Minority communities ready for civilianization

Monday, August 29, 2011

Vercihan Ziflioğlu

ISTANBUL

Prime Minister Erdoğan’s meeting with Turkey’s minority leaders brings along civilianization demands of Turkey’s minority communities. ‘Our patriarchates are always the decision-making bodies but our communities need to be civilianized,’ says Bedros Şirinoğlu, the head of Armenian Hospital Foundation

Lay members of Turkey’s minority groups appear set to increase their participation in their internal affairs while the communities themselves are looking to contribute more to the overall society, according to community leaders attending a landmark iftar Sunday with the prime minister.

“Of course, our patriarchates are always the decision-making bodies but our communities need to be civilianized,” Bedros Şirinoğlu, the head of the Surp Pırgiç Armenian Hospital Foundation and a leading member of the Armenian community, said during the event, which marked the first time Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had come together with all 161 minority foundations registered in Turkey for a fast-breaking meal. Turkey’s recognized minorities include the Jews, the Armenians and the Greek Orthodox, although other Christian foundations also attended Sunday’s event.

“The heads of foundations will soon become decision-making mechanisms, and the patriarchates will be endorsement centers. We are able to see the signals of this today,” said Simon İş, a lawyer who monitors developments and cases related to minority foundations, adding that the communities had advanced a long way on the road to civilianization.

One source speaking on condition of anonymity said it was symbolic that it was Laki Vingas, the lay head of an assembly representing all minority foundations under the General Directorate of Foundations, who took the floor at Istanbul’s Archaeology Museum and addressed the prime minister during the iftar rather than traditional religious leaders.

Vingas said the iftar meeting was a result of a mutual decision of minority communities. “We want to obtain inter-communal integration and in this sense this event, this togetherness is extremely important regarding the future.”

In addition to the desire for a greater civilianization of the minority communities, many in the groups have expressed a desire to have a greater say in the new constitution to be written during the present parliamentary term.

Members of the communities had been buoyed ahead of the iftar by news that a decree was published in the Official Gazzette on Saturday night recognizing the rights of minorities to the property that was seized from them 75 years ago.

According to the decree, minority communities will be paid compensation at market value for the properties that were sold to third parties. Minority foundations have 12 months to apply to benefit from the new ruling.

“Now, our community will be able to supply its domestic dynamics with self revenues,” Şirinoğlu told the Hürriyet Daily News at the event.

The decree issued by the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government was very important for the communities, Vingas said, but added that some people were arguing that because the Greek population in Turkey had decreased, the gains from the properties were no longer of use to anyone in the community.

“This is an unnecessary debate; I don’t want to start [such an argument]. I don’t think we are in a position to reject property and say, ‘Very few of us are left; what do we do with these possessions?’ I don’t think we have a right so say that,” he said.