Turkey’s Armenian community finally won back Camp Armen last week. The Gedikpasa Armenian Protestant Church in Istanbul now owns the deed to the former orphanage and children’s camp, offering a ray of hope to Turkish Armenians and other non-Muslim minorities. The episode, however, illustrates the many obstacles that non-Muslim foundations in Turkey must overcome to re-acquire their lost properties or buy new ones.
At one level, the story is the sort that deserves a “life is beautiful” tagline, a tale that restores one’s faith in humanity. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Tuzla children’s camp on Istanbul’s Asian side served Turkey’s Armenian community both as an orphanage and summer camp, bringing together some 1,500 children from all over the country with the aim to strengthen their cultural and communal ties.