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TAKSIM SQUARE BELONGS TO ARMENIANS
Veterans Today
June 18 2013
While the newspapers are replete with stories about the rioting at
Taksim Square in Istanbul, as Paul Harvey used to say"....here's the
rest of the story "
According to Lebanese daily "Aztag", some Turkish protesters in Taksim
Square demanded the dedication, in the square, of a monument to the
memory of the victims of the Genocide of Armenians.
It is worth mentioning that the legal owner of the square and the
surrounding area is the Armenian Church of Turkey. In 1930 the
Armenian Cemetery, which was at Pangalti district attached to the
square, was destroyed by the order of the city.
The marble tombstones and monuments were sold by the city and the
land was used to build, in addition to the Inonu Gezi Park, hotels
such as Hilton, Intercontinental, and Divan.
Also, the TRT radio and TV building was built on the sized Armenian
land.
Pangaltý district, part of the St. Hagop Armenian Cemetery, was the
largest non-Muslim cemetery in Istanbul. The cemetery was built in
1560 after Sultan Suleiman I (the Magnificent) officially decreed
the land to the Armenians. That year, when a plague hit Istanbul,
the Armenians began burying their dead outside the city, across from
the St. Hagop Sanatorium which later became St. Hagop Cemetery.
In 1780 the cemetery was enlarged and in 1853 a wall was built
around it.
According to some, in 1919 a monument was built there in memory of
the victims of the Genocide of Armenians. In 1933, Istanbul launched a
legal challenge to take the land from the Armenian Church. The Armenian
Patriarch launched a counter challenged, but the court case dragged
on for so long that at the end the Ministry of Interior decided to
confiscate the cemetery which covered 850,000-sq. meters and hand it
to the city.
Only 6,000-sq. meters were left to the patriarchate. Furthermore,
the ministry demanded the patriarchate pay 3,200 liras for cover
court costs.
After the confiscation, the city started to sell the land to
investors. The confiscations continued and between 1931 to '39, St.
Hagop Church, which was at Gezi Park and Taksim Square, was also
confiscated and destroyed.
The destruction of the centuries-old church was the final nail which
erased the presence of Armenians in that part of the city. The illegal
confiscation and demolition was in line with the Turkish government
policy of ethnic cleansing which started with the genocide of 1915
against the Armenians.
The irony is that the Turkish authorities used the cemetery and church
stones to build the current park and square.
The history of the Taksim Square and Gezi Park symbolize the vicious,
inhuman and barbarous policies of successive Turkish governments
vis-a-vis minorities. The racist policy has persisted unmitigated
for the last one hundred years.
----------
Gwenyth Eve Todd Huxtable I dislike writing about foreign policy
on Face book but I have to say something, The longer the protests
continue in Turkey, the more we will see coverage of Syria and hear
about the need to arm the rebels or even invade.
Syria is Erdogan's foil and he is able to divert many people's
attention from his own dictatorial ambitions by pointing at Syria and
shouting "squirrel". if he has his way, we will lose out in Turkey
as well as Syria. We do not want to discuss the arrests (or worse)
of so many people allied with the West in Turkey who have dared to
speak out against Erdogan, and Erdogan knows this, so he is fueling the
crisis in Syria to give the West a reason to support Erdogan on Syria.
This means the West overlooks Erdogan's own gross abuse of power
because we seem unable to focus on more than one dictator at a time.
I suspect many people are naive enough to believe that a bunch of
Sunni fundamentalists (certified as OK by Erdogan) running Syria
is somehow better than the situation under the Ba'athists. And we
gloss over the hideous acts of murder and torture carried out by the
Erdogan-backed Syrian rebels against the very Syrian people they are
supposed to be rescuing.
The casualty is the Syrian people, unfortunately, who love freedom as
much as the rest of us but who realize that the rebels could easily
be worse than the Ba'athists.
Did we learn nothing in Iraq? And frankly, anyone recommended by
Erdogan as a viable leader of Syria should be considered highly
suspect when it comes to Western interests. And yes, I know that I
had better not travel to Turkey, even without writing this!
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/16/taksim-square-belongs-to-armenians/
Veterans Today
June 18 2013
While the newspapers are replete with stories about the rioting at
Taksim Square in Istanbul, as Paul Harvey used to say"....here's the
rest of the story "
According to Lebanese daily "Aztag", some Turkish protesters in Taksim
Square demanded the dedication, in the square, of a monument to the
memory of the victims of the Genocide of Armenians.
It is worth mentioning that the legal owner of the square and the
surrounding area is the Armenian Church of Turkey. In 1930 the
Armenian Cemetery, which was at Pangalti district attached to the
square, was destroyed by the order of the city.
The marble tombstones and monuments were sold by the city and the
land was used to build, in addition to the Inonu Gezi Park, hotels
such as Hilton, Intercontinental, and Divan.
Also, the TRT radio and TV building was built on the sized Armenian
land.
Pangaltý district, part of the St. Hagop Armenian Cemetery, was the
largest non-Muslim cemetery in Istanbul. The cemetery was built in
1560 after Sultan Suleiman I (the Magnificent) officially decreed
the land to the Armenians. That year, when a plague hit Istanbul,
the Armenians began burying their dead outside the city, across from
the St. Hagop Sanatorium which later became St. Hagop Cemetery.
In 1780 the cemetery was enlarged and in 1853 a wall was built
around it.
According to some, in 1919 a monument was built there in memory of
the victims of the Genocide of Armenians. In 1933, Istanbul launched a
legal challenge to take the land from the Armenian Church. The Armenian
Patriarch launched a counter challenged, but the court case dragged
on for so long that at the end the Ministry of Interior decided to
confiscate the cemetery which covered 850,000-sq. meters and hand it
to the city.
Only 6,000-sq. meters were left to the patriarchate. Furthermore,
the ministry demanded the patriarchate pay 3,200 liras for cover
court costs.
After the confiscation, the city started to sell the land to
investors. The confiscations continued and between 1931 to '39, St.
Hagop Church, which was at Gezi Park and Taksim Square, was also
confiscated and destroyed.
The destruction of the centuries-old church was the final nail which
erased the presence of Armenians in that part of the city. The illegal
confiscation and demolition was in line with the Turkish government
policy of ethnic cleansing which started with the genocide of 1915
against the Armenians.
The irony is that the Turkish authorities used the cemetery and church
stones to build the current park and square.
The history of the Taksim Square and Gezi Park symbolize the vicious,
inhuman and barbarous policies of successive Turkish governments
vis-a-vis minorities. The racist policy has persisted unmitigated
for the last one hundred years.
----------
Gwenyth Eve Todd Huxtable I dislike writing about foreign policy
on Face book but I have to say something, The longer the protests
continue in Turkey, the more we will see coverage of Syria and hear
about the need to arm the rebels or even invade.
Syria is Erdogan's foil and he is able to divert many people's
attention from his own dictatorial ambitions by pointing at Syria and
shouting "squirrel". if he has his way, we will lose out in Turkey
as well as Syria. We do not want to discuss the arrests (or worse)
of so many people allied with the West in Turkey who have dared to
speak out against Erdogan, and Erdogan knows this, so he is fueling the
crisis in Syria to give the West a reason to support Erdogan on Syria.
This means the West overlooks Erdogan's own gross abuse of power
because we seem unable to focus on more than one dictator at a time.
I suspect many people are naive enough to believe that a bunch of
Sunni fundamentalists (certified as OK by Erdogan) running Syria
is somehow better than the situation under the Ba'athists. And we
gloss over the hideous acts of murder and torture carried out by the
Erdogan-backed Syrian rebels against the very Syrian people they are
supposed to be rescuing.
The casualty is the Syrian people, unfortunately, who love freedom as
much as the rest of us but who realize that the rebels could easily
be worse than the Ba'athists.
Did we learn nothing in Iraq? And frankly, anyone recommended by
Erdogan as a viable leader of Syria should be considered highly
suspect when it comes to Western interests. And yes, I know that I
had better not travel to Turkey, even without writing this!
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/16/taksim-square-belongs-to-armenians/