Turkey's treatment of its minorities‏

The International Herald Tribune, France
March 15 2009
Turkey failing on minority property rights
ReutersPublished: March 15, 2009
By Ayla Jean Yackley

Turkey's EU-inspired reforms of laws limiting property rights have
created new obstacles for ethnic minorities and threaten to stymie
progress towards membership of the bloc, a report said.

Non-Muslim Turks still face "anti-democratic and unlawful practices"
that violate the European Convention on Human Rights, despite
legislation in September that sought to ease restrictions on their
property ownership, the report by the Turkish Economic and Social
Studies Foundation, or Tesev, said.

The European Union has said Turkey must expand rights for minorities
if it is to advance its membership bid. The European Commission
welcomed the new law in its annual progress report on Turkey, but said
the government had failed to implement it fully and had not resolved
outstanding property disputes.

"The rights of minorities are of utmost importance in the EU process,"
Dilek Kurban, one of two authors of the Tesev report, said at a news
conference on Saturday.

"If Turkey is unable to resolve the issue of property rights, EU
membership is impossible."

Since the 1930s, Turkey has seized thousands of properties belonging
to Greek, Armenian and Jewish foundations. The foundations are mainly
tasked with overseeing assets belonging to the minorities.

Turkey has also curbed their ability to buy and sell assets, receive
financial assistance from overseas and generate revenue from property.

The law passed in September lifted such restrictions and includes
terms for the return of some of the confiscated property. But it
offers no "fair solution" to ensure the return of assets and now
requires non-Muslim charities to seek state permission to acquire new
property, Istanbul-based Tesev said.

Turkey's population of 71 million is 99 percent Muslim. About 80,000
Armenians, Jews and Greeks remain in Turkey, the descendents of
Ottoman Empire subjects.

Under the new law, the state has re-registered properties it has
seized under different names to prevent their return and bars
non-Muslims from establishing new foundations, a right afforded Muslim
charities, the report said.

Turkey has lost five cases at the European Court of Human Rights in
the past two years that were brought by ethnic Greek and Armenian
foundations. The Strasbourg-based court ordered the Turkish government
to return the properties or pay about 3.8 million euros in
reparations.

Turkey's main opposition parties have appealed to Turkey's top court
to strike down the new law on foundations.

"The government is making efforts to meet EU criteria, but unless all
parties and institutions are part of the process, little progress can
be achieved," said Kezban Hatemi, the second author of the report.

JUDICIARY AND STATE BEHIND ALIENATION OF NON-MUSLIMS
Today's Zaman
March 16 2009
Turkey

Turkey's non-Muslim communities have been alienated, and it was done
by the state and judiciary, said the writers of a new report revealing
the facts behind the real estate ownership problems of non-Muslim
foundations dating from the Ottoman period.

"In the 1930s, it became evident that pushing or directly forcing
the few non-Muslims left in Turkey to abandon the country was an
explicit state policy," said Kezban Hatemi, the co-author of the
report, titled "The Story of an Alien(ation): Real Estate Ownership
Problems of Non-Muslim Foundations and Communities in Turkey," which
was released on Saturday as part of the democratization program of
the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV). Speaking
at a panel discussion convened to make the report public, Hatemi was
referring to various restrictions and conditions imposed through a
series of laws, acts and practices.

One example she gave was the Civil Code of 1926 that pruned minority
rights granted in the Treaty of Lausanne, which adopted the principle
that the status granted to Muslim citizens in terms of religious
rights and liberties should also be granted to non-Muslim citizens.

"Only a short while after the Treaty of Lausanne, it became obvious
that the state did not intend to implement the rights it was
supposed to give," she said, citing other discriminatory laws and
practices including the most detrimental one, the 1936 Declaration,
in which non-Muslim foundations were given the status of "affiliated"
foundations and placed under the guardianship of the Directorate
General for Foundations (VGM), which "played a crucial role in
implementing repressive policies" imposed on non-Muslim foundations.

"More than 30 [pieces of fixed property] of the Armenian community
were seized, on the unlawful basis that they were acquired after
1936. The Tuzla Armenian Children's Camp is one of the most striking
and heartbreaking examples of the seizure of properties from the
Armenian non-Muslim foundations," she added, pointing out that Hrant
Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist murdered in 2007, was among the
first group of children who built the camp, which he later managed
with his wife for many years.

Dilek Kurban, co-author of the report, said that when Turkey became
a candidate for European Union membership, it became evident that
it was not possible to sustain this state policy toward non-Muslim
communities. Kurban started filing lawsuits with the European Court of
Human Rights after exhausting avenues within the Turkish legal system.

"It was no longer easy for the bureaucracy to take over the assets of
non-Muslim foundations, and the government was expected to take legal
action to return or pay indemnity for seized assets," Kurban said.

The report also pointed out that the Justice and Development Party (AK
Party), which came to power in 2002, made several amendments to the Law
on Foundations in order to solve the problem. In February 2008, after
strong opposition from nationalist elements within Parliament, a new
law was enacted that endowed non-Muslim foundations with new rights,
such as the acquiring and disposing of assets and registering assets
in their possession. Even though the law falls short of returning
all assets that were seized and paying indemnity for assets that
have been transferred to third parties, the main opposition parties
objected to the law, appealing it to the Constitutional Court.

"It is important to look at which properties these are and to whom
they belong," Kurban said in apparent reference to a historical
building owned by non-Muslims that now belongs to the Workers' Party
(Ä°P), whose leader was arrested last year for suspected membership
in Ergenekon, a clandestine terrorist organization nested within
state organs and charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

"I was fighting against a group for 15 years without knowing who
they really were. Thank God they are all in prison," Hatemi said,
again referring to the detention of some suspects for alleged links
to Ergenekon.

Part of the investigation has suggested that there may be links between
Ergenekon and the self-declared "Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate"
run by the Erenerol family. On behalf of the Fener Greek Orthodox
Patriarchate, based in what is now Ä°stanbul since A.D. 356, Hatemi,
an attorney, has long been asking the courts to return four churches
confiscated by the fake patriarchate in the mid-1920s.

The Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarchate once had 90 churches in Ä°stanbul
and on the islands of Gökceada (Imbros) and Bozcaada (Tenedos),
the deeds of which belong to the foundation of each church.

TESEV's report indicated that as of November 2008, 24 foundations of
the Jewish community were included among the seized foundations, and
as of November 2007, 30 real estate parcels of the Armenian community
were seized. Two pieces of fixed property of the Catholic community,
a church and a building, were also seized.

Mahcupyan: Taxpayers should be concerned

Opening the panel discussion, TESEV's democratization program director
Etyen Mahcupyan said since domestic avenues have been exhausted,
non-Muslim foundations moved their legal battle to Strasbourg. The
first ruling was made in a case filed by the Fener Greek High School
Foundation of the Greek Orthodox Community and the European Court of
Human Rights found Turkey in violation. In 2007, the court ordered
Turkey to return the seized property to the foundation or to pay
almost 900,000 euros. Other cases followed because of the non-Muslim
foundations' successes.

"While non-Muslim foundations win in the European court, Turkey is
losing. And the money is paid out of the taxpayers' pockets. All
Turkish citizens should be concerned about this," he said.

TURKEY DISREGARDS MINORITY RIGHTS IN SCHOOLS
By Ayla Jean Yackley
International Herald Tribune
March 16 2009
France

Nearly half of the children of internally displaced ethnic Kurds
in Turkey are unable to attend school and other minorities face
institutional discrimination in education, a report said on Monday.

Nurcan Kaya, author of the report by Minority Rights Group
International, said a failure to provide equal access to education
for children from non-Turkish backgrounds could hamper the country's
bid to join the European Union, which has called on Turkey to expand
cultural rights for its ethnic minorities.

"The discrepancy between EU standards on education for minorities
and those in Turkey will ultimately affect Turkey's efforts to join
the EU," Kaya said at a news conference.

"The EU should give this issue greater priority during Turkey's
accession process," she said.

Turkey only recognises Greeks, Armenians and Jews as minorities under
a treaty that ended World War One and doesn't afford special rights
to other ethnic or religious groups, including Kurds, who make up
about 20 percent of the population, Roma, Syriac Christians, Alevi
Muslims and others.

Millions of Kurds over the last three decades have left the countryside
in southeast Turkey for urban centres to find work and escape fighting
between the army and Kurdish separatists.

Forty-eight percent of these families questioned said they were unable
to send their children to school after moving, citing poverty as the
main obstacle, according to the London-based NGO's report, which was
funded by the EU.

Literacy rates are 73 percent in the mainly Kurdish southeast,
compared to 87 percent in the country's more affluent west, the report
said. Only 60 percent of women are able to read in the Kurdish region,
it also said.

Turkey has eased restrictions on the Kurdish language, which was
completely banned until 1991, and language courses are now available
at a handful of universities.

Kurdish children, as well as other ethnic groups, who attend state
school are unable to study their mother tongue, the report concluded.

Officially recognised minorities operate their own schools and are
able to teach some classes in Greek or Armenian, but are given as
little as $1 per student annually in financial assistance from the
government, said Garo Paylan of the Armenian Foundation Schools at
the news conference.

Minority schools are unable to find properly trained teachers and
updated textbooks, he said. A Turkish assistant principal employed
by the Education Ministry is the main authority at the schools.

Religious education that teaches the Sunni Hanafi creed of Islam
remains mandatory in state schools and non-adherents can only opt
out of classes if they disclose their faith, which violates Turkey's
secular constitution, the report said.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that religion
classes in Turkey's state schools violate pluralism in a case brought
by an Alevi father.
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