ON THE TOPICAL ISSUES OF ARMENIAN COMMUNITY IN ISTANBUL
Ruben Melkonyan

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22 February 2010

Among the Armenian communities outside Armenia the community in
Istanbul, which now faced very serious problems, has always played
an important role. It should be mentioned that among the Armenian
communities spread all over the Ottoman Empire only community in
Istanbul had survived after the Genocide and expanded on the account of
the Armenians who came from the provinces. While in Turkish provinces
the Armenian community live had not re-established (the only exception
is, at some extent, Armenia village of Vakifli).

The immigration among the Armenians of Istanbul and Turkey in general
had been of a permanent character and it is due to this fact that
today in Turkey there are officially only 55-60 thousand Armenians
who face a number of problems some of which are especially dangerous
because they threaten the future of the community.

Language issue. One of the most important problems of the Armenian
community in Istanbul is the situation with the Armenian language:
the number of people speaking Armenian is decreasing. This phenomenon
is connected with different factors but an important place should
also be allotted to the policy carried out by the state which is not
always benevolent to the fact that people do not speak Turkish, to
say the least. As a manifestation of the state policy we can remember
"Compatriot, speak Turkish" actions which were wide spread in different
years and which aim was banning the usage of any other language except
the Turkish in public places. All these were accompanied by different
persecutions. The decrease of the usage of the Armenian in public
places was followed by using of Turkish language at home. During one
internal communal discussion about the decay of the Armenian language
the opinion was sounded that Armenian language turned into a kind of
"intermediate" language and had "a status which is weaker than the
mother tongue but stronger than the foreign language". There is
also an opinion that today the Armenian "is not a language of the
Armenian community but a language of the teachers". One of the most
vivid examples of the decay of level of Armenian language speaking
is the sermon in Turkish in the Armenian churches of Istanbul which
today has turned into a common phenomenon.

The study has been carried out recently in the Armenian community in
Istanbul in order to find out what language they speak according to
the scale of age. Such is the picture:

Scale of age 13-18 19-24 25-34 35-44 45-60 60+ Total Armenian (%)
26.7 8.8 17.5 22.4 22.2 33.3 18.4 Turkish (%) 73.3 90.0 77.5 76.6
76.6 66.7 80.1

>From the table above it becomes clear that only 18% of the community
speaks Armenian and 90% of youth speaks Turkish.

The issue of the mixed marriages. Generally, the internal marriages
(endogamy) are wide spread among the Armenians and the attempts are
also made to preserve it outside Armenia. In the community in Istanbul
great attention is also paid to internal marriages but a number of
processes going on influence this phenomenon too: the level of the
mixed marriages in the community has reached the 40-50%. All this
is really bothering and it also should be taken into consideration
that the mixed marriages arouse a number of problems, particularly,
the problems of religious and national identity of the children born
from such marriages.

The issue of the Patriarchate. The Armenian Patriarchate of
Istanbul plays important role in the life of the Armenian community:
de-facto the Patriarch is accepted by the Turkish authorities as
a leader of the Armenian community. It is not a secret that the
incumbent Patriarch Mesrob Mutafian is hopelessly sick and cannot
manage the community. According to the church charter in such cases
the joint-ruler patriarch should be elected and according to the
Turkish law the permission to elect the patriarch is given by the
administration of Istanbul to which the application was submitted
by the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul but no response has been
received yet. The candidates to the post of the joint ruler patriarch
are know – the Primate of the Gugarats Diocese Bishop Sepuh Chuldjian,
the Primate of German Diocese Archbishop Garegin Bekchyan and the
representative of the Patriarchy of Istanbul Archbishop Aram Ateshian.

Let us mention that the Istanbul Patriarchate is also partially
responsible for the thousands of the citizens of Armenia working
in Turkey and having legal problems. And Turkish authorities do not
miss a chance to speculate on the issue of the citizens of Armenia who
illegally live in Turkey and constantly exaggerate their number. And in
one of his recent statements the prime-minister Erdogan even mentioned
the number of 100 thousand which has nothing do with the reality.

Many other problems and de-facto absence of the Patriarch put the
Armenians of Istanbul into a rather difficult position which even
more aggravates the situation in the community. Thus, it can be
supposed that the election of the active and national patriarch may
contribute seriously to the prevention of crisis of Armenian community
in Istanbul.

At the same time, unfortunately, the passivity in regard to the
national and religious issues can be seen in the community. In case
of such development the issues get even more burning and the community
face the threat of assimilation and loss of national character.

While examining the processes going on in today’s community in Istanbul
we arrive at a conclusion that the community can be divided into
several conditional groups in accordance with the stance in regard
to the community life and problems:

1. Indifferent group – this group is not interested in the community,
national problems; it is more occupied with their everyday issues and
their belonging to the Armenian community is mostly of conditional
character.

2. Adapting group – this group, which is the majority, became
very adapting and even sometimes frightened due to the policy of
persecutions carried out by the Turkish authorities for decades. For
them the identification with the Armenians of Diaspora and Armenians
from Armenians are very often undesirable.

3. Active group – this group, which is the smallest, mostly consists
of the young people of liberal views and tending for the changes.

It should be mentioned that the position and the attitude of Armenia
towards the Armenians in Turkey should be differentiated because the
most of the Armenians living in that country do not consider themselves
the Armenians of Diaspora and they have grounded motivations for that
(e.g. most of the centers of population of Armenia where they came
from today form a part of Turkey).

At the same time let us mention that the interest of Armenia in
community, spiritual and cultural live of the Armenians in Turkey is
as natural as the interest of any national state in their compatriots
living abroad (as, e.g. the interest of Turkey in Turks living in
Europe). We also believe that the mending of the relations between
Armenia and Turkey will contribute to the solution of a number of
issues facing Armenian community in Turkey.