Nikolaos Uzunoğlu 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 Uzunoğlu 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. “If you'd asked me five years ago about this possibility,
I'd say no. But it seems more likely now,” said Uzunoğlu, a university
professor in Athens.
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 İstanbul.
“If 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,” he added in reference to Turkish officials' calls on minorities who
left Turkey in the past due to mistreatment to return to the country.
At the beginning of March, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent
Arınç, 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.
Then recently, Culture and Tourism Minister Ömer Çelik
made statements in Moscow during an official visit where he also called on
Christians and Jews who had to leave Turkey to return. “We tell them all, come
back to your country,” he said.
In contact with various ministries in Ankara, Uzunoğlu'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.
“We hope that we are moving toward a solution,” Uzunoğlu
said. “The 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.”
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.
“Those calls are important and they are coming from
important ministers. However, just mere calls are not enough,” 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.
“The 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,” Vingas said.
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.
But Vingas said that even if Halki is reopened, there are
still other issues. He also pointed out the sociological factors. “Communities
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,” he said.
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.
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 Atatürk, 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.
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.
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 İstanbul.
Hayko Bağdat, a civil society activist and a Turkish
citizen from an ethnic Armenian background, said the officials deserve praise
for their calls to minorities.
“Those 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,” Bağdat said.
Bağdat also mentioned the climate of unease among the
Armenian community, giving the example of the murder of Sevag Balıkçı, 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. Balıkçı was shot dead on
April 24, 2011 -- the date the Armenian diaspora has chosen to commemorate the
incidents of 1915.
Complaining about growing anti-Semitism in Turkey,
particularly in the media, İvo Molinas, the editor-in-chief of the Şalom
newspaper, a daily published by Turkey's Jewish community, suggested a need to
erase fears of discrimination.
“Jewish 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,” he said.
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.
“On 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,” said Tuma Çelik, editor-in-chief of Sabro, the first newspaper
representing the Syriac community in Turkey.
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, Çelik 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.
“If there is such a plan, how can it be possible that the
government is planning to lease our own property to us?” he asked.
In the last 10 years, about 60 Syriac families returned
to live in Turkey, Çelik said, and he is among them.
“It 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,”
he said, adding that there are approximately 300,000 Syriacs of Turkish origin
currently living in Europe.
According to sociologist Ayhan Aktar, who specializes on
minority issues, Turkish officials' calls to return are “sympathetic but
empty.”
“What 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.”
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