“Turkey cannot redress magnitude of the damage inflicted”
The Turkish government's announcement of its decision to abide by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights to return long-ago confiscated properties of minorities comes as a step in the right direction, the Armenian Assembly of America (AAA) said in a statement.
"While it remains to be seen how the government will implement this new measure, the policy holds the promise of restoring the rule of law for minorities long discriminated against in Turkey," said the AAA.
The announcement comes in the wake of a series of developments in Turkey resulting in increasing civilian oversight of several branches of the Turkish government previously controlled by the military. Some of these reforms stem from Turkey's aspirations for membership in the European Union.
"However, with the increasingly Islamist policies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party and a recent turnabout for the worse in its relations with the Kurdish population in Turkey, we hope the timing is not just another effort to burnish the government's image as a reform-minded administration.
The timing of Erdogan's new policy on minority properties also coincides with the fact that the Turkish Parliament failed to act on the Armenia-Turkey protocols to establish diplomatic relations and open the border, despite its international commitments to do so. Turkey's failure to enact the protocols reflects a continued pattern of nonperformance, including its existing obligations under the Treaties of Kars and Moscow guaranteeing Armenia access to the Black Sea.
Instead, Turkey, in solidarity with Azerbaijan, maintains its illegal blockade of Armenia and seeks to isolate Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh.
As far as the Armenian minority in Turkey is concerned - after a century of violent persecution, official discrimination, and public racism - the decree to return some of the confiscated properties is a welcomed development, but cannot begin to redress the magnitude of the damage inflicted. This indirect admission that Turkey discriminated against minorities for over three quarters of a century does nothing to reverse the lasting consequences of the Armenian Genocide. Turkey has shown no evidence that it is prepared to deal with the legacy of the Armenian Genocide," reads the statement.
