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TURKEY'S SECRET 'ANCESTRY CODES' TRACK NON-MUSLIM MINORITIES
Assyrian International News Agency AINA
Aug 8 2013
It all started when a mother in Istanbul tried to enroll her child at
an Armenian school. Like so many other Armenians who wanted to save
themselves from the 1915 massacre, this woman's family had converted
to Islam. Now she wanted to assume the identity of her ancestors. She
underwent baptism, and her identity card was changed to show she is
a Christian.
She thought her identity as a Christian would be enough to enroll
her child at an Armenian school, but she soon found that it would not
be so easy. There were bureaucratic steps to be taken. She was told,
"You must get an official certification from the National Education
Office attesting that there is no impediment to your [child's]
enrollment in this school."
The family went to the local National Education Office and requested a
document allowing the child to be enrolled at the Armenian school. The
written response of the Istanbul-Sisli District National Education
Office was a shocker: "It is required to know whether the parent of
the student to be enrolled had changed religion, name and sect by
a court decision. Therefore her confidential ancestry code must be
extracted from the population register [maintained] since 1923. The
said student can be registered if his parent's confidential code is
2 at the relevant population and citizenship directorate register."
Research by the daily Radikal and interviews with officials following
the news reports confirmed a century-long saga of discrimination.
Registering populations using "ancestry codes" dates back to the
1923 Lausanne Treaty. According to Radikal's findings, the Population
Directorate codes Greeks using the number 1, Armenians 2 and Jews 3.
Officials told Radikal that the ancestry codes are only for regulating
who will be allowed to enroll in the educational institutions of
minorities. Further research by Radikal, however, revealed that this
pretext is false. This became evident when it was discovered that the
Syriacs [Assyrians] were coded as number 4 and other non-Muslims as
number 5. The minorities coded 1, 2, and 3, indeed, have their own
schools, but Syriacs and other minorities do not.
This is obviously a scandal that should shake Turkey to its core,
but the country is so busy with its own agenda. Given Turkey's
history, which is full of unfair practices toward non-Muslims,
perhaps the significance of this scandal can best be understood
through comparison. For a moment, imagine that Jews in Germany today
were secretly being identified through coding by the German government
and that this was exposed. It would register as a political earthquake
big enough to shake the German political system down to its roots. In
contrast, the scandal in Turkey remained in the news only for a few
days in a few newspapers.
What has been exposed is a practice that some suspected of existing,
but could not prove. For instance, there is not a single non-Muslim in
the Turkish military or security services today. Turkey has not had a
Jewish colonel, a police chief of Greek origin or a judge of Armenian
extraction. It appears that the confidential coding of ancestry has
been used to ensure that should non-Muslims change their identities,
they still can be excluded from public service.
This ongoing practice will perhaps initiate a fresh review of a
number of events in Turkish history. For example, was the 1946
Wealth Tax, essentially aimed at non-Muslims, enabled by coding
ancestry? Did the coding play a part in the 1934 pogroms against
Jews in Thrace and in 1955 when homes and residences of ethnic Greek
citizens were ransacked? Further, does this practice confirm that
all the policies of the Union and Progress regime that ethnically
cleansed Turkey of Armenians in 1915 were adopted in their entirety
by the Turkish Republic established in 1923? Is population coding
institutionalized racism? What kind of invisible walls were erected
around the non-Muslims of Turkey with these codes? How did (and does)
it restrict their lives?
There so many questions we must ask about the sufferings of the
non-Muslims. These newly discovered ancestry codes might also indicate
how important and urgent it is for Turkey to deal with its past.
We are now waiting with great interest to see whether Turkey's
non-Muslim minorities will take legal action after learning about
the coding. According to the law, the government is required to pay
compensation for "service faults" it has committed. Because of this
legislation, Turkey's non-Muslims can sue for such discriminatory
practices at administrative courts and then at the Constitutional
Court. If no satisfactory outcome is derived from domestic legal
recourses, then there is the possibility of taking the matter to the
European Court of Human Rights and UN bodies.
This ancestry coding scandal is actually a golden opportunity to take a
fresh look at the history of modern Turkey, the hardships non-Muslins
have endured and Turkey's discrimination issues. Perhaps the country
will make use of this opportunity.
By Orhan Kemal Cengiz AL Monitor
http://www.aina.org/news/20130808154621.htm
From: A. Papazian
Assyrian International News Agency AINA
Aug 8 2013
It all started when a mother in Istanbul tried to enroll her child at
an Armenian school. Like so many other Armenians who wanted to save
themselves from the 1915 massacre, this woman's family had converted
to Islam. Now she wanted to assume the identity of her ancestors. She
underwent baptism, and her identity card was changed to show she is
a Christian.
She thought her identity as a Christian would be enough to enroll
her child at an Armenian school, but she soon found that it would not
be so easy. There were bureaucratic steps to be taken. She was told,
"You must get an official certification from the National Education
Office attesting that there is no impediment to your [child's]
enrollment in this school."
The family went to the local National Education Office and requested a
document allowing the child to be enrolled at the Armenian school. The
written response of the Istanbul-Sisli District National Education
Office was a shocker: "It is required to know whether the parent of
the student to be enrolled had changed religion, name and sect by
a court decision. Therefore her confidential ancestry code must be
extracted from the population register [maintained] since 1923. The
said student can be registered if his parent's confidential code is
2 at the relevant population and citizenship directorate register."
Research by the daily Radikal and interviews with officials following
the news reports confirmed a century-long saga of discrimination.
Registering populations using "ancestry codes" dates back to the
1923 Lausanne Treaty. According to Radikal's findings, the Population
Directorate codes Greeks using the number 1, Armenians 2 and Jews 3.
Officials told Radikal that the ancestry codes are only for regulating
who will be allowed to enroll in the educational institutions of
minorities. Further research by Radikal, however, revealed that this
pretext is false. This became evident when it was discovered that the
Syriacs [Assyrians] were coded as number 4 and other non-Muslims as
number 5. The minorities coded 1, 2, and 3, indeed, have their own
schools, but Syriacs and other minorities do not.
This is obviously a scandal that should shake Turkey to its core,
but the country is so busy with its own agenda. Given Turkey's
history, which is full of unfair practices toward non-Muslims,
perhaps the significance of this scandal can best be understood
through comparison. For a moment, imagine that Jews in Germany today
were secretly being identified through coding by the German government
and that this was exposed. It would register as a political earthquake
big enough to shake the German political system down to its roots. In
contrast, the scandal in Turkey remained in the news only for a few
days in a few newspapers.
What has been exposed is a practice that some suspected of existing,
but could not prove. For instance, there is not a single non-Muslim in
the Turkish military or security services today. Turkey has not had a
Jewish colonel, a police chief of Greek origin or a judge of Armenian
extraction. It appears that the confidential coding of ancestry has
been used to ensure that should non-Muslims change their identities,
they still can be excluded from public service.
This ongoing practice will perhaps initiate a fresh review of a
number of events in Turkish history. For example, was the 1946
Wealth Tax, essentially aimed at non-Muslims, enabled by coding
ancestry? Did the coding play a part in the 1934 pogroms against
Jews in Thrace and in 1955 when homes and residences of ethnic Greek
citizens were ransacked? Further, does this practice confirm that
all the policies of the Union and Progress regime that ethnically
cleansed Turkey of Armenians in 1915 were adopted in their entirety
by the Turkish Republic established in 1923? Is population coding
institutionalized racism? What kind of invisible walls were erected
around the non-Muslims of Turkey with these codes? How did (and does)
it restrict their lives?
There so many questions we must ask about the sufferings of the
non-Muslims. These newly discovered ancestry codes might also indicate
how important and urgent it is for Turkey to deal with its past.
We are now waiting with great interest to see whether Turkey's
non-Muslim minorities will take legal action after learning about
the coding. According to the law, the government is required to pay
compensation for "service faults" it has committed. Because of this
legislation, Turkey's non-Muslims can sue for such discriminatory
practices at administrative courts and then at the Constitutional
Court. If no satisfactory outcome is derived from domestic legal
recourses, then there is the possibility of taking the matter to the
European Court of Human Rights and UN bodies.
This ancestry coding scandal is actually a golden opportunity to take a
fresh look at the history of modern Turkey, the hardships non-Muslins
have endured and Turkey's discrimination issues. Perhaps the country
will make use of this opportunity.
By Orhan Kemal Cengiz AL Monitor
http://www.aina.org/news/20130808154621.htm
From: A. Papazian