Yasin
22.12.2006, 20:28
Bismillah
Es gibt ein Interview mit dem armenischen Patriarchen von Istanbul, Mesrob II. (geboren 1956), dem gewählten Oberhaupt der armenischen Kirche in der Türkei aus dem Jahre 1999, das auch unter http://www15.dht.dk/~2westh/interview_with_patriarch_mesrob_.html
nachgelesen werden kann.
Dieses Interview wurde in New York, während eines Besuches des Patriarchen durchgeführt und in einer armenischen Zeitschrift (Armenian Mirror-Spectator) in den USA auf Englisch veröffentlich, welches hier auszugsweise zitiert wird:
Q: How many Armenian churches are there in Istanbul, and do they all have priests? And how many Armenian churches outside of Istanbul?
A: There are 38 functioning churches and chapels being administered by 33 parish councils. We have 26 married priests and six celibate priests. Outside of Istanbul, we have six functioning churches - in Diyarbakir, Kaiseri (in the region of Hatay), Antioch, Kirikhan in Antioch, one in Alexandretta (Iskenderun) and one in Musa Dagh. Then we have quite a few communities which don't have churches but are somewhat organized: Ankara, Sebastia (Sivas), Malatia, Mersin and other small communities. They keep a constant relationship with the Patriarchate. We send priests to them.
Q: How many Armenians are there in Istanbul, and how many outside of Istanbul in all these small communities?
A: In Istanbul the community is between 60,000 and 65,000. Outside of Istanbul, we have no way of counting. But in all of Turkey, the total is about 80,000 to 82,000.
Q: Do the Armenians of Istanbul speak Armenian? And are there Armenian language papers? Do they print in both Armenian and Turkish?
A: Not all speak Armenian, because some of them have come from the inner provinces where they don't have churches or schools. They speak a dialect or understand a dialect, but they wouldn't be fully conversant in Armenian. We, in Istanbul, have two daily Armenian newspapers: Marmara is about 50 years old, and Jamanak, 90 years old, the oldest Armenian newspaper still in publication in the world. The circulation is about 2,000 for each. Both print only in Armenian. We also have the three-year old Agos, which is a bilingual [Turkish and Armenian] weekly with a circulation of nearly 6,000.
Q: What is the status and condition of the Armenian schools in Turkey?
A: We have 19 Armenian day schools in Istanbul, and this year we have 3,800 students. Fifteen of them are Armenian Orthodox schools, and four of them Armenian Catholic schools. But the Armenian Catholic community is less than 2,000 people. I would say, 95 percent of the Armenian Catholic school students are from our community. Pressures on the Armenian Church in Turkey
Q: What pressures are there on the Armenian Church in Turkey by the government?
A: How would you define pressure?
Q: What restrictions or efforts to curtail either the education, language or the freedom of the church are there?
A: We can open any of our churches at any time of the day. We can have any services we wish. We can have any type of Armenian or Turkish sermons or Bible studies on any subject that we want. There are no restrictions. In Turkey, I can openly say, there are no religious restrictions at all. Turks are religious people themselves. And we enjoy the same religious liberty as Muslims, Jews and Greeks. No ethnic or religious minority today in Turkey can say with a clear conscience, that there are any restrictions whatsoever. The only difficulty, and it isn't a direct curtailment of religious liberty, is how to train new priests. That's the main problem we have because we don't have an Armenian seminary in Istanbul.
Q: Are you able to send candidates out of the country to other seminaries, then bring them back to Turkey with no problem?
A: Yes, yes, with no problem. I can't say this is a restriction on the Armenian community, because it's the same for the Jews, Greeks and even the Muslims. The Muslim communities have no seminaries, but the universities have theological faculties where they have Islamic theology. There are not enough people who would enlist in a department of Christian theology in a country of 70 million Turkish citizens. And we Christians altogether are less than one percent [of the population]. The Greeks are less than 3,000. There are some 10,000 Syrian Orthodox, some 5,000 Catholics, some 5,000 Protestants. So, if you take all other non-Muslim Christian denominations, and put the Armenian Church on the other side of the scale, then we are still larger than all of them united. The Armenians are the largest non-Muslim community in Turkey, the number one church in that respect. None of these communities have enough vocations for the priesthood. There is no demand for the universities to open a Christian faculty of theology, because Turkey has secular laws and does not allow each religious community to open their own uncontrolled religious theological seminary. It's a Middle Eastern country, and you can have fanaticisms, like Islamic resurgence. If you do not allow Muslim communities to have their own private seminaries, then it wouldn't be right for the Christian communities to have their own seminaries because this would not be an equal opportunity before the law. And this is why we have problems. So what we have is informal Lsaran (auditorium) within the Patriarchate where, when we get vocations, we give spiritual formation training for two or three years. Then we send for shorter liturgical training these candidates who complete the formative training to places like Echmiadzin. They complete a year or two in these places, then we ordain them. If they have the will and capability to study further, then we send them to European schools, where they finish their education. It is costly this way.
I have just suggested to the Turkish Higher Institution Council in Ankara that maybe they should allow the Patriarchate the privilege of enrolling five to ten students a year in the university system for whom we could prepare an interdisciplinary program where they could take existing humanities courses from different university departments. Then we could teach Christian theology and Armenian distinctive doctrines, about two semesters worth, and they could receive a university degree for that. Since my election, I have been working with the academicians in order to solve this problem. Apart from that, we have no restrictions in daily religious life. I have been working as a minister of different ranks since 1977. During the last 22 years in Istanbul, since being ordained a deacon, I have never experienced any restriction in church ministry.
Q: Do the Armenians of Istanbul speak Armenian? And are there Armenian language papers? Do they print in both Armenian and Turkish?
A: Not all speak Armenian, because some of them have come from the inner provinces where they don't have churches or schools. They speak a dialect or understand a dialect, but they wouldn't be fully conversant in Armenian. We, in Istanbul, have two daily Armenian newspapers: Marmara is about 50 years old, and Jamanak, 90 years old, the oldest Armenian newspaper still in publication in the world. The circulation is about 2,000 for each. Both print only in Armenian. We also have the three-year old Agos, which is a bilingual [Turkish and Armenian] weekly with a circulation of nearly 6,000.
Q: You were elected by a very large vote margin. Why was the Turkish government so opposed to your election?
A: You cannot find even a single word in any radio, TV or newspaper report where the Turkish government opposed my candidacy. Just the opposite. All the mainline papers in Turkey defended my candidacy. It was the ultra-nationalists, two or three papers and one ultra-nationalist TV channel, which claimed that the government did not support my candidacy. The reality is that, among the 33 Armenian parish councils, three opposed my election. They were in the hands of some Armenian people using the real estate of those churches. They did not have a substantial parish community and were dwindling, small churches. The people in power in this group knew that a dynamic, younger patriarch would challenge what was happening in those parishes. They seemed to prefer someone older whom they could manipulate. They tried to use their connections with the governor of Istanbul to influence the government decision. And the government, instead of opposing my candidacy, thinking that the community was divided on this issue which was not true, wanted the preelection period to be longer, to be studied. It was the Turkish president himself who finally stated publicly that the Turkish government has no right to interfere in the democratic way in which the Armenian community has always elected their patriarchs, and that the Turkish government will ratify whoever is elected. This is what happened, and I was given a high state welcome two months later in Ankara by the President, the President of the National Assembly, the Prime Minister, the deputy Prime Minister and three state ministers in the National Assembly hall. The 50 Armenian administrators from various districts in the community were all honored by the National Assembly.
Q: Has the government restricted the building of renovation of Armenian religious monuments?
A: We just renovated the St. Gregory the Illuminator Church in Kayseri (Gesaria), and in 2001 we're going to celebrate the 1,700-year [anniversary of the ] founding of the Church.
Q: But we have heard, read and seen pictures of the destruction of the Armenian monuments in Turkey. Are things like that taking place?
A: The churches which still belong to the Armenian church communities are in good shape. All Armenian churches in Istanbul are in excellent shape. In Anatolia, we just reconstructed the whole complex of St. Mary's Armenian Church on Musa Dagh. And the only church now which is in terrible shape is in Dikranagerd (Diyarbakir), St. Giragos Church.
The problem in Diyarbakir is that the municipality and the governor's office are bugging the Patriarchate to go on with the renovation. And it is the Armenian community which is not able to renovate. Why? Because after the Gulf War, many northern Iraqis migrated to Diyarbakir, and many Armenians didn't like the insecurity in the area. They left for Istanbul. So the parish belongings and the title deeds of buildings and real estate, the church, the monuments there are now in the hands of just 14 simple provincial people who don't know what to do with the property. They don't have the money to renovate it, and when you have only a community of 14, as opposed to at least 1,000 or 1,500, the Patriarchate is now wondering whether it is worth renovating the place. It is a huge church with five altars, and the roof has collapsed. It is as large as St. Vartan Cathedral here. Just the mending of the roof will cost at least $200,000.
Q: How about Ani, Akhtamar?
A: According to Ottoman law and the laws of the Turkish Republic (which pertain not only to Armenians, but also Greeks, Jews and Muslims), if a religious temple does not have a community, it is not owned by that community any longer.
Es gibt ein Interview mit dem armenischen Patriarchen von Istanbul, Mesrob II. (geboren 1956), dem gewählten Oberhaupt der armenischen Kirche in der Türkei aus dem Jahre 1999, das auch unter http://www15.dht.dk/~2westh/interview_with_patriarch_mesrob_.html
nachgelesen werden kann.
Dieses Interview wurde in New York, während eines Besuches des Patriarchen durchgeführt und in einer armenischen Zeitschrift (Armenian Mirror-Spectator) in den USA auf Englisch veröffentlich, welches hier auszugsweise zitiert wird:
Q: How many Armenian churches are there in Istanbul, and do they all have priests? And how many Armenian churches outside of Istanbul?
A: There are 38 functioning churches and chapels being administered by 33 parish councils. We have 26 married priests and six celibate priests. Outside of Istanbul, we have six functioning churches - in Diyarbakir, Kaiseri (in the region of Hatay), Antioch, Kirikhan in Antioch, one in Alexandretta (Iskenderun) and one in Musa Dagh. Then we have quite a few communities which don't have churches but are somewhat organized: Ankara, Sebastia (Sivas), Malatia, Mersin and other small communities. They keep a constant relationship with the Patriarchate. We send priests to them.
Q: How many Armenians are there in Istanbul, and how many outside of Istanbul in all these small communities?
A: In Istanbul the community is between 60,000 and 65,000. Outside of Istanbul, we have no way of counting. But in all of Turkey, the total is about 80,000 to 82,000.
Q: Do the Armenians of Istanbul speak Armenian? And are there Armenian language papers? Do they print in both Armenian and Turkish?
A: Not all speak Armenian, because some of them have come from the inner provinces where they don't have churches or schools. They speak a dialect or understand a dialect, but they wouldn't be fully conversant in Armenian. We, in Istanbul, have two daily Armenian newspapers: Marmara is about 50 years old, and Jamanak, 90 years old, the oldest Armenian newspaper still in publication in the world. The circulation is about 2,000 for each. Both print only in Armenian. We also have the three-year old Agos, which is a bilingual [Turkish and Armenian] weekly with a circulation of nearly 6,000.
Q: What is the status and condition of the Armenian schools in Turkey?
A: We have 19 Armenian day schools in Istanbul, and this year we have 3,800 students. Fifteen of them are Armenian Orthodox schools, and four of them Armenian Catholic schools. But the Armenian Catholic community is less than 2,000 people. I would say, 95 percent of the Armenian Catholic school students are from our community. Pressures on the Armenian Church in Turkey
Q: What pressures are there on the Armenian Church in Turkey by the government?
A: How would you define pressure?
Q: What restrictions or efforts to curtail either the education, language or the freedom of the church are there?
A: We can open any of our churches at any time of the day. We can have any services we wish. We can have any type of Armenian or Turkish sermons or Bible studies on any subject that we want. There are no restrictions. In Turkey, I can openly say, there are no religious restrictions at all. Turks are religious people themselves. And we enjoy the same religious liberty as Muslims, Jews and Greeks. No ethnic or religious minority today in Turkey can say with a clear conscience, that there are any restrictions whatsoever. The only difficulty, and it isn't a direct curtailment of religious liberty, is how to train new priests. That's the main problem we have because we don't have an Armenian seminary in Istanbul.
Q: Are you able to send candidates out of the country to other seminaries, then bring them back to Turkey with no problem?
A: Yes, yes, with no problem. I can't say this is a restriction on the Armenian community, because it's the same for the Jews, Greeks and even the Muslims. The Muslim communities have no seminaries, but the universities have theological faculties where they have Islamic theology. There are not enough people who would enlist in a department of Christian theology in a country of 70 million Turkish citizens. And we Christians altogether are less than one percent [of the population]. The Greeks are less than 3,000. There are some 10,000 Syrian Orthodox, some 5,000 Catholics, some 5,000 Protestants. So, if you take all other non-Muslim Christian denominations, and put the Armenian Church on the other side of the scale, then we are still larger than all of them united. The Armenians are the largest non-Muslim community in Turkey, the number one church in that respect. None of these communities have enough vocations for the priesthood. There is no demand for the universities to open a Christian faculty of theology, because Turkey has secular laws and does not allow each religious community to open their own uncontrolled religious theological seminary. It's a Middle Eastern country, and you can have fanaticisms, like Islamic resurgence. If you do not allow Muslim communities to have their own private seminaries, then it wouldn't be right for the Christian communities to have their own seminaries because this would not be an equal opportunity before the law. And this is why we have problems. So what we have is informal Lsaran (auditorium) within the Patriarchate where, when we get vocations, we give spiritual formation training for two or three years. Then we send for shorter liturgical training these candidates who complete the formative training to places like Echmiadzin. They complete a year or two in these places, then we ordain them. If they have the will and capability to study further, then we send them to European schools, where they finish their education. It is costly this way.
I have just suggested to the Turkish Higher Institution Council in Ankara that maybe they should allow the Patriarchate the privilege of enrolling five to ten students a year in the university system for whom we could prepare an interdisciplinary program where they could take existing humanities courses from different university departments. Then we could teach Christian theology and Armenian distinctive doctrines, about two semesters worth, and they could receive a university degree for that. Since my election, I have been working with the academicians in order to solve this problem. Apart from that, we have no restrictions in daily religious life. I have been working as a minister of different ranks since 1977. During the last 22 years in Istanbul, since being ordained a deacon, I have never experienced any restriction in church ministry.
Q: Do the Armenians of Istanbul speak Armenian? And are there Armenian language papers? Do they print in both Armenian and Turkish?
A: Not all speak Armenian, because some of them have come from the inner provinces where they don't have churches or schools. They speak a dialect or understand a dialect, but they wouldn't be fully conversant in Armenian. We, in Istanbul, have two daily Armenian newspapers: Marmara is about 50 years old, and Jamanak, 90 years old, the oldest Armenian newspaper still in publication in the world. The circulation is about 2,000 for each. Both print only in Armenian. We also have the three-year old Agos, which is a bilingual [Turkish and Armenian] weekly with a circulation of nearly 6,000.
Q: You were elected by a very large vote margin. Why was the Turkish government so opposed to your election?
A: You cannot find even a single word in any radio, TV or newspaper report where the Turkish government opposed my candidacy. Just the opposite. All the mainline papers in Turkey defended my candidacy. It was the ultra-nationalists, two or three papers and one ultra-nationalist TV channel, which claimed that the government did not support my candidacy. The reality is that, among the 33 Armenian parish councils, three opposed my election. They were in the hands of some Armenian people using the real estate of those churches. They did not have a substantial parish community and were dwindling, small churches. The people in power in this group knew that a dynamic, younger patriarch would challenge what was happening in those parishes. They seemed to prefer someone older whom they could manipulate. They tried to use their connections with the governor of Istanbul to influence the government decision. And the government, instead of opposing my candidacy, thinking that the community was divided on this issue which was not true, wanted the preelection period to be longer, to be studied. It was the Turkish president himself who finally stated publicly that the Turkish government has no right to interfere in the democratic way in which the Armenian community has always elected their patriarchs, and that the Turkish government will ratify whoever is elected. This is what happened, and I was given a high state welcome two months later in Ankara by the President, the President of the National Assembly, the Prime Minister, the deputy Prime Minister and three state ministers in the National Assembly hall. The 50 Armenian administrators from various districts in the community were all honored by the National Assembly.
Q: Has the government restricted the building of renovation of Armenian religious monuments?
A: We just renovated the St. Gregory the Illuminator Church in Kayseri (Gesaria), and in 2001 we're going to celebrate the 1,700-year [anniversary of the ] founding of the Church.
Q: But we have heard, read and seen pictures of the destruction of the Armenian monuments in Turkey. Are things like that taking place?
A: The churches which still belong to the Armenian church communities are in good shape. All Armenian churches in Istanbul are in excellent shape. In Anatolia, we just reconstructed the whole complex of St. Mary's Armenian Church on Musa Dagh. And the only church now which is in terrible shape is in Dikranagerd (Diyarbakir), St. Giragos Church.
The problem in Diyarbakir is that the municipality and the governor's office are bugging the Patriarchate to go on with the renovation. And it is the Armenian community which is not able to renovate. Why? Because after the Gulf War, many northern Iraqis migrated to Diyarbakir, and many Armenians didn't like the insecurity in the area. They left for Istanbul. So the parish belongings and the title deeds of buildings and real estate, the church, the monuments there are now in the hands of just 14 simple provincial people who don't know what to do with the property. They don't have the money to renovate it, and when you have only a community of 14, as opposed to at least 1,000 or 1,500, the Patriarchate is now wondering whether it is worth renovating the place. It is a huge church with five altars, and the roof has collapsed. It is as large as St. Vartan Cathedral here. Just the mending of the roof will cost at least $200,000.
Q: How about Ani, Akhtamar?
A: According to Ottoman law and the laws of the Turkish Republic (which pertain not only to Armenians, but also Greeks, Jews and Muslims), if a religious temple does not have a community, it is not owned by that community any longer.