Historic Armenian Cemetery of Beyoglu Returned to Community

ISTANBUL (A.W.)—The Armenian community of Istanbul has regained ownership of a historic cemetery located in the Şişli district, Turkey’s Daily Sabah reported on Feb. 2. The news comes in the wake of new legal amendments that allow the return of properties seized from minorities.

In 2011, the Beyoglu Üç Horan (Holy Trinity) Church Foundation had applied for ownership of the cemetery. After a four-year legal battle, the Prime Ministry’s Directorate General of Foundations, which oversees properties belonging to religious and ethnic minorities, granted ownership of the cemetery to the foundation. The cemetery covers about 452,000 sq. ft. in the heart of Istanbul, and is reported to be worth around $286 million.

Contributor Raffi Bedrosyan, in a Special Report for the Armenian Weekly in 2011, reported on the Turkish government’s announcement that real estate assets once belonging to Armenian, Greek, and Jewish charitable foundations—and confiscated by the state—would be returned to their rightful owners. The government was to also pay compensation for confiscated property that had since been sold to third parties—a “long overdue positive step in the right direction by the Turkish government,” Bedrosyan wrote.

The cemetery’s Armenian roots date back to the early 19^th century, when it was handed over to the Armenian community in a decree by the sultan. It was confiscated by Turkish officials in the 1970’s. Non-Muslim minority charitable foundations were required to submit a list of all real estate assets to the state. According to Bedrosyan, more than 1,400 properties that had been willed or gifted to these charitable organizations were confiscated by the state between 1936 and 1974. In 2012, the Directorate returned a title deed of the Armenian Catholic Cemetery in Şişli to its rightful owners.

Columnist Markar Esayan of the Daily Sabah says minorities have suffered greatly from the “illegal policies” of the directorate that exploited legal loopholes. “Until [2008], they suffered at the hands of fascistic measures,” he said. In 2008, an amendment in the laws “helped the state to repair its past mistakes,” according to Esayan.