Taksim Square Belongs to Armenians
Ardash Amroyan
According to Lebanese daily “Aztag”, some Turkish protesters in Taksim Square demanded the dedication, in the square, of a monument to the memory of the victims of the Genocide of Armenians.
It is worth mentioning that the legal owner of the square and the surrounding area is the Armenian Church of Turkey. In 1930 the Armenian Cemetery, which was at Pangalti district attached to the square, was destroyed by the order of the city. The marble tombstones and monuments were sold by the city and the land was used to build, in addition to the Inonu Gezi Park, hotels such as Hilton, Intercontinental, and Divan. Also, the TRT radio and TV building was built on the sized Armenian land.
Pangaltı district, part of the St. Hagop Armenian Cemetery, was the largest non-Muslim cemetery in Istanbul. The cemetery was built in 1560 after Sultan Suleiman I (the Magnificent) officially decreed the land to the Armenians. That year, when a plague hit Istanbul, the Armenians began burying their dead outside the city, across from the St. Hagop Sanatorium which later became St. Hagop Cemetery. In 1780 the cemetery was enlarged and in 1853 a wall was built around it.
According to some, in 1919 a monument was built there in memory of the victims of the Genocide of Armenians. In 1933, Istanbul launched a legal challenge to take the land from the Armenian Church. The Armenian Patriarch launched a counter challenged, but the court case dragged on for so long that at the end the Ministry of Interior decided to confiscate the cemetery which covered 850,000-sq. meters and hand it to the city. Only 6,000-sq. meters were left to the patriarchate. Furthermore, the ministry demanded the patriarchate pay 3,200 liras for cover court costs. After the confiscation, the city started to sell the land to investors.
The confiscations continued and between 1931 to '39, St. Hagop Church, which was at Gezi Park and Taksim Square, was also confiscated and destroyed. The destruction of the centuries-old church was the final nail which erased the presence of Armenians in that part of the city. The illegal confiscation and demolition was in line with the Turkish government policy of ethnic cleansing which started with the genocide of 1915 against the Armenians.
The irony is that the Turkish authorities used the cemetery and church stones to build the current park and square.
The history of the Taksim Square and Gezi Park symbolize the vicious, inhuman and barbarous policies of successive Turkish governments vis-à-vis minorities. The racist policy has persisted unmitigated for the last one hundred years.
