TURKEY: RELIGIOUS MINORITIES VOICE OPPOSITION TO

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 002998

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/02/2017
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREL OSCE TU
SUBJECT: TURKEY: RELIGIOUS MINORITIES VOICE OPPOSITION TO
DRAFT FOUNDATIONS LAW


Classified By: Political Counselor Janice G. Weiner, reasons 1.4 (b),(d
)


1. (C) Summary and comment: Turkey's traditional religious
minority communities -- Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox,
and Jewish Community -- recently have criticized elements of
a draft Foundations Law, vetoed in 2006 by then-President
Sezer, that Parliament is expected to take up in early 2008.
All three groups believe the draft law fails to compensate
for seized properties registered after 1936 and expropriated
properties sold to third parties. The Greek and Armenian
Communities oppose the bill outright, maintaining it
backslides. They say it makes implementation conditional on
Greece taking reciprocal steps, and allows the government to
take control of foundations and seize associated properties.
The Jewish Community and the EU Commission believe these
deficiencies are outweighed by the bills progressive steps,
such as enabling them to recover some properties and granting
them more managerial control over foundations. Although the
law is imperfect, it goes significantly further than past
steps, and could be a bellwether of further reforms. End
summary and comment.

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GOT Plans to Re-Pass Foundations Law in 2008
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2. (SBU) Turkey's EU Secretariat Political Chief Cem
Kahyaoglu told us he expects Parliament to re-pass in early
2008 a Foundations Law that was partially vetoed by
then-President Sezer in November 2006. Ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP) whip Sadullah Ergin told us the
Foundations Law was one of several laws Parliament would take
up after passing a budget (completed last Friday). Yusuf
Beyazit, DG of Turkey's Foundations Directorate (the
"Vakiflar"),explained the Vakiflar had prepared the law in
2005, as part of Turkey's Ninth EU Reform Package, to address
the conflict over properties belonging to Turkey's historic
minority communities. The law would ease administrative
restrictions on foundations by allowing them to acquire,
exchange, and dispose of properties without governmental
permission, and to establish corporations to help them to
carry out investment activity, according to Beyazit. The law
also would establish an 18-month period within which
foundations could apply to recover properties catalogued in a
1936 GOT declaration and expropriated by the State.

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At Issue: Non-Muslim Properties Seized by the State
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3. (SBU) Churches and other non-State religious institutions
have no legal personality in Turkey and thus cannot own
property in their own right. For this reason, religious
community properties such as churches, monasteries, and
schools tend to be owned by Religious Community Foundations
that come under the authority of the Vakiflar. Although
Article 40 of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty granted religious
minority communities the right independently to administer
their own foundations, the Turkish state has regularly
intervened in the management of these foundations.


4. (SBU) In 1936, the GOT required foundations to declare all
their properties in a land registry. In 1974, amidst
mounting tensions over Cyprus, the Turkish High Court of
Appeals (the "Yargitay") issued a ruling that minority
religious foundations had no right to acquire properties
beyond those listed in the 1936 declarations. The State
subsequently seized control of properties acquired after

1936. That ruling also allowed the State to confiscate
properties, including those declared in 1936, under certain
conditions. Most expropriated properties belonged to the
Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox foundations. The
properties included not only churches but also
rent-generating assets such as apartment buildings.

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Religious Minorities Say Foundations Law Seriously Flawed
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5. (SBU) Representatives from the Greek Orthodox, Armenian

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Orthodox, Jewish, and Assyriac communities pointed out the
bill's shortcomings at a December 6 Istanbul conference
organized by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies
Foundation (TESEV). Dilek Kurban, TESEV's Director of
Democratization, told us the groups agreed the draft law has
five major shortcomings:

--it fails to reverse allegedly arbitrary State decisions to
confiscate foundations' properties declared after 1936 -- the
bulk of properties seized by the State;

--it fails to address the issue of expropriated properties
sold to third parties;

--it does not allow communities to recover foundations over
which the government took control when there were no
descendants of the original founders or trustees (so-called
"mazbut" or "fused" foundations);

--it makes implementation conditional on Greece taking
reciprocal steps; and

--it prohibits foundations from participating in activities
abroad.


6. (C) The Greek Orthodox community has expressed the loudest
opposition to the draft law. Greek Orthodox Metropolitan
Meliton explained to us that the law failed to compensate the
community for the more than 2000 properties seized and sold
by the GOT -- far more than other groups. Greek community
lawyer Kezban Hatemi stated the new law would officially
sanction the Vakiflar's ability subjectively to declare that
a foundation had no appropriate heir. Armenian Community
lawyer Luiz Bakar told us the GOT had seized approximately 35
of her community's properties. Bakar agreed the law was
flawed but also believed it would bring some advances, such
as liberalizing rules governing foundations' ability to
manage properties and purchase new property. Bakar
emphasized that the Armenian Community finds other issues
more pressing, particularly the continuing inability of
children of undocumented Armenian citizens residing in Turkey
to attend Armenian schools.


7. (C) Kurban told us the Jewish Community had also expressed
opposition to the law at TESEV's conference, but had refused
to join the other groups in speaking out publicly for fear of
jeopardizing an historically good relationship with the GOT.
Jewish Community Executive VP Lina Filiba told us during a
private meeting that the law was imperfect -- the GOT had
watered down earlier versions -- but was a step in the right
direction. One key shortfall, according to Filiba, is that
the law does not address returning confiscated minority
community cemeteries now owned by municipalities.

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EU: Re-Passing Foundations Law a Key Symbolic Step
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8. (SBU) EU Commission Political Counselor Diego Mellado told
us re-passing the Foundations Law would be an important
message that the GOT is committed to re-starting a stalled
reform process. EU Commission Political officer Sema Kilicer
maintained the current draft does much to advance the rights
of religious minorities, and that future laws could address
controversial issues such as expropriated properties sold to
third parties and the "mazbut" system. A main advance is
that the law is not limited to the three "traditional"
minorities (Jewish, Armenian Christian, and Greek Orthodox)
but applies to Chaldeans, Bahai's, and all other groups. The
draft law also would give foundations more leeway in managing
their properties, allow minority communities to recover some
expropriated properties -- though admittedly through a
confusing and untried legal process -- and allow foundations
to amend their charters, helping them prevent the Vakiflar
from seizing properties based on its judgment that the
foundation is no longer pursuing its original purpose.

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WILSON