Mayor: Armenians have no right to demand land

The mayor of a southern Turkish town where a monastery that Lebanese Armenians want to return to is located said Armenians cannot prove the site belonged to them and said, "Not even an iota of land is to be handed over to anyone."

The Lebanon-based Armenian Church Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia has filed an appeal with Turkey's Constitutional Court for the return of a monastery in Kozan, a district in the southern Turkish province of Adana, it says once belonged to it.

A lawyer representing Catholicos of Cilicia Aram I, head of the church, called on Turkey to recognize the land of the monastery, which now lies in ruins, as the property of the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia.

Musa Öztürk, the mayor of Kozan from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), told reporters that Armenians had no proof of ownership of the monastery, which fell into ruin in the 1950s.

The lawyer for Aram I had presented telegrams from Talat Pasha and Cemal Pasha, two senior figures of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, as evidence of ownership of the monastery by the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia.

Öztürk said the lawsuit came at the time of the centenary of the so-called Armenian genocide, while "a more aggressive campaign against Turkey by the Armenian diaspora was underway."

Lawyer Cem Murat Sofuoğlu, who represents the Armenians, said earlier that the lawsuit was not related to the centenary of the so-called Armenian genocide - a term used by Armenians to describe the mass deaths of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 during their forced deportation - but is simply a property issue. The centenary, marked last week, once again pitted Armenia and Turkey against each other over the controversial issue, with the Armenian diaspora lobbying for recognition of the 1915 events as genocide and urging Turkey to return the land they claim belonged to Armenians in eastern Turkey.

The mayor warned that the Armenians' appeal to the Constitutional Court would pave the way for similar lawsuits. He cited the Treaty of Lausanne between Turkey and the Allies signed in 1923 that granted rights to minorities. "The relevant clause of the treaty stipulates that minorities should appeal within six months after the treaty comes into force for the return of their properties if any were seized by the state. It is not a retroactive clause, and unclaimed properties were handed over to the Treasury. The Treasury, in turn, handed the property to the Kozan municipality," Öztürk said. He said that the municipality's search could not find any official documents granting ownership to Armenians. "We have not an iota of territory that we can give to anyone," he added.

The monastery, known as Cilicia or Saint Sophia, is largely dilapidated. Its walls were removed decades ago and used in the construction of a cemetery wall and school.

Speaking to Ihlas News Agency, Abdurrahman Kütük, a local historian, said Armenians left Kozan of their own free will in 1920 and claimed they were not prevented from coming back in the following years. Kütük said the land claimed by the monastery originally belonged to a Muslim Turkish family, and Armenians seized it in 1903.