Camp Armen was founded in Üç Çınar in the province of Tuzla by the Gedikpaşa Armenian Church Foundation in 1962. Its purpose was to provide summer education to Armenian children; it educated 1500 children in the 21 years during which it was in service. Most of these children were orphans and nearly 95 percent of them live abroad today. The situation of the Camp is no different from its children who were raised here but could not live in their own country.
What singles out that table from the others and is not apparent to the naked eye is the fact that they came from thousands of kilometers away to be there that night. It is not only Kaya Çınar, who has been living in the USA for 45 years, who came from abroad; nearly all of those gathered around the table live in different countries around the world. Having left Istanbul in 1970s, these people are able to see their relatives, neighbors and teammates who stayed in Turkey only once every few years.
They are guests in their own country and are in exile in their new lives, with which they do not identify. They are Armenians.
Kaya Çınar, aged 65, is one of the children of the Tuzla Children’s Camp, originally named Camp Armen. Camp Armen was founded in Üç Çınar in the province of Tuzla by the Gedikpaşa Armenian Church Foundation in 1962. Its purpose was to provide summer education to Armenian children; it educated 1500 children in the 21 years during which it was in service. Most of these children were orphans and nearly 95 percent of them live abroad today. The situation of the Camp is no different from its children who were raised here but were not able to live in their own country; it was appropriated and returned to its previous owner free of charge with a court ruling in 1983. Although the property passed into many other hands in the last 32 years, no activity was carried out on it. Deprived of children’s voices in 1983, the Camp has lived in exile like the owners of these voices.
Camp Armen was a place little known outside the Armenian community until the latest owner of the land, Fatih Ulusoy, started its demolition on the 6th of May. What made the name of the Camp popular to some extent was the fact that the journalist Hrant Dink, who was murdered in 2007, was raised here and had undertaken the management of the camp in his last years. However, the demolition revived the Camp that had been unused for many years. At first, the demolition was stopped. The resistance began the same night in the Camp with the demand for the Camp to be returned to the Armenian community. On May 23, Fatih Ulusoy stated that he would “grant” the Camp to the Gedikpaşa Armenian Church Foundation “upon the request and order of the Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.” On the 35th day of the resistance, Ulusoy still had not fulfilled his promise. I will examine first the story of Camp Armen and how it began. Then I will turn to the current state of affairs regarding the return of the Camp in the second part of this article.
“Baron” Hrant Küçükgüzelyan
The Head of the Gedikpaşa Armenian Protestant Church Foundation, Hrant Küçükgüzelyan, named “Baron” by children, wandered around the cities in 1950s because no school giving education in Armenian was still operating in Anatolia. He brought Armenian children who did not have the opportunity to receive an education to Istanbul. These children, some of whom were orphans, would receive their education in the İncirdibi Armenian Protestant School and lived on the ground floor of the Gedikpaşa Church, which was turned into an orphanage. One of the children who was found by Küçükgüzelyan in Malatya was Garabet Orunöz, who was orphaned when he was four and came to Istanbul when he was seven:
Küçükgüzelyan would go from door to door to find the school-aged children and would convince their families. He enabled us to have education by covering all the expenses. When the summer came, all the children would be sent to their families. The goal was to find a solution for children during the summer holiday who were in danger of forgetting the Armenian language as they did not speak it throughout the year.1
The foundations of minorities may acquire property on the condition that the governor issues a relevant letter of consent and the property is registered in the foundation registry following the issuance of the official title deed. The Foundation applied to the Governorship of Istanbul and the General Directorate for Foundations to purchase the approximately 1 hectar of land in Tuzla. It took ten months to receive this permission. The land was purchased from its owner Sait Durmaz and its title deed was registered on behalf of the foundation. The ground of the camp was broken on 6 January 1962, the birthday of the Prophet Jesus. Let’s hear the rest from Hrant Dink:
One morning, they took us, 13 children… We walked from Gedikpaşa to Sirkeci. We crossed over to Haydarpaşa by ferry, then we travelled from Haydarpaşa to Tuzla Station by train. Then they took us, by foot, to a wide, immense piece of flat land between the lake and the sea. Back then Tuzla wasn’t a place full of villas for the rich and bureaucrats like it is today… An untouched beach with fine sand and a piece of a lake, cut off from the sea… One or two houses, a few fig and olive trees and brambly blackberry bushes spread out along the ditch…
And the Red Crescent tents we erected…13 puny kids, our ages ranging from 8 to 12, we were no longer sentenced to the concrete garden of the Gedikpaşa Orphanage… We only remembered our family and close ones when we watched the city lights flickering in the far distance at night. We likened the city lights to old stars that had fallen to the ground and piled up.
For three years, we got up at dawn and worked until midnight to complete the camp building. One of our shortest, “Kütük” [The Log] (That’s what we used to call Zakar) could take a cement bag up in his arms all by himself and carry it to the roof. At night, we used to pee in our pants from exhaustion.2
Camp Armen and its children were raised like that. Garabet Orunöz, who is six years younger than Dink, says that when he first arrived at the Camp in 1967, the second floor of the Camp had been completed. There was no electricity and they had to pump water from the well.
Dink gives an account of the construction of the Camp in another of his articles as follows:
“And we spent all those summers like that for many years. We went to the Tuzla Camp every year. The number of children grew each year. We dug new wells; the amount of water increased and the place became greener. One day, the water pump from which we pumped water day and night with our hands had a motor. As the years went by, the trees grew to exceed our height, covered the buildings and the sky of the camp no longer allowed the burning sun in as we had shadows everywhere. Perhaps our voices as children mixed with our labor to fertilize the land. The visitors used to envy it. “Well done,” they would say all, “well done.”3
“Minorities cannot own property after 1936”
Two official acts played a significant role in the development of Camp Armen, as was the case with many foundations’ property in Turkey. These acts are the “1936 Declaration” and the ruling of the Supreme Court Assembly of Civil Chambers from May 8, 1974.
Let’s begin with the “1936 Declaration.” The General Directorate for Foundations requested all the foundations to declare the list of their property based on the Law of Foundations enacted in 1935. It was claimed on paper that the aim of this call was to enable the newly founded Republic to keep a regular land registry (Baskın Oran argues that the real aim of this request was to “make revisions to dry up the economic resources of Islamist communities”4). All foundations complied with the state regulations and submitted the list of the properties owned by them to the relevant institutions. However, the foundations were able to acquire new properties provided that they received the necessary permissions from the state.
The tension that emerged between the Turkish and Greek communities in Cyprus in the first half of the 1960s began to have an impact on the minorities, particularly on the Greek people in Turkey. The 1936 declarations that had been kept in drawers for a long time were remembered and the authorities wanted to use them against the Greek community and therewith threaten Greece.5 The state began to seize the properties of the foundations acquired after 1936 through purchases, inheritances, donations, testaments and gratuities.
The foundations took legal action and filed court cases. One of those foundations is the Balıklı Greek Hospital Foundation in Istanbul, which filed a court case against the Treasury for the return of its properties in 1971. Since the courts ruled in favor of the General Directorate of Foundations each time, the foundations appealed to the Supreme Court. Although there was no legal obligation in that respect written into the 1936 Declaration, the Second Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled that the community foundations which had not clearly stated in their declarations that they accepted donations would not be able to acquire property directly or through testaments.
The decision was approved by the Supreme Court Assembly of Civil Chambers on May 8, 1974 and constituted a legal precedent. This opened up the way for the confiscation of many properties acquired by the minority foundations after 1936. (In the justification of the decision, the Supreme Court states that “it is seen that the legal entities founded by non-Turks are forbidden to acquire immovable properties.” In this way, the Court defines the non-Muslim citizens of the Republic of Turkey as “non-Turks”, illustrating it in a clear manner that citizenship is defined and practiced on an ethnic and religious basis in Turkey6).
The decision issued in 1974 had relevance for Camp Armen in 1979. The General Directorate for Foundations appealed to the 3rd Civil Court of General Jurisdiction in Kartal to demand the cancellation of the title deed of the Gedikpaşa Armenian Church Foundation and the return of the camp land to its previous owner. The case continued for four years and the court ruled that the land should be taken from the foundation and returned to its previous owner. Sait Durmaz took back the land which he sold in 1962 together with the camp facilities built on it without paying any money. The Armenian Protestant Church Foundation lost the land in an illegal manner although it had legally acquired the land. The Foundation appealed to the Supreme Court but its action was rejected in 1987.
Harut Özer, a member of Türkiye Ermenileri Düşünce Platformu [Thought Platform of Turkey’s Armenians] gives an account of the appropriation of Camp Armen from the Gedikpaşa Church as justified by this decision dated 1974:
“Immediately following the precedent ruling in 1974 that ‘minorities cannot acquire property through donation,’ the state filed court cases for the cancellation of titles deeds of all the properties which were not in the lists of 1936 but were acquired throughout the subsequent 38 years. However, a point is being missed here. The minorities already had a very limited right to have title deeds back then. You could acquire property if the governorship consented. That was the case for Camp Armen as well.”
Harun Özer claims that the goal behind cases being filed for the cancellation of the title deeds was to cause the minorities and their foundations to have economic difficulties. “Our lawyers identified the situation. The cases would be drawn out for three or five years, especially if the person was old….When the person died, these properties would be registered as revenues of the Treasury. And the Treasury would sell them immediately.”
When Camp Armen was taken from the foundation and given to its previous owner, the authorities urged the owner to sell it: “We returned it, now you sell it to someone else.” The reason is that in common law, these third persons are inculpable. And at this point the state says “What could I do? The person who took it back sold it to someone else, I cannot take it back.”
The deep “interest” of the state in the camp does not end here. The founding director Hrant Küçükgüzelyan was put on trial after the September 12 coup for “training Armenian militants” in Camp Armen and served time in prison for eight and a half months. When he got out, he left Turkey and moved to Marseilles; he did not return for 25 years. Hrant Dink managed the Camp in its last three years.
Dink’s most commonly known article from among the first articles he wrote on Camp Armen may be the one titled “Do Not Get Lost, Children,” written in 1998.7 Dink tells the story of Garabet Orunöz, who found his sister Flor in the Camp in 1977. They had not seen each other for 15 years since Flor had been given for adoption in Malatya when she was three and a half months old upon the death of their mother.
Camp Armen’s short story “Do Not Get Lost Children” was filmed in 2010. After the death of Hrant Dink, the children “who had eaten the bread of and drunk the water of the Camp” met in what Dink called “the Civilization of Atlantis” for the first time in years upon the initiation of Orunöz. There were 130 of them in 2008 and 30 of them had come from abroad. They met there in the last week of April each year.
I have regrets,” says Orunöz, “Brother Hrant used to say, ‘We need to write our own stories.’ He wanted me to write the story of the way in which we met with Flor after many years. I wasn’t able to write it when he was alive. Then he wrote a short summary as far as he could remember. I wish we could write it together. I wish we could make that film together. That is why we lay claim to our camp. Not to say ‘I wish I had’ again! We want this land back!
Their number increased each day. Sayat Tekir, the co-head of Nor Zartonk, the “self-organization of the Armenians” claims that the awareness of the society increased the interest in and support for the camp due to the connection with Hrant Dink:
“It is a chance that Camp Armen is noted for Hrant Dink. However, there are dozens of Camp Armens. Not all of the lands which belong to the Armenian community that are seized, coveted and whet the appetite of those seeking rent have a Hrant Dink. I speak as a person who studied with foundation scholarship. The properties of the foundations are very important for our community. There are many Armenians who do not have social security.”
Following the demolition, the demand that “they need to give us back our properties which they took from us” was expressed in a louder manner in this community. Sayat Tekir adds that “They try to make the minority communities obey them. People like Markar Eseyan spread fabricated news claiming that ‘the camp was returned’ and support those in power by saying that ‘be on good terms with the power and take what you want.’ But maybe for the first time Armenians will win a place by resistance. The resistance of Camp Armen is a good example of the power of the people when they are united.”
The elderly are more cautious than the young. In relation to the negotiations which are held for the transfer of the title deeds and has not yet been concluded, Garabet Orunöz claims that “We are close to the title deed but we still don’t have it in our hand.”
The Return of belonging
Camp Armen has an important symbolic meaning for the Armenian society. Harut Özer says that nearly all of the children raised in the Camp live abroad and emphasizes that especially the connection of the Armenians in diaspora with their own country needs to be preserved:
This place would not bring an economic gain. But it has a great social importance. The young people who represent Turkey abroad today, with whom the state is often in conflict and whom it calls diaspora were raised here. They work in many fields abroad. Therefore, Camp Armen connects them to this place and makes them feel that they belong here. Our only aim is that these childrens’ feelings of belonging are returned.
Fatih Ulusoy heard about all these things which I tried to account for in this article for the first time in his life when I contacted him on May 6, the day when the Camp was to be demolished. He thought that the place had been used as a hostel by the Armenians, being unaware of the fact that the place which he was to demolish was called a “camp” not to offend the children who spent their lives in the Gedikpaşa Orphanage. The only thing he knew was that a marina and a huge entertainment center were to be built in Tuzla and his land would gain value for that reason.
Whether the Camp will be returned to its real owners depends on the statement which Fatih Ulusoy made on May 23 to announce that he would “grant” the Camp to the Gedikpaşa Armenian Church Foundation “upon the request and order of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.” We do not know whether Ahmet Davutoğlu will be able to ensure that his order is carried out after the selections on June 7. But it seems that even if the land is transferred, this will not be a donation.
1 See Orunöz , Garabet; “Bu yazı Kamp Armen çocukları için yazıldı”, Evrensel, May 3, 2015.
2 See. Dink, Hrant; “Dear Humanity, I Would Like to Press Charges!...”, http://www.hrantdink.org/?Detail=332&HrantDink=11&Lang=en
3 See Dink, Hrant; “Aşk Olsun”, Agos, 5 July 1996
4 See Dilek Kurban and Keban Hatemi (2009), The Story of an Alie(nation): Real Estate Ownership Problems of Non-Muslim Foundations and Communities in Turkey, Istanbul, TESEV Publications.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Dink, Hrant; “Kaybolmayın Çocuklar”, Agos, 8 November, 1998
