H\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> yesterday.<\/p>\nThe patriarchate also demanded the return of other properties in the Central Anatolian province of Sivas formerly owned by the Sansaryan Foundation in the lawsuit it filed Mar. 14.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not going to content ourselves with the mere return of historical buildings. We are also going to demand compensation from the Foundations General Directorate for all material losses incurred by the patriarchate since 1936,\u201d Elbeyo\u011flu said.<\/p>\n
Upon the government\u2019s request, Turkey\u2019s minority groups in 1936 gave the government declarations detailing their real property. Over the years, however, many of these properties did not remain registered under the minority foundations\u2019 names, and some were even sold to third parties.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s Foundations General Directorate expropriated the Sansaryan Foundation citing the 1936 Declaration, according to Elbeyo\u011flu.<\/p>\n
The Turkish-Armenian Patriarchate also filed another suit against the Foundations Directorate General in recent months demanding that the Sansaryan Shopping Center in Istanbul\u2019s Emin\u00f6n\u00fc district be returned to the patriarchate. However, the head of Turkey\u2019s Foundations Directorate General has said it will not be returned despite a ruling by an Istanbul court to impose an interim injunction over the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis runs counter to all international legal [norms] as well as the Treaty of Lausanne. The Patriarchate is still in possession of the title deed,\u201d Elbeyo\u011flu said.<\/p>\n
The Armenian community currently owns three small foundations across the whole of Anatolia. If the patriarchate wins its lawsuit, it will mark the first time that Turkey\u2019s Armenian community has regained control of a foundation in Anatolia.<\/p>\n
The Foundations Directorate General still classifies Sansaryan as a property left without a manager and whose ownership consequently passed onto the Foundation Directorate General, but for that definition to hold up in court, it would require there to be no citizens of Armenian descent in Turkey, according to Elbeyo\u011flu.<\/p>\n
The Sansaryan Foundation was established by M\u0131g\u0131rdi\u00e7 Sansaryan, a Russian-Armenian philanthropist. The police used the Sansaryan Shopping Center in Istanbul for a long period during which torture was widespread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Armenian Patriarchate has filed a landmark suit in Ankara for the return of the historical Sansaryan School in the eastern province of Erzurum that was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":168986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169012"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}