09:31,

ISTANBUL, MAY 18, ARMENPRESS. The Turkish-Armenian community wants Armenia and Turkey to reconcile, Marmara newspaper’s Publishing Director Ari Haddeciyan told ARMENPRESS.

Ari Haddeciyan is the son of Marmara Editor-in-Chief, playwright and writer Rober Haddeciyan. He currently runs Marmara together with his brother as their 97-year-old father is having difficulties coming to the office due to health issues.

Marmara is an Armenian-language daily newspaper published since August 31, 1940 in Istanbul. Rober Haddeciyan has been its editor-in-chief since 1967.

“We have two homelands, Turkey and Armenia. We certainly wish our two homelands to reconcile, so that we will be able to freely, easily and confidently travel, speak, and live happily,” Ari Haddeciyan said, emphasizing the importance of the Armenian-Turkish relations.

Normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey will positively impact the societies of the two countries, according to Haddeciyan.

Speaking about the Turkish-Armenian community, which has an estimated population of over 50,000 and is concentrated in Istanbul, Haddeciyan said that regrettably many of them don’t speak Armenian.

“There’s no one left who speaks or reads Armenian. We have 5 high schools and 12-13 elementary schools, every year thousands of students enroll in these schools, but finding someone among them who reads or wants to read in Armenian is like finding a miracle. They assimilate with Turkish,” he said, adding that this is one of the reasons why the number of Marmara subscribers has dropped significantly.

“Just like other Armenian newspapers, Marmara has a decreasing number of readers and subscribers, today we no longer have the number of subscribers we used to have some 10 or 20 years ago. But we will persistently struggle, we will continue our path, we hope that we will be able to continue publishing the Armenian newspaper for many years,” Haddeciyan said.

Araks Kasyan