Turkey’s Armenian community urges changes to schools regulations

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian community is preparing to submit a report to the Turkish education minister, requesting certain modifications to the regulations at minority schools, Hurriyet Daily News reports.

In a report to Education Minister Ömer Dinçer, the Armenian community will demand the abolition of the practice of appointing Turkish deputy principals to minority schools. The report will also demand that the terms of offices of Turkish language and Turkish history teachers be determined by the schools themselves.

Karekin Barsamyan, the elementary school principal of Private Pangalti (Mihitaryan) Armenian High School in Istanbul’s Nişantaşı neighborhood, said they had taken important steps to resolving the problems, as a result of a series of negotiations they had so far held with Ankara.

Barsamyan said the difference of opinions between Armenian principals and Turkish deputy principals had caused some major problems in the past. “Actually, according to the current regulations, we are able to choose our own deputy principals and teachers. We only want to legalize this regulation,” he said.

Silva Kuyumcuyan, the principal of the Armenian School in Karaköy, also contributed to the report. “It is true that we are not currently experiencing the problems that we faced in past. We only demand equal citizenship. We demand that the regulations of other schools are practiced in our schools,” he said.

In Istanbul, there are 14 elementary schools, five high schools and one kindergarten belonging to the Armenian community. There were 3,000 students registered in these schools during the last school year, HDN says.