User:Yerevantsi/Armenian cultural heritage in Turkey

Overview
Recent research pegs the number of Armenian churches in Turkey before 1915 at around 2,300.

These numbers do not include the churches and schools in Kars and Ardahan provinces, which were not part of Turkey until 1920, and were part of Russia since 1878.

On June 18, 1987 the Council of Europe drafted a 6 point resolution which stipulates that "the Turkish government must pay attention to and take care to heed the language, culture and educational system of the Armenian Diaspora living in Turkey, simultaneously demanding an appropriate regard to the Armenian monuments that are situated in Turkey’s territory."

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2011/08/01/searching-for-lost-armenian-churches-and-schools-in-turkey/

http://books.google.com/books?id=Xuz6GngdaVsC&pg=RA1-PT42&dq=armenian+churches+turkey+destroyed&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kbU6UdfSJIWm9gTWjIHICw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA

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A survey, not in itself comprehensive, prepared in 1914 by the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople listed 2,549 religious sites under its control, including more than 200 monasteries and 1,600 churches. Many were destroyed in the process of the genocide but many more have since been vandalized, flattened or converted to mosques or barns. In contrast to Kristallnacht, where the destruction of architecture offered a warning of worse to come, the Turks have continued to remove stone by stone, the evidence of millennial of Armenian architectural and art history following the mass murder and exile of the Armenian people. It was only in the 1960s that Armenian and other architectural scholars began the politically and physically dangerous task of recording and rescuing what remains of 1,800 years of Armenian ecclesiastical heritage. A 1974 survey identified 913 remaining churches and monastic sites in Turkey in various conditions. At half of these sites the buildings had vanished utterly. Of the remainder, 252 were ruined. Just 197 survived in anything like a usable state.

In the late 1980s and early '90s the travel writer William Dalrymple found evidence of the continuing destruction of Armenian historic sites. Although many sites had fallen into decay through not so benign neglect, earthquakes or peasants searching for Armenian gold supposedly hidden beneath churches, there are clear instances of deliberate destruction.

He argues that the destruction accelerated in the 1970s and 80s in response to the emergence of a terrorist group, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, which carried out attacks against the Turkish establishment. Censorship increased. In one 1986 incident, the editor of the Turkish edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was arrested and charged regarding a footnote that made mention of the historic Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. The book was banned. Ten years earlier, French historian J. M. Thierry was sentenced, in his absence, to three months' hard labout after being arrested for drawing a plan of an Armenian church near Van. He escaped before being sentenced. Thierry also reported that the government had sought to demolish an Armenian church in Osk Vank in 1985 but the villagers resisted, valuing it for various utilitarian uses - a granary and a stable among them.

Although Dalrymple notes that the difficulties of finding unequivocally clear evidence of deliberate destruction after the fact, a number of telling examples have been discovered. A collection of five important churches at Khitzonk (now Bes Kilise), near Kars, had been officially offlimits to visitors since the genocide until the 1960s. Only the cupola of the eleventh-century St Serguis chapel remained by the time of Dalrymle's visit; its four walls had been blow out (no earthquake could cause such a damage). The remaining churches had all but vanished. Locals said the buildings had been dynamited by the army.

Other shattered religious sites include Surb Karapet, partially destroyed in the 1915 massacres and then reduced to a rubble by the military target practice in the 1960s.

Elsewhere some remains cling on, including the tenth-century chapel frescos at Varak Vank, now a barn. The ninth-century basilica at Dergimen Koyu, near Erzinja, is a warehouse with a huge hole smashed in the side to allow vehicles entry. The Armenian cathedral at Edessa (now Urfa), converted into a fire station in 1915, was converted again to as mosque as recently as 1994 with the remains of its ecclesiastical fittings destroyed in the process. The town is, traditionally, the first outside the Holy Land to have accepted Christianity. There are no churches in use today.

The strategy of neglect of the cultural heritage of the excluded ‘other’ is a long-term policy linked to the cultural priorities of local and central governments, and might probably be seen as the continuation of the strategy of destruction in times of peace. While, at least some mosques and examples of Turkish/Islamic (indigenous) architecture are reconstructed with public funds, Christian churches or Synagogues are largely ignored by state agencies. As long as Christian or Jewish communities are present, these churches can be kept through communal efforts and even with the involvement of local municipalities. Yet, once the community is no more, as is the case in most of the Southeast of the country, the places of worship of the other are either used as stables or manufactories, are left in disrepair or converted to mosques. The few examples of conversion of churches to cultural centers and museums are mostly located in the western parts of the country, where some municipalities implement more humanistic cultural policies.

http://arsiv.setav.org/ups/dosya/13204.pdf

map from source

List of notable churches, monasteries
The premeditated destruction of objects of Armenian cultural, religious, historical and communal heritage was yet another key purpose of both the genocide itself and the post-genocidal campaign of denial. Armenian churches and monasteries were destroyed or changed into mosques, Armenian cemeteries flattened, and, in several cities (e.g. Van), Armenian quarters were demolished.

Aside from the deaths, Armenians lost their wealth and property without compensation. Businesses and farms were lost, and all schools, churches, hospitals, orphanages, monasteries, and graveyards became Turkish state property. In January 1916, the Ottoman Minister of Commerce and Agriculture issued a decree ordering all financial institutions operating within the empire's borders to turn over Armenian assets to the government. It is recorded that as much as 6 million Turkish gold pounds were seized along with real property, cash, bank deposits, and jewelry. The assets were then funneled to European banks, including Deutsche and Dresdner banks.

After the end of World War I, Genocide survivors tried to return and reclaim their former homes and assets, but were driven out by the Ankara Government.

In 1914, the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople presented a list of the Armenian holy sites under his supervision. The list contained 2,549 religious places of which 200 were monasteries while 1,600 were churches. In 1974 UNESCO stated that after 1923, out of 913 Armenian historical monuments left in Eastern Turkey, 464 have vanished completely, 252 are in ruins, and 197 are in need of repair (in stable conditions).


 * Arter
 * Banak
 * Diyarbakir
 * Saint Hakob of Akori Monastery
 * St. Marineh Church, Mush
 * Tekor Basilica
 * Bagnayr Monastery
 * St. Hovhannes Church of Bagrevand

Reaction
http://schiff.house.gov/press-releases/house-passes-resolution-urging-turkey-to-restore-properties-to-armenian-church/

http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/Doc/XrefViewHTML.asp?FileID=11851&Language=EN

http://rules.house.gov/Media/file/PDF_112_1/Suspension%20bills/HRes3061209.pdf

On June 18, 1987, the European Parliament, with the initiative of the Greek MPs, formally recognized the Armenian Genocide.


 * Calls for fair treatment of the Armenian minority in Turkey as regards their identity, language, religion, culture and school system, and makes an emphatic plea for improvements in the care of monuments and for the maintenance and conservation of the Armenian religious architectural heritage in Turkey and invites the Community to examine how it could make an appropriate contribution;
 * Considers that the protection of monuments and the maintenance and conservation of the Armenian religious architectural heritage in Turkey must be regarded as part of a wider policy designed to preserve the cultural heritage of all civilizations which have developed over the centuries on present-day Turkish territory and, in particular, that of the Christian minorities that formed part of the Ottoman Empire;