TURKEY: NON-MUSLIM PLACES OF WORSHIP TO BE RESTORED
AKI, Italy
March 29 2006
Istanbul, 29 March (AKI) – For the first time since the foundation
of Turkey in 1923, the government is funding an ambitious project to
renovate and restore non-Muslim places of worship, such as churches,
monasteries and synagogues. The Foundations General Directorate, an
agency which regulates the status of the non-Muslim faiths, began a
review of important sites around the country two years ago and produced
an emergency action plan involving 750 heritage buildings out of 18,500
such holy sites in the country. The restoration of select monuments has
been welcomed by representatives of the minority religions in Turkey.
Silvio Ovidio, the spokesman of the Jewish community, told Adnkronos
International (AKI) that they welcomed the decision. “We are pleased
with the Directorate’s decision. I don’t think it is related with
Turkey’s EU harmonisation process but rather, the office decided it
on its own. There is one synagogue in Edirne [a city near the Greek
border] included in the renovation plan,” Ovidio added.
Turkey’s Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II also praised the move. “This
shows there is no discrimination”, he told reporters on Sunday, adding
that it was a gesture of good will which he hoped would continue in
the future.
Besides the synagogue, six churches and one monastery will be renovated
in the first stage of the plan. These sites belong to Greek Orthodox,
Assyrian Christian, Greek Catholic and Armenian Orthodox communities.
The status of assets belonging to non-Muslim communities is a source
of tension between Turkey and the European Union which it is seeking
to join.
A 1936 proclamation ordered non-Muslim foundations to provide lists
of their properties, which effectively functioned as deeds.
However, these communities have not been allowed to register properties
ever since 1974 when the Cyprus crisis broke out and the Turkish
minority was being oppressed in Greece. A controversial decision by
the Turkish Supreme Court over the Balikli Greek Hospital Foundation
in Istanbul led to all non-Muslim foundations being banned from buying,
owning or selling properties. The ruling also stated that they had not
been entitled to own property since 1936, and demanded the properties
they purchased after 1936 be handed back to the previous owners,
or if these were dead to be confiscated by the state.
EU officials say that this proclamation violates both human rights
and minority rights.
Under the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 that laid the foundations of the
modern Turkish republic, non-Muslims are equal before the law.
Article 40 of the treaty even specifies that this gives them the equal
right to “establish, manage and control at their own expense; any
charitable, religious and social institutions, any schools and other
establishments for instruction and education, with the right to use
their own language and to exercise their own religion freely therein.”