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22.02.2010

ON THE TOPICAL ISSUES OF ARMENIAN COMMUNITY IN ISTANBUL

   

Ruben Melkonyan

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.


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