The two largest American-Armenian groups have expressed opposing views over Turkey’s recent announcement that hundreds of properties seized by the state from minorities over the past seven decades will be returned to their rightful owners.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s announcement is just a “smokescreen,” said the Armenian National Committee of America, or ANCA, the largest and most influential U.S. Armenian group. The more moderate Armenian Assembly of America, or AAA, the second-largest U.S. organization, said however that the decision was “a step in the right direction.”

The Turkish move was made due to “fear of mounting losses at the European Court of Human Rights and the recent [committee] adoption of U.S. Congressional legislation calling attention to its repression of Christian communities,” ANCA said in its statement.

“Erdoğan’s decree, clearly prompted by increased Congressional scrutiny of Turkey’s repression of its Christian minority and successive losses at the European Court of Human Rights, will return less than 1 percent of the churches and church properties confiscated during the Armenian genocide and the decades that followed it,” said ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian.

“Ninety-six years after the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians, Greeks and Syriacs, this decree is a smokescreen to evade the much broader consequences of those brutal acts. ANCA will expand its outreach to Congress and the administration to ensure that the Turkish government comes to terms with its brutal past, respects the religious freedom of surviving Christian communities and returns the fruits of its crime,” Hachikian said.

Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed in the Ottoman Empire during World War I in what they call “genocide.” Turkey counters that the number was much smaller and that many Turks and Muslims were also killed in turmoil during the war.

‘A welcome development’

“The Turkish government’s announcement of its decision to abide by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights to return the long-ago confiscated properties of minorities comes as a step in the right direction,” the AAA said in a written statement late Wednesday. “While it remains to be seen how the government will implement this new measure, the policy holds the promise of restoring the rule of law for minorities long discriminated against in Turkey,” it added.

“The announcement comes in the wake of a series of developments in Turkey resulting in increasing civilian oversight of several branches of the Turkish government previously controlled by the military. Some of these reforms stem from Turkey’s aspirations for membership in the European Union,” the AAA said. “As far as the Armenian minority in Turkey is concerned – after a century of violent persecution, official discrimination, and public racism – the decree to return some of the confiscated properties is a welcomed development, but cannot begin to redress the magnitude of the damage inflicted.”

Speaking during a landmark fast-breaking, or iftar, dinner Sunday with representatives of all of Turkey’s 161 registered minority foundations, Erdoğan said the decision to return hundreds of properties to non-Muslim communities was about righting past wrongs.

/Hurriyet Daily News/