Turkish-Armenian MP calls for cancellation of ethnicity codes

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkish-Armenian MP of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Garo Paylan proposed that the parliament remove the religious affiliation component on Turkish identification cards, as well as eradicate the notorious secret ethnicity classification codes for citizens, the Armenian Weekly reports.

In his speech, Paylan noted that he himself has been subjected to racism within the Turkish bureaucracy, because of these divisive classification systems.

“When they see a name like Garo that isn’t familiar, they look to find the religion listed. When they see that I am listed as a Christian, one day’s work won’t get done for a week or ten days…I am repeatedly discriminated against,” he was quoted as saying.

“We Armenians are number ‘2’s,’ the Greeks are ‘1’s,’ the Jews are ‘3’s,’ and the Assyrians are ‘4’s,” he said, adding that people are getting discriminated against due to these codes in various government departments such as the military.

Speaking to the Armenian Weekly in July 2015, Paylan explained how his proposal to remove what he called the “vicious” secret codes from Turkey’s education system had been approved. “If you are to send your child to an Armenian school, you have to prove that you are in fact Armenian. You have to submit a form, and they look if you are a number 2 or not. But there are many Islamized Armenians, and children of mixed marriages. Our parents have so many problems with the coding system. It’s actually humiliating. I argue that we know each other; we know who is an Armenian and who is not. You have to give us that permission. So [the Minister of Education] just signed it—it’s no longer going to be based on the code. We are going to decide who can attend our schools,” he said.

During his interview, Paylan also discussed how he would introduce a measure, which aimed to remove the coding for good. “I will still open another case about the coding, because it’s not just about the education system. Whenever we go into military service or apply for public service positions, they look at the code again. We have to get rid of that code. Luckily, we got rid of the code in the education system. Our parents won’t have to prove that they are Armenian anymore,” he said.