Armenian patriarch raises concerns over foundations bill

Turkish Daily News
Oct 20 2006

Friday, October 20, 2006

ANKARA – Turkish Daily News – Turkish Armenian Patriarch Mesrob
Mutafyan yesterday criticized a bill aimed at returning confiscated
property to minority foundations, saying it was contradictory to the
principle of equality as set forth in the Constitution.

He said if the bill was legislated in its current form, it would
not bring a solution to Turkey’s decades-old problem on minority
foundations.

Mesrob II sent letters to Parliament Speaker Bulent Arýnc, Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to
express his views on the bill, which Parliament has been considering
as part of a European Union-backed reform package prior to the release
of the EU Commission’s key progress report next month.

"We have no request other than equal citizenship," he said, expressing
disappointment that the bill was being evaluated on the basis of
reciprocity without taking into account the views of Turkish Armenians.

Parliament was continuing debate yesterday on the controversial bill,
which caused tension when Parliament’s Justice Commission discussed it
last month. On that occasion, the main opposition Republican People’s
Party (CHP) claimed that a decision to restore property rights for
minority foundations as envisaged by the bill would violate the
Lausanne Treaty’s principle of reciprocity, which stipulates that
improvements in rights for the Greek minority in Turkey should be
mirrored by improvements in the rights of Greece’s Turkish minority.
In a move to soothe such concerns, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Ali
Þahin submitted a proposal, saying that the principle of reciprocity
would be upheld at the implementation phase.

"We are citizens of this country, so we believe that there is nothing
more natural than our informing you of our problems and asking you
to resolve them," the patriarch said.

–Boundary_(ID_jBNbi3UGhViNaLccp77aEw)–