minority Archives

Azerbaijan mainly sends representatives of ethnic minorities to its frontline positions_ Shahin Mirzoev

February 15, 2017 by administrator

“70-80 percent of the Azerbaijani servicemen serving in the frontline are representatives of ethnic minorities. It can be stated that they are drafted to the army forcefully being immediately sent to the frontline. This is the reason why the majority of the killed soldiers are Talysh people, Tatars and Udis, as it can be inferred from their names,” member of Talish Cultural Council, participant of Talish freedom movement, reporter of “Tolishi Sado” newspaper Shahin Mirzoev, who fled to Armenia from Azerbaijan with his family, told the aforesaid to the reporters, Panorama.am reports.

He was taking part in the international conference titled “Breaking the Siege of Stepanakert: 25 years later” underway in Yerevan.

He noted that only some 20-30 percent of the Azerbaijani servicemen are so called locals, who call themselves Turks. They serve at warehouses or are cooks.

Asked whether they can reject to serve in the frontline, the participant of Talish freedom movement noted that in that case they would put their lives at risk. “They will be detained at least. In addition to that, their entire family will face hardships. Currently I am in Armenia and there they have forced my 92-year old father to refuse from me,” he added.

Shahin Mirzoev said that he and his family are feeling fine in Armenia. He said that on the next day of their arrival his wife, who suffers from oncological disease, was hospitalized.

To note, Shahin Mirzoev has requested a temporary asylum from the Armenian authorities, as being a member of Talish Cultural Council, participant of Talish freedom movement, reporter of “Tolishi Sado” newspaper he was obliged to flee from Azerbaijan due to the persecutions against ethnic and religious minorities and gross violations of their rights. The Armenian authorities have reacted positively Shahin Mirzoev’s request.

Serial Monitor Kurdish, Alevi and Armenian does not like

October 24, 2016 by administrator

ASULİS Language, Dialogue, organized by the Democracy Lab ‘story Difficult Status: Native Arrays in Turkey and Discrimination’ main issues discussed at the panel how the widespread discrimination known in the number of subject and minorities, was how the place where you can find the number of conflictual other and the Turkey issue .

people from various sectors of society in its native range in Turkey are struggling to find a place for themselves. The difficulties encountered in the scriptwriting process, passing in front of a sector that enables communication of different sounds. In the series, different ethnic and religious groups and the judiciary produced about sexual identity, relationships with common forms of discrimination in society, popular culture, the most important issues to be discussed. ASULİS Language, Dialogue, organized by the Democracy Lab ‘story Difficult Status: Native Arrays in Turkey and discrimination titled’ interview, a leading figure tomris giritlioğlu sector, Gaye Boralıoğl and Nilgun the Ones participation was discussed discrimination and representation issues in popular culture. The panel was moderated by the Bosphorus University, his Feyza Akınerdem video recording, Hrant Dink Foundation can be viewed from the YouTube channel.

tragic situation

The main issues discussed at the panel, how the subject of widespread discrimination and minorities known in the series, was how to find a place in the series of conflicting and other issues in Turkey. share their personal experiences in this regard from the screenwriter was asked.

“Discrimination and the number of sectors in the count we have to say in the middle is a tragedy,” said Gaye Boralıoğl of groups such as minorities in the wall told us that power many of introducing into this structure. Boralıoğl Referring to the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, for example, said: “it was never reflected in this series, but the biggest issue. Dine like … religious conflicts, we can not get into sectarian conflict. For example, ‘Bazaar’ We are writing the series; Alevis are a lover of one of the characters will be introduced to the girl come to the boy’s mother. the boy says to the girl, ‘the wrong way, but in the first meeting that I not tell you the flame.’ This publication they stopped two hours ago. “Nilgun Ones,” in relation to the other, “the subject in range of described as a group,” until a certain time, the ‘other’ when he is called minorities make fun way to use, not a problem to make a satirical material . When they entered their job seriously bindirip turns out the problem areas, “he said. The tomris giritlioğlu, the same issue, “Sometimes I think, have things we did in the past madness. I saw that the Kurds do not like this country does not like Alevis, Armenians do not like at all, “he said.

“You can not tell Tours”

Nilgun Referring to represent the native range of sexual identities Ones, “For example, gay characters, always wave remained as factors that will pass, the audience in a way that would impose, were shown it will make the joke” that was found in the review, Boralıoğl also, “unless you have a cartoonish have no problem, but you humanize you naturalize you face obstacles, “he said. “I see it as a matter of basic discouragement” if he continued to tomris giritlioğlu he said: “A self-censorship works wonderfully for producers and channels. Maybe they care about this issue a little more. Channel, to be more courageous filmmakers, they have to be people who are faced with making the rebellion that society also deserved. For example, I would love to tell the trip but you can not tell, on the edge of, you can not switch from the end. “

Source: Agos

Does Turkey See Its Armenian Minority As A Security Threat?

May 2, 2016 by administrator

gagrulenet illustration

By EurasiaNet

Does Turkey See Its Armenian Minority As A Security Threat? by Dorian Jones, EurasiaNet

Members of the small ethnic Armenian community in Turkey are feeling increasingly uneasy. Their wariness is an outgrowth of recent claims by senior officials in Ankara that Kurdish rebels collaborate with Turkish Armenians, as well as the government’s move to expropriate several Armenian churches.

The words and actions come amid heavy fighting between Turkish security forces and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels in towns and cities across southeastern Turkey. In these areas, graffiti with expletives calling ethnic Armenians traitors and accusing them of working with the rebels is commonplace.

“Everybody is afraid, there is fear everywhere,” said one ethnic Armenian resident of Diyarbak?r, Turkey’s main Kurdish population center, a city of roughly a million inhabitants. “If the fighting gets worse, the fire will burn us, too. … We are not the direct target. But if this fire grows, it will definitely swallow us, too.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan apparently sees links beyond just the PKK.

During his visit to the United States earlier this month, Erdogan claimed that angry protests in Washington, DC, over Turkey’s fight against the PKK are part of a national and international conspiracy. He described the Kurdish American protesters, gathered outside the Brookings Institution, where he was scheduled to speak, as “representatives of the PKK terrorists’ organization, the YPG [Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units], Asala, and the parallel state [a reference to the movement led by self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen], who previously fled Turkey and currently live in the United States, standing side by side and live in each other’s pockets.”

Asala was an Armenian terrorist group that assassinated dozens of Turkish diplomats in the 1970s and 1980s. A flare-up in fighting in early April between Armenia and Turkey’s closest Eurasian ally, Azerbaijan, that erupted during Erdogan’s trip no doubt further fueled the government’s anxiety.

But even earlier, in a February 27 speech attacking Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also played the Armenian card. The prime minister in the speech accused Turkish-Armenian activists of helping the HDP establish political contacts with Russian leaders. Such contacts at this particular time are guaranteed to raise Ankara’s ire, given the high-level of enmity in Turkish-Russian relations. Bilateral ties have been in a nosedive since November, when Turkish fighters shot down a Russian military jet.

The hostile comments made by top Turkish leaders have alarmed members of Turkey’s ethnic Armenian minority, a group of uncertain size that generally stays in the shadows.

“The expressions of the president and the prime minister are supporting this phenomenon and encouraging those targeting the Armenians,” Garo Paylan, a Turkish-Armenian member of parliament from the HDP, told the Bianet.org news website. “We have seen in the writings on walls in cities under barricades that the word ‘Armenian’ still is being used as a swearword in Turkey.”

Historically, Turkish nationalists have always portrayed Turkey’s predominantly Christian Armenian minority as an untrustworthy fifth column, sympathetic to traditional enemy Russia. Until recently, schools echoed that claim. The prejudice extends to an unwritten rule that prevents ethnic minority members from becoming police officers, army officers or judges.

For some ethnic Armenians, the suggestion that they are collaborating with PKK rebels brings to mind World War I suspicions that their community supported Russian interests – a notion that helped fuel the mass slaughter of ethnic Armenians in 1915.

Years ago, Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party had presented itself as free from such prejudices. It attempted a diplomatic reconciliation with neighboring Armenia, and allowed the reopening and refurbishing of some Armenian churches in the southeast. It also took steps to return some previously expropriated Armenian properties.

Yet this month, the state expropriated St. Giragos in Diyarbak?r, the largest Armenian church in the region. St. Giragos recently underwent a multi-million-dollar renovation, paid for primarily by contributions from members of the Armenian Diaspora and the pro-Kurdish city government. The expropriation was part of an eminent domain action, under which the Turkish government adopted legislation that gave it possession of 90 percent of the city’s historic Sur quarter.

The seizures are part of government plans to redevelop Sur, parts of which were devastated by recent fighting with the PKK. In a government video illustrating future plans for the area, numerous images of mosques are included, but no churches, even though the quarter contains seven churches. In addition to the expropriation of St. Giragos, two other churches with Armenian ties were taken over by the government, along with a Protestant and an Assyrian houses of worship.

Local civic activists fear that the government’s redevelopment plan will drastically alter the city’s flavor. “We are talking about a city where 33 civilizations existed. It means something to us and it means something else to the Turkish state,” said Merthan An?k, former head of the Diyarbak?r chamber of architects. “When the prime minister came to Diyarbak?r [on April 1] he made a speech emphasizing only the Ottoman and Seljuk architecture and culture.”

Muhammed Akar, head of Diyarbak?r’s branch of the ruling Justice and Development Party, downplayed such concerns. “This expropriation matter is misunderstood,” Akar said.

Much uncertainty remains concerning the plans for the Sur neighborhood. The official claim that the expropriation measure is being misinterpreted is not reassuring members of the local Armenian community. “We are not unfamiliar with this. We have anxiety, fear because we don’t know” what will happen, said Gaffur Türkay, a board member of the Giragos Foundation, a non-profit group which works to maintain St. Giragos.

A bomb threat incident from Islamic State terrorists during the Easter holiday already had heightened the sense of vulnerability, commented political scientist Cengiz Aktar of Istanbul’s Süleyman ?ah University. The threat turned out to be a hoax, but the Armenian community remains wary. “All in all, they [Turkish Armenians] are not as confident as a few years ago,” Aktar said.

As the government shifts to an increasingly nationalist narrative, that discomfort is not likely to dissipate soon.

Editor’s note: Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.

Iranian Armenian: We are Iran’s sole minority to celebrate New Year on night of December 31

January 3, 2016 by administrator

The Armenian community in Iran is the country’s sole national minority that celebrates New Year on the night of December 31.

Armine Elajian, a journalist of Tehran-based Alik Armenian daily, told the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

“The [Iranian Armenian] national social associations celebrate New Year on December 31, from 7pm to midnight,” Elajian said. “And some of the [Iranian] Armenians celebrate [the New Year] at home, since New Year is a family holiday.”

In her words, the Armenian community in Iran maintains all the traditions, and also celebrates all national religious holidays with great fanfare.

“We are the largest [national] minority in Iran,” Armine Elajian added. “The [Iranian] Armenian community is very traditional, and it retains all the traditions, especially national religious. There are many people in Iran who are interested in our holidays. They come and partake in the celebrations, as a guest.”

According to the latest official data, about 80 thousand Armenians live in Iran, and there are several dozens of Armenian schools that provide education in this country.

Most Iranian Armenians are artisans and traders, but there also are numerous physicians, lawyers, engineers, and architects among them.