Turkey – Beginning of a New Approach toward the Aramaeans?

A Turkish Court of Justice at Midyat reversed the initial decision which had been taken by the Turkish Land Registration Court (on 29 August 2008) that granted three surrounding villages more than 110 hectares of land belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Monastery.

As the event may well augur a new era in the attitude of the Turkish state toward the Aramaeans, the Syriac Universal Alliance issued earlier today a press release that I integrally republish herewith. Along with it, I republish an editorial from the English medium Turkish daily Today’s Zaman, and a Report by the Reuters.

As the issue has become a matter of greater focus, while at the same time being of the utmost importance for the future of the 32-century old Semitic nation, I will dedicate several articles to what form of cooperation today’s Aramaeans can possibly achieve with Turkey, what the targets of the Aramaean Renaissance can be, who should be considered as the principal enemies of the Aramaean Nation, and what the primary needs of all the Aramaean organizations are.

Syriac Universal Alliance Press Release – Syriac Monastery Wins Land Boundary Case, More Cases Postponed
Midyat, Turkey, Friday 22 May, 2009

Midyat, Turkey – In a landmark decision, the local Midyat Court has reversed the initial decision taken on 29 August 2008 by the Turkish Land Registration Court, which had granted three surrounding villages more than 110 hectares of land originally owned by the Syriac Orthodox Monastery. Later court cases saw claims of more than 300 Hectares of land by the surrounding villages for this Boundary Line dispute – all of which have been rejected by the court.

As predicted by the Syriac Universal Alliance (SUA), the court did make a decision today and whilst the first verdict fell in the Monastery’s favor, there are still three (3) other open trials being contested in which the Mor Gabriel Monastery is involved.

Since the first appeal trial on 19 November 2008 and after six postponements, the court has finally decided that the initial decision taken by Land Registration State Officials in May 2008, who had redrafted the boundary lines, was based on illegal and baseless grounds. Hence the Judge today deemed all the maps, legal documents, witness accounts and other evidence put forward by the Monastery to be complete, convincing and conclusive. At the moment, the SUA is uncertain whether the surrounding villages or the State authority will appeal the decision of the Local Midyat Court.

The Syriac Monastery puts this historic victory down to the huge and continuous pressure from the international community, in particular from the European embassies, parliamentarians and media.

However, the Monastery is still cautious, maintaining that the fight is not over. The two other cases heard today were postponed once again. After listening to the arguments of the lawyers and realizing he lacked information on some issues, the Judge postponed both the "Treasury" and "Forestry" cases as follows:

- The case concerning the "Treasury" land claim (for some 24 Hectares of Land) will now take place on 17 June;

- The "Forestry" Land claim (for some 34 Hectares of Land) takes place on 24 June; and

- The case involving the Head of the Religious Foundation of the Monastery, Mr Kuryakos Ergün, as a defendant, for the "intentional violation of the Forestry law", will still be heard on June 24 (as was decided on the May 6, 2009 trial).

In order to win the remaining three cases and for justice to prevail, SUA continues to request all media, human rights organizations and politicians to maintain and increase their interest and passion in relation to this critical issue for the Aramean people.

The SUA will continue to keep you updated in relation to these other trials. If you require any further information, please contact Mr Daniel Gabriel (SUA’s Director of Human Rights and NGO) on +44 7795 602 078 or on daniel.gabriel@sua-ngo.org. For more information, especially on historical maters, you can also contact Mr J. Messo (SUA’s President) on +31 611 539 771 or on johny.messo@sua-ngo.org.

Arameans call for reversal of place names
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=175906&bolum=101

The Syriac Universal Alliance (SUA), an umbrella organization for Aramean federations, appealed to Minister of Interior Beşir Atalay on Monday for the "reversal of the Turkification of ancient Aramaic place names" and for Arameans to be given the right to replace their Turkish surnames with their original Aramaic family names.

In a written letter, the SUA noted that Atalay had said last week that, although it is not on the agenda of the government at the moment, if there were local demands for returning the original names of villages and towns in Turkey, they would be considered.

"With great enthusiasm, we have welcomed your bold statements," the letter said, providing information and examples of places in Turkey that once had Aramaic names, including Diyarbakır, which the letter claimed was called Amid.

The letter also emphasized that Arameans were not able to enjoy the rights and freedoms that should be given to minorities under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

"For example, in theory the Arameans should have been given ‘an equal right to establish, manage and control, at their own expense, any charitable, religious and social institutions, any schools or other establishments for instruction and education, with the right to use their own language and to exercise their own religion freely therein.' In practice, however, Aramean teachers were imprisoned for teaching Aramaic. In more recent times, state officials even attempted to permanently close down the Christian monasteries of Kurkmo / Zafaran in Mardin [1978] and Mor Gabriel in Midyat [1997] for teaching Aramaic," the letter said.

Christian monastery in Turkey wins back land
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-39823220090522

Istanbul (Reuters) - One of the world's oldest functioning Christian monasteries has won a legal battle to have land it had owned for centuries restored to it, after a Turkish court ruled on Friday it could not be claimed by the state.

The dispute over the boundaries of Mor Gabriel, a fifth-century Syriac Orthodox monastery in eastern Turkey, had raised concerns over freedom of religion and human rights for non-Muslim minorities in Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country and European Union aspirant.

In a statement, the Syriac Universal Alliance (SUA), a leading Syriac group based in Sweden, said a Turkish court in Midyat had reversed an initial decision by the land registry court to grant villages some 110 hectares (272 acres) of monastery land.

But it added another three cases relating to the monastery's former land remained open, two of which had been postponed.

The row began when Turkish government land officials redrew the boundaries around Mor Gabriel and the surrounding villages in 2008 to update a national land registry.

The Syriac Orthodox monks said the new boundaries turned over to the villages large plots of monastery land and some designated as public forest.

The case became a rallying cry for Christian church groups across Europe, and had been postponed several times.

Syriacs are one of the oldest communities in Turkey and still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ. But they are not officially designated a minority in Turkey like the Greeks or Armenians, so have no special protection under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne's provisions for non-Muslim minorities.

The ruling AK Party government has said it has expanded the rights of minorities. But the EU and U.S. President Barack Obama, during a trip to Turkey in April, have urged Ankara to do more to promote religious freedom.

Note
Picture: Aramaean monuments from Hatra, in NW Iraq. Quite interestingly, and quite erroneously, they are claimed by some Iranian nationalists as ‘Parthian" (see source below). There is of course no doubt that the inscriptions of the monuments at Hatra are written in Aramaic and that the local population was of Aramaean descent. The Parthian imperial control did not redefine in anything the descent of the indigenous populations. However, the contrast of claims shows clearly were lies the only chance of the modern Aramaeans to survive: to mainly oppose the fallacious Orientalist dogmas of the English and French criminal pseudo-academia who are the main responsible for the harm made on the Aramaeans over the past five centuries. Any concept of an Aramaean Diaspora alliance with Western powers is by definition an immoral betrayal of the Aramaean National History and will lead the Aramaeans to total extinction from the Middle East.
From: http://www.allempires.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=10737&PID=199305