ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News
The land of the historic Mor Gabriel Monastery will be returned to the Syriac community in Turkey as part of the “democratization package” announced by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan today, while the package fell short of meeting the expectations that the Halki Seminary could be reopened.
“The land of the Mor Gabriel Monastery will return to the monastery’s foundation,” Erdoğan promised today, while declaring a wide range of reforms on democracy.
“In fact, our government has shown a great sensitivity in this issue throughout the [Turkish] Republic’s history and has made serious efforts in return for such rights. We have taken sincere steps with regulations we made about the removal of such injustices in 2003, 2008 and 2011 and we received concrete results. We have returned more than 250 [properties], costing more around 2.5 billion Turkish Liras to the original owners,” said Erdoğan. Erdoğan also said that they would continue to return the properties of minorities without occasioning the suffering of others.
Mor Gabriel is a 1,700-year-old monastery located in Mardin’s Midyat district. In 2008, the Forestry Ministry, the Land Registry Office and the villages of Yayvantepe, Çandarlı and Eğlence sued the monastery for allegedly occupying their fields. The court recognized the monastery as an “occupier,” after which the case was brought to the ECHR.
The package, announced by Erdoğan today, however, lacked any development about the reopening of the Halki Greek Orthodox seminary on Istanbul’s Heyebeliada Island, which has been an ongoing point of debate for years.
The reopening of the school has been postponed due to a lack of clarity over its status, as well as the principle of reciprocity with Greece, which has refused to allow Turkish minorities to elect their own religious officials.
On Sept. 12, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said that they would take the necessary steps for the reopening of the Halki Seminary “when certain local and international conditions are constituted.” He also gave signals of solving the Mor Gabriel Monastery issue in the same speech. “We have to apply the law on the matter but an alternative formula could resolve the problem [of Mor Gabriel monastery],” Arınç said.
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Package proves disappointing for non-Muslim communities
Turkey’s non-Muslim communities have mainly expressed disappointment at the government’s democratization package announced on Monday, although the package also includes some positive points.
The democratization package makes no mention of the Greek Orthodox seminary on Heybeliada, which the government has been considering reopening, a demand long pursued by Turkey’s Greek community. The Greek Patriarchate is an institution under the protection of international law as guaranteed by the Treaty of Lausanne. It has long complained about the status of the Halki Seminary as well as other property issues in Turkey. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has repeatedly said that the reopening of the seminary is of vital importance to the survival of the Greek Orthodox clergy. Established in 1844 on the island of Heybeliada off İstanbul, Halki Seminary was closed in 1971 under a law that placed religious and military training under state control.
But the package openly does say that all the legal obstacles in the way of the Mor Gabriel Monastery, a Syriac Monastery in Midyat, Mardin, whose ownership has been in dispute since 2005, being given to the Syriac community will be removed. The package also includes provisions that introduce harsh punishments for crimes committed against the members of an ethnic or religious minority.
But members of non-Muslim groups say they would have liked to see more and profounder changes in the package. Editor-in-Chief of the Syriac language Sabro newspaper Tuma Çelik told Today’s Zaman: “This attitude of ‘returning’ Mor Gabriel, as if it ever belonged to the state, is wrong. The land [on which Mor Gabriel is situated]already belonged to the [Syriac] foundation. They just did the right thing.”
He also said international pressure on the government was high regarding the fate of Mor Gabriel. “We were going to get it back anyway. It should have come earlier. Minorities are seen as secondary communities, so they weren’t considered in the package.” He said, however, it is positive that provisions that will introduce punishment for discrimination on the basis of religion are being introduced.
However, Çelik said the democratization package only seeks to alleviate international reaction, and it is not a solid step toward real democratization. “It is not a package that is based on a fundamental desire to democratize. It was drafted with the concern of decreasing international pressure.”
Laki Vingas, the elected representative of non-Muslim foundations at the Council of the General Assembly of the Directorate General for Foundations (VGM) and a member of the Greek Orthodox community, said: “The returning of Mor Gabriel Monastery land is important, but the seminary issue was delayed to a later time. The minority issue could have been more actively dealt with. The inclusion of hate crimes is a positive development. There are positive aspects but also there are important steps missing. It is the government’s responsibility to remedy these.” He said that the seminary issue would be left hanging, adding that he has been skeptical about the reopening of the school for a long time. Many expected the package to include a provision that would allow the reopening of the school.
Kuryakos Ergün, chairman of the Foundation of the Mor Gabriel Monastery, said the Syriac community of Mardin was very happy about the decision. “This decision has caused us great happiness,” he said. He recalled that the status of Mor Gabriel had been the subject of a series of court proceedings, including at international courts. “That the prime minister personally stated that our demands will be met has shown that we are nearing a solution,” Ergün said. He also thanked those civil society organizations and media outlets that kept the issue alive and on the government’s agenda. “We hope that the democratization package will be implemented soon,” Ergün said.
Yetvart Danzikyan, a Radikal columnist, said the package was a disappointment for minorities. “The package in its entirety is positive, but there is nothing about Alevis, and Kurdish as the language of education is only allowed in private schools. The failure to reopen the seminary has caused disappointment not only among the Greek community, but all minority groups.”
Metropolitan of Bursa Elpidophoros Lambriniadis was brutally honest in his comments. “We are hugely disappointed,” he said, regarding the exclusion of the Halki Seminary from the package. “We were really hopeful [as the Greek Patriarchate]. This is not what we were expecting from the government.” He said the Greek community will continue to express this demand.