Turkey’s Education Ministry has barred Armenian schools in Istanbul from teaching children who hold Armenian citizenship, ending an arrangement that ran for 14 years and directing about 70 students toward Turkish state schools.
Ministry inspectors delivered the instruction during visits to the schools, arriving with lists carrying the names of students from Armenia, asking what had become of those enrolled in previous years, and demanding that current registrations be transferred out.
The instruction came verbally. No written order has been issued, nothing has appeared in the Official Gazette, and the 2012 regulation that permitted the arrangement has not been repealed, which leaves school administrators with no document to appeal.
That regulation, published on March 20, 2012, allowed foreign nationals to attend private schools as guest students subject to enrollment quotas. It specified that such students could not receive diplomas, and that those who left would get a document listing the courses they attended and the grades they earned.
Armenian schools in Istanbul have enrolled children from Armenia under that provision ever since. Syrian-Armenian children were covered by the same rule.
Up to 3,000 children attend Armenian schools in Istanbul, about 70 of whom are Armenian citizens studying under guest status, Ara Gochunyan, editor-in-chief of the Istanbul Armenian newspaper Jamanak, told Armenpress.
Their parents hold the right to work or reside in Turkey. The children sit in every class and take every exam alongside children from Turkey’s Armenian community, then finish with a grades document instead of a diploma. Attending under guest status was itself taking place with the permission of Turkish authorities, Gochunyan said.
Gochunyan said the ministry’s position extends past Armenian schools. “The ministry has had certain observations concerning other minority schools as well, based on which it felt the need to intervene. As a result, a situation has emerged in which the children of families who emigrated from Armenia and attend our schools under ‘guest student’ status are being deprived of this opportunity,” he said.
Greek and Jewish schools fall within the same inspection scope. Armenians, Greeks and Jews are Turkey’s recognized minority groups under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, and the schools established under that treaty were built to serve Turkish citizens belonging to those communities. The guest-student provision was the workaround for a system designed to exclude everyone else.
The authorities’ argument, according to commentary in Agos, the Istanbul Armenian weekly that first reported the inspections, is that the 2012 regulation never covered minority schools to begin with. That reading voids 14 years of practice without producing a document anyone can appeal.
Turkey’s Center for Combating Disinformation, an official body under the Directorate of Communications, has denied that anything has changed. Responding to the Agos report, it called posts about restrictions on minority schools disinformation and said no new practice is being introduced beyond the provisions of the relevant law, with schools continuing their educational activities.
Education Minister Yusuf Tekin has said the ministry does not discriminate among students, and the ministry says it is continuing dialogue with minority schools.
The Human Rights and Oppressed Peoples Solidarity Association, known as MAZLUMDER, has taken up the case. The group said the 2012 provision was an interim fix for a longstanding problem and that ending it without a replacement would leave students facing further difficulties. It has called for legal changes.
The Hrant Dink School in Istanbul is untouched, Gochunyan said. It has operated since the early 2000s without recognition or official status from Turkish authorities, teaching children of migrants from Armenia temporarily living in Turkey using Armenian textbooks and Armenia’s curriculum. Its graduates can return to Armenia and continue their education after sitting an examination.
Children at the minority schools have no such route. Even the grades document often creates problems when they try to continue their education in Armenia, Gochunyan said, though the arrangement at least kept them in an Armenian-language environment in Istanbul.
The Union of Armenian Vakifs in Turkey was set to meet on August 24, with representatives of every foundation that runs a school taking part. Agos reported that Patriarch Sahak Mashalian and AKP member of parliament Sevan S?vac?o?lu were expected to attend.
Community administrators are examining the various aspects of the issue and preparing proposals for the authorities, Gochunyan said, and a delegation representing the Armenian community may go to the Istanbul Governor’s Office after the meeting to raise it.
