The Armenians on Wednesday filed a complaint before the European Court of Human Rights to recover the property of the historic seat of their apostolic church in Sis (Kozan) in Turkey and the right to worship there. “A historical moment,” Lebanon’s Catholicos Aram I said. “For the first time, we are taking legal action against Turkey”.
The “property” consists of a monastery, the Cathedral of St. Sophia and the residence of which there are now only ruins, including two walls of basement near which a playground was installed by the municipality of Kozan. But this place is symbolic. It was the headquarters of the Armenian church under the Ottoman Empire, for more than seven centuries. Sis was also the capital of the ancient Armenian kingdom of Cilicia for two centuries.
In September 1915, during the Armenian genocide, the religious had had ten days to evacuate the place. They took only a few objects and eventually settled on the heights of Beirut at Antelias, where they built a new cathedral.
The Armenian diaspora had initially expected the goodwill of the then Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to obtain this restitution. But two letters addressed by Aram I to M.Erdogan remained unanswered.
In 2011, the Catholicossat of the Great House of Cilicia brought the case to the Constitutional Court of Turkey. It was dismissed this year on the pretext that the Armenian church had not registered its property in a law passed in 1936. Hence the idea of seizing the European Court. A dossier of 900 pages was transmitted Wednesday in Strasbourg.
“This would not be the case if the Turkish government had replied to the two letters of His Holiness Aram. If it had been me, I would have returned immediately this monastery because our record is solid, “said Iranian-Canadian lawyer Payam Akhavan at a press conference in Brussels. He is head of a team of British and Turkish lawyers in charge of following this case.
The lawyer believes that a positive decision by the European Court could pave the way for further refunds, which Ankara evidently fears more than a hundred years after the genocide which caused 1.5 million deaths. Nearly 8,000 ruins of Armenian churches have been identified in the country, outside the Van area. The Armenians were stripped of their possessions while others, who remained in Turkey, were Islamized.
But the lawyer insists on the uniqueness of Sis. “It is not an orchard, not a store, but a place of historical significance,” he said. “We are ready to invest thousands of dollars to restore it and make it a place of worship. This could be of benefit to the municipality as tourists and faithful would come. “
The Armenians want to revive this place of worship and therefore refuse financial compensation. Most of the Armenian community lives today in Istanbul, where it has several dozen churches. In 2007-08, the Turkish government had the Holy Cross Church of Aghtamar restored near Van, but transformed it into a museum where only one Mass can be celebrated each year.
The European Court must first declare the complaint admissible, then the Turkish government will give its opinion before the judgment is pronounced, not for several months or years probably.
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