Garo Paylan

Garo Paylan
Member of the Grand National Assembly
In office
7 June 2015 – June 2023
ConstituencyIstanbul 3rd electoral district (June 2015, Nov 2015)
Diyarbakır (2018)
Personal details
Born1972 (age 51–52)
Istanbul, Turkey
CitizenshipTurkish
NationalityArmenian
Political partyPeoples' Democratic Party (HDP)
Alma materIstanbul University's School of Business
OccupationPolitician

Garo Paylan (Armenian: Կարօ Փայլան, born 1972) is a politician from Turkey and one of the country's leading democracy activists. Paylan was among the few Armenians elected to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and served for two consecutive terms in 2015–2018 and 2018–2023, representing Istanbul and Diyarbakir. He is a founding member of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and since 2016 was the first Armenian in the history of the Republic of Turkey to publicly discuss the Armenian genocide of 1915 from the podium of the Turkish parliament. Paylan is recognized for his activism on human rights and minority rights in Turkey and has been the recipient of several awards, including the Grand Vermeil Medal and has been twice nominated for the Nobel peace prize.

Early life and activism

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Garo Paylan was born in Turkey in 1972 to an Armenian family originally from Malatya. His grandparents on both sides were survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide and Paylan said “I grew up in a household with my grandmother, who an orphan who had lost her entire family. I don’t need a document [to know what happened]. My grandmother is my document.”

He graduated from Istanbul University's School of Business and worked in family shoe manufacturing business. He has served as a board member and coordinator of Armenian community schools in Istanbul, working on multi-lingual education projects. After the assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, Paylan dedicated his career to civil society and was a founding member of “Friends of Hrant Dink”, a group established to seek justice for the 2007 assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. The group organized a yearly vigil in Istanbul on the anniversary of Dink's murder starting 2008.

Political career

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Garo Paylan was among the participants that started the People's Democratic Congress in 2011 and in 2013 became a founding member of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which was established as a progressive coalition and supported a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish conflict.

On June 7, 2015, he was elected into the Grand National Assembly as a representative of Istanbul's 3rd electoral district[1] and was among the few Armenian members ever elected to the Turkish parliament, alongside Selina Özuzun Doğan (CHP) and Markar Esayan (AKP).[2][3][4] Paylan was re-elected in the snap elections of November 2015 and then as a Diyarbakir deputy in the Parliamentary Elections on 24 June 2018.[5] He was an active member of the parliament working on economic issues and minority rights.

Armenian Genocide

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After his elections in 2015, Paylan vowed to fight against Armenian genocide denial and for reconciliation on the Armenian issue inside Turkey.[6] In April 2016, Paylan spoke at the general assembly on the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide , and read out loud the names of Ottoman Armenian politicians and intellectuals who were arrested and killed after being taken away from their homes on April 24, 1915.[7] In April 2021, he submitted an amendment for the recognition of Armenian genocide by the Turkish Parliament: “The place to discuss this great tragedy is this parliament. If we do this, what other parliaments say becomes irrelevant. The only place that would heal the wound of Armenian nation is this parliament.” Paylan submitted a similar proposal in 2022 but was harshly criticized by the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the leader of the nationalist MHP, Devlet Bahceli.[8]

Religious and minority rights

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During his eight years in the Turkish parliament, Paylan was a vocal critic of the Turkish government's approach towards Christian and Jewish minorities and advocated for a pluralist and a democratic Turkey.

In 2022, Paylan went on a tour of eastern Turkey to identify and document churches and synagogues in the countryside facing destruction and ruin, including the Surp Bartholomes in Baskale, Van, dating back 1600 years. Paylan visited 20 sites in Turkey's Eastern countryside and identified hundreds of churches and synagogues that were either in ruins or facing ruin, including Diyarbakir’s last synagogue, a 15th-century building in Çermik . Paylan made videos of these historic monuments to raise awareness and called on Ministry of Culture and Tourism to preserve the buildings.

Paylan highlighted problems faced by Turkey's Christian community's religious and educational foundations, and in 2022 called on the government to allow self-governance the foundations by the members of the community. Paylan called for a government investigation into reports in 2019 that at a Turkish summer camp for girls, kids were encouraged to shout “death to Jews”.

Paylan highlighted discrimination against non-Muslim minority communities during his time in the parliament, including the 6–7 September 1955 pogroms against Jewish, Greek, and Armenian communities in Istanbul and sought to submit a bill to the parliament to declare that date “Memory Day.” He also called for the removal of street names that honored the perpetrators of the Armenian deportations, most significantly Talat Pasha, equating it to calling streets in Germany in memory of Adolf Hitler.[9]

Budget Committee

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From 2015 to 2023, Paylan served as a member of the Turkish parliament's Budget Committee. He scrutinized the government's budgetary choices and economic governance and was a frequent commentator on economic issues in Turkish media. Paylan frequently appeared in Turkish media and criticized Turkish government’s controversial policy in 2018-2023 of selling central bank reserves to stabilize the Turkish Lira, arguing that it was depleting Turkey's central assets and creating a risky economic situation.

Political attacks and persecution

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Paylan was physically attacked on 2 May 2016 inside the Turkish parliament during a subcommittee meeting on constitutional reform and suffered minor injuries. He said the attack was planned and that he was subject to racist slurs about his Armenian identity from deputies of the governing Justice and Development Party. A week later, Minister of Justice, Bekir Bozdağ, blamed Paylan for starting the fight. Paylan responded by saying Bozdağ's remarks were slanderous.[10] He said he was attacked because of his ethnic Armenian identity.[11]

Turkey's Human Rights Association released a statement condemning the violence against Paylan. The statement said that the attacks against him were due to his Armenian origins. and condemned various racial slurs that were said to him such as "the Armenian bastard".[12]

In 2017, Paylan's speech at the general assembly was cut off when he said, “Our diversity was lost through massacres and genocides” and he was banned from the general assembly for three sessions.

In 2020, during the 44-day war between Armenian and Azerbaijan, Paylan was targeted by a full-page ad in Sabah by the nationalist Eurasia Institute of Strategic Affairs and accused of committing “treason” for calling on an end to the Azeri-Armenian war. Paylan filed legal complaint about the advertisement and wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times, “As an Armenian from Turkey and a descendant of genocide survivors, I know very well the meaning of this message.”

On 17 March 2021, the State Prosecutor for the Court of Cassation, Bekir Şahin, filed a lawsuit[13] before the Constitutional Court demanding a 5-year political ban on Paylan and 686 other HDP politicians in an indictment that also asked for the pro-Kurdish HDP to be shut down due to the party's alleged organizational links with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).[14] In the 2023 parliamentary elections, Paylan did not run for a third term, despite his popularity, because of HDP's policy of term-limits.[15]

Throughout his two terms in the Turkish parliament, Paylan faced other legal charges, including “praising a crime and criminal” for calling Selahattin Demirtas, imprisoned former co-chair of HDP “dear Selahattin.” In 2018, he faced two indictments, including “defaming Turkey and the Turkish state” and “insulting Turkishness” for his comments referring to the Armenian genocide.

In 2022, a 2016 assassination plot against Paylan was revealed by a former mafia lawyer. Paylan filed an official complaint and demanded a parliamentary inquiry. The alleged mastermind of the plot was detained, but later released with charges dropped. 424 intellectuals calling themselves “Friends of Garo” signed a petition and called on the government to investigate the allegations of threats to his life.

Police violence

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Paylan has been an advocate of human rights and has shown solidarity with Saturday Mothers (Turkish: Cumartesi Anneleri), the group who has been meeting every Saturday in Galatasaray, Istanbul, since the 1990s to demand answers on the whereabouts of their "disappeared" relatives in Turkey.[16][17] At the 700th meeting of Saturday Mothers, Paylan fought off a police effort to detain the demonstrators, including journalist Ahmet Şık and the son of Hrant Dink.

Views

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Armenia and Artsakh

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During the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno Karabakh in 2020, he urged the Turkish Government to play a stabilizing role in the Caucasus and support a peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In a New York Times op-ed “How Turkey’s Military Adventures Decrease Freedom at Home” on October 15, 2020, Paylan argued that rising nationalism in Turkey was linked to regional instability and democratic backsliding, “Turkey’s involvement in regional conflicts has whipped up nationalist fervor, obliterated space for advocates of peace and democracy and deepened a sense of fear and precarity among the minority populations. (…) Militant nationalism and authoritarianism can neither solve our domestic problems nor help the region. A better choice for my country will always be to seek regional peace and cultivate better ties with our neighbors. Turkey must encourage Armenia and Azerbaijan to return to peace talks and facilitate a lasting settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute."[18]

LGBTQ+ rights

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On 1 November 2022, in Yerevan, Paylan made an impromptu visit after meeting Armenia's prime minister Nikol Pashinyan earlier that day. Paylan stated, "If Armenia wants to be a democratic country, it should respect LGBTIQ rights."[19]

Awards

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See also

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  • "Garo Paylan". tbmm.gov.tr (in Turkish). Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Retrieved 2018-11-21.

References

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  1. ^ UDEOĞLU, Başak (2015-10-31). "Basının kamuoyu oluşturma görevi: 2014 cumhurbaşkanlığı seçim kampanyası dönemi, yeni Şafak ve Sözcü gazetesi örneği (Aim of molding public opinion of the press: presidency election campaign 2014, sample of Yeni Şafak and Sözcü newspapers)". Gümüşhane Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi Elektronik Dergisi. 3 (2). doi:10.19145/guifd.83195. ISSN 2146-3301.
  2. ^ TOPÇU, İlyas (2017-01-01). "KARSTA 1950-1954-1957 MİLLETVEKİLİ SEÇİMLERİ VE DEMOKRAT PARTİ". Journal of Turkish Research Institute. - (58): 389–407. doi:10.14222/turkiyat1602. ISSN 1300-9052.
  3. ^ "June 5", On This Day (June), Gorgias Press, pp. 29–32, 2020-12-31, doi:10.31826/9781463241384-006, ISBN 9781463241384, retrieved 2023-08-21
  4. ^ Kuper, Leo (2017-07-05), "The Turkish Genocide of Armenians, 1915-1917", The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, Routledge, pp. 43–60, doi:10.4324/9781315131023-3, ISBN 978-1-315-13102-3, retrieved 2023-08-21
  5. ^ Libaridian, Gerard J. (2017-07-28), "The Re-Imagined Future: Turkey-Armenia and Turkish-Armenian Relations since Independence", Modern Armenia, Routledge, pp. 265–281, doi:10.4324/9781315124667-13, ISBN 978-1-315-12466-7, retrieved 2023-08-21
  6. ^ Wallis, Andrew (2021-03-15), "Politics of Inter/National Denial of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda", Postgenocide, Oxford University Press, pp. 179–208, doi:10.1093/oso/9780192895189.003.0008, ISBN 978-0-19-289518-9, retrieved 2023-08-21
  7. ^ Varnava, Andrekos (2014-03-12). "Imperialism first, the war second: the British, an Armenian legion, and deliberations on where to attack the Ottoman empire, November 1914-April 1915". Historical Research. 87 (237): 533–555. doi:10.1111/1468-2281.12054. ISSN 0950-3471.
  8. ^ English, Duvar (2021-04-27). "Turkish far-right deputy threatens Armenian MP Paylan with another genocide". www.duvarenglish.com (in Turkish). Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  9. ^ English, Duvar (2021-04-27). "Turkish far-right deputy threatens Armenian MP Paylan with another genocide". www.duvarenglish.com/turkish-far-right-deputy-threatens-armenian-mp-paylan-with-another-genocide-news-57246 (in Turkish). Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  10. ^ "VIDEO: Another fight breaks out at Turkish parliament - Türkiye News". Hürriyet Daily News. 2016-05-02. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  11. ^ "Garo Paylan says he was attacked in Turkish parliament for being ethnic Armenian". armenpress.am. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  12. ^ "Turkish Rights Group Confronts Parliament on Paylan Attacks – Asbarez.com". Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  13. ^ "HDP indictment seeks political ban for 687 members, including Demirtaş, Buldan and Sancar".
  14. ^ English, Duvar (2021-03-18). "Turkish prosecutor seeks political ban on 687 pro-Kurdish politicians". www.duvarenglish.com/turkish-prosecutor-seeks-political-ban-on-687-pro-kurdish-politicians-news-56691 (in Turkish). Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  15. ^ English, Duvar (2023-10-04). "26 political parties will compete in Turkey's upcoming general election". www.duvarenglish.com/26-political-parties-will-compete-in-turkeys-upcoming-general-election-news-62177 (in Turkish). Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  16. ^ SCF (2018-08-25). "700th gathering of 'Saturday Mothers' marred by Turkish police violence, detentions". Stockholm Center for Freedom. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  17. ^ SCF (2018-09-08). "Turkey's 'Saturday Mothers' meet for 702nd week despite police threats". Stockholm Center for Freedom. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  18. ^ Paylan, Garo (2020-10-15). "Opinion | How Turkey's Military Adventures Decrease Freedom at Home". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  19. ^ "More than 140 defy war to attend Armenian LGBTIQ forum". openDemocracy. Retrieved 2023-08-21.
  20. ^ "GARO PAYLAN AWARDED GRAND VERMEIL MEDAL". Archived from the original on 2021-04-19. Retrieved 2020-08-30.
  21. ^ Garo Paylan awarded with YSU Gold Medal
  22. ^ Garo Paylan nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, by Siranush Ghazanchyan, Public Radio of Armenia, January 24, 2020
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