan 2012 Salı
Turkey's missionary killings overlooked: lawyer
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News / Vercihan Ziflioğlu
The lawyer for the families of victims of the Malatya massacre, in which three Christian missionaries were killed in 2007, has expressed frustration just days before the case’s 40th hearing at judicial authorities’ inability to link a series of murders against Christians to each other.
“The massacre is directly related to Turkey’s ongoing coup plot cases,” lawyer Erdal Doğan recently said, adding that the Hrant Dink murder could have been prevented if enough interest had been shown earlier in plots against Christians.
German citizen Tillman Geske and two Turks, Necati Aydın and Uğur Yüksel, were tied up and tortured before having their throats slit at the Zirve Publishing House, a Christian publisher, in the eastern province of Malatya on April 18, 2007.
Five young men, aged 19 and 20 at the time of the killings, confessed to the murder and were arrested for the crime. However, authorities are continuing to investigate the matter, which is believed by many to be an act of the “deep state” rather than a group of independent fanatics.
“Just before the daily Agos’ editor-in-chief Hrant Dink’s assassination on Jan 19, 2007, Italian priest Andrea Santoro was murdered in Trabzon. The Zirve Publishing House massacre and the murder of Catholic Bishop Luigi Padovese in İskenderun followed those murders. Even though these were all the rings of the same chain, they were presented as individual missionary murders,” Doğan said.
“Even Hrant Dink was commonly presented to the public as the ‘son of a missionary.’ On the one hand, an anti-Christian agenda was pushed and, on the other, mitigating justification for those murders was created,” he said.
“When we expressed our opinion on this matter to the court, first they resisted joining the cases files, but then they allowed some reports to be sent to the court,” Doğan said.
Geske’s family has continued to live in Malatya since the massacre, while one of the other families has moved to the United States, Doğan said. The other family is currently in the neighboring province of Elazığ, but is having problems pursuing the lawsuit because of financial difficulties.
Doğan also said he had received a letter from a military official, which he considered a “warning” regarding his research on coup-plot cases.
April/06/2012
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News / Vercihan Ziflioğlu
The lawyer for the families of victims of the Malatya massacre, in which three Christian missionaries were killed in 2007, has expressed frustration just days before the case’s 40th hearing at judicial authorities’ inability to link a series of murders against Christians to each other.
“The massacre is directly related to Turkey’s ongoing coup plot cases,” lawyer Erdal Doğan recently said, adding that the Hrant Dink murder could have been prevented if enough interest had been shown earlier in plots against Christians.
German citizen Tillman Geske and two Turks, Necati Aydın and Uğur Yüksel, were tied up and tortured before having their throats slit at the Zirve Publishing House, a Christian publisher, in the eastern province of Malatya on April 18, 2007.
Five young men, aged 19 and 20 at the time of the killings, confessed to the murder and were arrested for the crime. However, authorities are continuing to investigate the matter, which is believed by many to be an act of the “deep state” rather than a group of independent fanatics.
“Just before the daily Agos’ editor-in-chief Hrant Dink’s assassination on Jan 19, 2007, Italian priest Andrea Santoro was murdered in Trabzon. The Zirve Publishing House massacre and the murder of Catholic Bishop Luigi Padovese in İskenderun followed those murders. Even though these were all the rings of the same chain, they were presented as individual missionary murders,” Doğan said.
“Even Hrant Dink was commonly presented to the public as the ‘son of a missionary.’ On the one hand, an anti-Christian agenda was pushed and, on the other, mitigating justification for those murders was created,” he said.
“When we expressed our opinion on this matter to the court, first they resisted joining the cases files, but then they allowed some reports to be sent to the court,” Doğan said.
Geske’s family has continued to live in Malatya since the massacre, while one of the other families has moved to the United States, Doğan said. The other family is currently in the neighboring province of Elazığ, but is having problems pursuing the lawsuit because of financial difficulties.
Doğan also said he had received a letter from a military official, which he considered a “warning” regarding his research on coup-plot cases.
April/06/2012
Christian clerics alarmed at growing threats, persecution in Turkey
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News / Vercihan Ziflioğlu
In the wake of an attack against an Istanbul Protestant Pastor, Christian Clerics in Turkey say they feel alarmed at the accelerating number of such incidents and even hesitate to open their doors to people
Christian clerics in Turkey have expressed their anxiety regarding the growing threats they face in wake of an attack against Pastor Semih Serkek of the Protestant “Lütuf” (“Grace”) Church in Istanbul’s Bahçelievler district on April 7.
“Attacks against Christian clerics drop off for a while, then they begin to re-energize. [Such attacks] have begun to accelerate again in recent days. We hesitate when opening our doors and welcoming the faithful inside,” Pastor Krikor Ağabaloğlu of the Gedikpaşa Armenian Protestant Church in Istanbul told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Attack on Easter
Three unidentified individuals attacked and beat Serkek on the night of April 7, immediately after an Easter service. “They were three people around the age of 18. They wore [prayer caps] on their heads. They forced the door open and said they were going to kill me unless I recited the ‘Kelime-i Şahadet’ [Islamic confession of faith]. I received a severe blow to my chest,” Serkek told the Daily News. The attacks were not coincidental, according to Serkek, who had also served as a mentor to the three victims slain in the Malatya Zirve Publishing House incident in eastern Turkey.
Pastor Orhan Picaklar of the Agape Protestant Church in the Black Sea province of Samsun also said he has been living with a personal escort 24 hours a day for the past four years, since a plot to assassinate him first came to light. “Police [officers] keep watch at the door during mass; the believers are afraid to enter the church due to the threat to their lives,” he said. The make-shift church, located inside an apartment building, also came under attack about a month ago, Picaklar said, adding that the congregation was chagrined at being stuck in an apartment. “[The authorities] gave the green light to the construction of a new church in 2004, within the framework of the European Union harmonization laws, although with the pre-condition that it must be no smaller than 2,500 square meters. We have no budget. We appealed to establish a church building 1,000 square meters in size, but did not receive approval for it.”
Ağabaloğlu said that in the case of his church, the state intentionally refused to grant permission
for the construction of a church building. “They are trying to stymie the spread of Christianity in this way.”
April/10/2012
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News / Vercihan Ziflioğlu
In the wake of an attack against an Istanbul Protestant Pastor, Christian Clerics in Turkey say they feel alarmed at the accelerating number of such incidents and even hesitate to open their doors to people
Christian clerics in Turkey have expressed their anxiety regarding the growing threats they face in wake of an attack against Pastor Semih Serkek of the Protestant “Lütuf” (“Grace”) Church in Istanbul’s Bahçelievler district on April 7.
“Attacks against Christian clerics drop off for a while, then they begin to re-energize. [Such attacks] have begun to accelerate again in recent days. We hesitate when opening our doors and welcoming the faithful inside,” Pastor Krikor Ağabaloğlu of the Gedikpaşa Armenian Protestant Church in Istanbul told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Attack on Easter
Three unidentified individuals attacked and beat Serkek on the night of April 7, immediately after an Easter service. “They were three people around the age of 18. They wore [prayer caps] on their heads. They forced the door open and said they were going to kill me unless I recited the ‘Kelime-i Şahadet’ [Islamic confession of faith]. I received a severe blow to my chest,” Serkek told the Daily News. The attacks were not coincidental, according to Serkek, who had also served as a mentor to the three victims slain in the Malatya Zirve Publishing House incident in eastern Turkey.
Pastor Orhan Picaklar of the Agape Protestant Church in the Black Sea province of Samsun also said he has been living with a personal escort 24 hours a day for the past four years, since a plot to assassinate him first came to light. “Police [officers] keep watch at the door during mass; the believers are afraid to enter the church due to the threat to their lives,” he said. The make-shift church, located inside an apartment building, also came under attack about a month ago, Picaklar said, adding that the congregation was chagrined at being stuck in an apartment. “[The authorities] gave the green light to the construction of a new church in 2004, within the framework of the European Union harmonization laws, although with the pre-condition that it must be no smaller than 2,500 square meters. We have no budget. We appealed to establish a church building 1,000 square meters in size, but did not receive approval for it.”
Ağabaloğlu said that in the case of his church, the state intentionally refused to grant permission
for the construction of a church building. “They are trying to stymie the spread of Christianity in this way.”
April/10/2012
4 Nisan 2012 Çarşamba
Minorities ask for regulations / Vercihan Ziflioğlu
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
Children of illegal immigrants can only attend schools under ‘guest’ status.
A series of amendments to regulations concerning private schools that were partly designed to ease problems for minority schools have instead made their predicament more complicated, according to representatives from the educational institutes.
“We are not private schools. We are not receiving any payments from students who attend our schools. We do not bear the status of a ‘kolej’ [private school]. We had requested a separate law for minority schools,” Garo Paylan, an administrator from the Yeşilköy Armenian School in Istanbul, recently told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Regulations concerning private schools in Turkey and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne allow only Turkish citizens to attend minority schools. A clause stipulating that only the children of Turkish citizens can attend their own minority community’s schools, however, was scrapped in new regulations that appeared in the Official Gazette on March 20, leading to perplexity among many educators.
The children of illegal Armenian immigrants still continue attending schools under the status of “guest students,” Paylan said, adding that nothing had changed thus far.
Some 15,000 Armenian citizens are currently residing in Turkey as illegal immigrants, according to data from the Armenian Foreign Ministry. Their children cannot attend minority schools in Turkey both due to their illegal status and the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne.
They were granted the status of “guest students” two years ago, meaning they are permitted to attend the minority schools but cannot receive any diplomas or officially enroll at the education institutions.
Students from Armenia cannot attend Rum (Anatolian Greek) schools in Istanbul because they are illegal immigrants, and the children of Greek citizens cannot attend them because they are not Turkish citizens, Mihail Vasiliadis, the chief editor of Greek-language daily Apoyevmatini, told the Daily News.
“The right to education is enshrined in international treaties. Children’s rights are universal. They ought to be under the protection of states whether they are illegal immigrants or citizens,” Vasiliadis said.
April/04/2012
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
Children of illegal immigrants can only attend schools under ‘guest’ status.
A series of amendments to regulations concerning private schools that were partly designed to ease problems for minority schools have instead made their predicament more complicated, according to representatives from the educational institutes.
“We are not private schools. We are not receiving any payments from students who attend our schools. We do not bear the status of a ‘kolej’ [private school]. We had requested a separate law for minority schools,” Garo Paylan, an administrator from the Yeşilköy Armenian School in Istanbul, recently told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Regulations concerning private schools in Turkey and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne allow only Turkish citizens to attend minority schools. A clause stipulating that only the children of Turkish citizens can attend their own minority community’s schools, however, was scrapped in new regulations that appeared in the Official Gazette on March 20, leading to perplexity among many educators.
The children of illegal Armenian immigrants still continue attending schools under the status of “guest students,” Paylan said, adding that nothing had changed thus far.
Some 15,000 Armenian citizens are currently residing in Turkey as illegal immigrants, according to data from the Armenian Foreign Ministry. Their children cannot attend minority schools in Turkey both due to their illegal status and the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne.
They were granted the status of “guest students” two years ago, meaning they are permitted to attend the minority schools but cannot receive any diplomas or officially enroll at the education institutions.
Students from Armenia cannot attend Rum (Anatolian Greek) schools in Istanbul because they are illegal immigrants, and the children of Greek citizens cannot attend them because they are not Turkish citizens, Mihail Vasiliadis, the chief editor of Greek-language daily Apoyevmatini, told the Daily News.
“The right to education is enshrined in international treaties. Children’s rights are universal. They ought to be under the protection of states whether they are illegal immigrants or citizens,” Vasiliadis said.
April/04/2012
2 Nisan 2012 Pazartesi
Cleric hopeful over reopening of Istanbul Greek Seminary
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - Vercihan Ziflioğlu
The classrooms of the Halki Greek Orthodox Seminary on Istanbul’s Heybeliada Island are being renovated with the motivation that the school will reopen soon, archpriest and Metropolitan of Bursa Elpidophoros Lambriniadis says
A recent meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and U.S. President Barack Obama in Seoul has raised hopes that the Halki Greek Orthodox Seminary on Istanbul’s Heybeliada Island may be reopened after 41years.
We have a feeling that Turkey will take steps toward [reopening] the seminary in the near [future]. We have begun preparing for this,” the Hagia Triada Monastery’s archpriest and Metropolitan of Bursa Elpidophoros Lambriniadis told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Classromms renovated
All the classrooms in the historical seminary are now being renovated one by one, and academics from Thessaloniki University are participating in the building’s renovation, Lambriniadis said.
“Prime Minister Erdoğan has demonstrated his determination on this matter through his statements. He has not said a decision has been made to reopen [the seminary, however]. I would especially like to emphasize that even when Atatürk founded the Turkish Republic, he did not close this seminary down,” Lambriniadis said, adding that the public perceived the wording used in the Seoul meeting differently.
In the event that it is reopened, the monastery will offer courses in both English and Greek, unlike in the past when Greek was the sole language of instruction. “Our primary goal is to train clerics for our own community. We are preparing to admit students from many nations,” Lambriniadis said. If the school reopens, it will also admit members of other minority communities in Turkey, according Lambriniadis. “The reopening of the seminary is more important for Turkey than it is for us. We have put up with [its being closed] for 41 years and can still go on. The state withheld from its citizens their right to education for forty years. If the seminary does not open, this will also reveal Turkey’s attitude regarding human rights,” Lambriniadis said.
The Halki Seminary has been hit hard by the political turmoil between Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. In 1971, Turkey decided to bring all private institutions of higher education under state control. The Fener Greek Patriarchate opposed the decision, in consequence of which the seminary was shut down.
April/02/2012
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - Vercihan Ziflioğlu
The classrooms of the Halki Greek Orthodox Seminary on Istanbul’s Heybeliada Island are being renovated with the motivation that the school will reopen soon, archpriest and Metropolitan of Bursa Elpidophoros Lambriniadis says
A recent meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and U.S. President Barack Obama in Seoul has raised hopes that the Halki Greek Orthodox Seminary on Istanbul’s Heybeliada Island may be reopened after 41years.
We have a feeling that Turkey will take steps toward [reopening] the seminary in the near [future]. We have begun preparing for this,” the Hagia Triada Monastery’s archpriest and Metropolitan of Bursa Elpidophoros Lambriniadis told the Hürriyet Daily News.
Classromms renovated
All the classrooms in the historical seminary are now being renovated one by one, and academics from Thessaloniki University are participating in the building’s renovation, Lambriniadis said.
“Prime Minister Erdoğan has demonstrated his determination on this matter through his statements. He has not said a decision has been made to reopen [the seminary, however]. I would especially like to emphasize that even when Atatürk founded the Turkish Republic, he did not close this seminary down,” Lambriniadis said, adding that the public perceived the wording used in the Seoul meeting differently.
In the event that it is reopened, the monastery will offer courses in both English and Greek, unlike in the past when Greek was the sole language of instruction. “Our primary goal is to train clerics for our own community. We are preparing to admit students from many nations,” Lambriniadis said. If the school reopens, it will also admit members of other minority communities in Turkey, according Lambriniadis. “The reopening of the seminary is more important for Turkey than it is for us. We have put up with [its being closed] for 41 years and can still go on. The state withheld from its citizens their right to education for forty years. If the seminary does not open, this will also reveal Turkey’s attitude regarding human rights,” Lambriniadis said.
The Halki Seminary has been hit hard by the political turmoil between Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. In 1971, Turkey decided to bring all private institutions of higher education under state control. The Fener Greek Patriarchate opposed the decision, in consequence of which the seminary was shut down.
April/02/2012
Interest drops in Turkey’s minority language courses
ISTANBUL-Hürriyet Daily News - Vercihan Ziflioğlu
Private languages courses teaching Kurdish, Armenian and Arabic in Turkey are nor attracting many students since a lot of people have lost connections to their origins and mother tongues, says one language course owner.
This file photo shows groups of students attending Anatolia Research and Culture Association, which teaches a number of languages including Armenian, Kurdish and Arabic. Altan Açıkdilli, the head of the the association says the mother tongues of Turkey’s minorities ought to be granted constitutional protection.
Private courses launched in recent years to teach Turkey’s minority languages have not attracted much attention despite the minimal fees they charge, and some believe the lack of interest in such courses has to do with Turkey’s long-lasting policies.
“Attendance rates for these courses may be low; this goes to show how far people started losing their connection with their mother tongues. Imagine a person who knows his roots are Laz (a Black Sea people,) but who does not know his identity or language. It is very difficult for this person to attempt to learn the language because this has no reciprocity in life,” Altan Açıkdilli, the head of the Anatolia Research and Culture Association (AKA-DER,) told Hürriyet Daily News.
The mother tongues of Turkey’s minorities ought to be granted constitutional protection, rather than being forced to wage individual struggles to survive, according to Açıkdilli, whose organization launched courses in Istanbul, Ankara and Antakya two years ago to teach a number of languages, including Armenian, Kurdish and Zaza, a dialect of Kurdish.
“It is possible to jumpstart the teaching of these languages through courses, but strength of will, or constitutional guarantees, in other words, will be necessary for people to follow through with it. Infrastructure is a primary condition for learning languages, but the infrastructure needed to teach and learn many such languages is lacking on this geography,” Açıkdilli said.
Joint initiative
Some 23 organizations launched a joint initiative called “The Constitution of the Peoples,” including AKA-DER, the European Syriac Union, Nor Zartonk (a civil initiative of Istanbul Armenians) and the Georgian Platform, he said, adding they had also appealed to the national government in Ankara to hold talks on the matter, but to no avail. “To gain the right to learn one’s mother tongue requires a political struggle in Turkey, and a price must be paid,” he said. “We are endeavoring to make progress in the midst of a great unknown. Learning one’s mother tongue as a child ought to be a natural part of life.
If you cultivate a tree and give it form, it then becomes difficult to give it another form,” Açıkdilli said. Prohibitive policies have reigned in Turkey for years, while many languages were banned, and they ostracized and humiliated, according to Açıkdilli. “This is part of the policy of denial. Denial also contains annihilation within itself. This process is unfortunately still in progress. Despite all the difficulties encountered, language courses ought to move forward with determination,” he said.
ISTANBUL-Hürriyet Daily News - Vercihan Ziflioğlu
Private languages courses teaching Kurdish, Armenian and Arabic in Turkey are nor attracting many students since a lot of people have lost connections to their origins and mother tongues, says one language course owner.
This file photo shows groups of students attending Anatolia Research and Culture Association, which teaches a number of languages including Armenian, Kurdish and Arabic. Altan Açıkdilli, the head of the the association says the mother tongues of Turkey’s minorities ought to be granted constitutional protection.
Private courses launched in recent years to teach Turkey’s minority languages have not attracted much attention despite the minimal fees they charge, and some believe the lack of interest in such courses has to do with Turkey’s long-lasting policies.
“Attendance rates for these courses may be low; this goes to show how far people started losing their connection with their mother tongues. Imagine a person who knows his roots are Laz (a Black Sea people,) but who does not know his identity or language. It is very difficult for this person to attempt to learn the language because this has no reciprocity in life,” Altan Açıkdilli, the head of the Anatolia Research and Culture Association (AKA-DER,) told Hürriyet Daily News.
The mother tongues of Turkey’s minorities ought to be granted constitutional protection, rather than being forced to wage individual struggles to survive, according to Açıkdilli, whose organization launched courses in Istanbul, Ankara and Antakya two years ago to teach a number of languages, including Armenian, Kurdish and Zaza, a dialect of Kurdish.
“It is possible to jumpstart the teaching of these languages through courses, but strength of will, or constitutional guarantees, in other words, will be necessary for people to follow through with it. Infrastructure is a primary condition for learning languages, but the infrastructure needed to teach and learn many such languages is lacking on this geography,” Açıkdilli said.
Joint initiative
Some 23 organizations launched a joint initiative called “The Constitution of the Peoples,” including AKA-DER, the European Syriac Union, Nor Zartonk (a civil initiative of Istanbul Armenians) and the Georgian Platform, he said, adding they had also appealed to the national government in Ankara to hold talks on the matter, but to no avail. “To gain the right to learn one’s mother tongue requires a political struggle in Turkey, and a price must be paid,” he said. “We are endeavoring to make progress in the midst of a great unknown. Learning one’s mother tongue as a child ought to be a natural part of life.
If you cultivate a tree and give it form, it then becomes difficult to give it another form,” Açıkdilli said. Prohibitive policies have reigned in Turkey for years, while many languages were banned, and they ostracized and humiliated, according to Açıkdilli. “This is part of the policy of denial. Denial also contains annihilation within itself. This process is unfortunately still in progress. Despite all the difficulties encountered, language courses ought to move forward with determination,” he said.
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