Turkish Armenian Parliamentarian Selina Dogan Fights for Human Rights

In addition to the direct work of parliament concerning laws, Dogan has other contacts with European legislators. She said, “Sometimes EU parliamentarians visit our country, and they want to see me or my colleagues. Lately, they participated in the gay parade in Istanbul and were arrested. I tried to help them.”

She is active on all sorts of discrimination issues. She said, “First of all, I do not only bring up issues about the Armenian community. There are also Greek, Jewish, Turkish Orthodox and Assyrian communities in Turkey. They have many problems. We have sometimes common problems; sometimes they have their own problems.”

She is playing a novel role in attempting to change the image of the RPP with respect to these groups. She said, “I am trying to somehow bring together the RPP and these entities. There was somehow a distance because of some historical reasons and I am trying to close this distance. I occupy a place in this party now. Within the party, there were some people who never met an Armenian before in their life, and they had prejudices, but after they knew me, this changed. Therefore I think it is very important to occupy this place.”

She declared, “When I will leave the parliament one day, and when they say Armenian, I know that they will remember me. It places on my shoulders a very big mission, a great responsibility.”

She has already raised questions in parliament about issues such as the codes being used secretly to categorize Armenians, Greeks, Jews and others.

At the end of December 2015, together with officials from the Armenian Patriarchate and a reporter from Agos newspaper, she visited Armenian from Iraq fleeing ISIS who ended up in Yozgat, and collected information for a RPP committee dealing with the plight of refugees in Turkey.

On December 12, Dogan in parliament criticized the use of the word “gavur,” meaning infidel or unbeliever, to describe the religious minorities in Turkey. She said that they do not wish to continually be considered as suspect elements in this country. She has made similar criticisms of insulting language directed at minorities in the past.

On a related issue, she states that the government Diyanet Isleri Bakanligi, or Religious Affairs Directorate, “should be abolished. This is an institution that serves only one sect in Islam. They don’t serve the Alevis. They don’t even recognize their place of prayer legally. It is an institution which discriminates in society, and it has a huge budget. It is completely against secularism.”

Dogan is also active on gender discrimination and LGBTI issues in Turkey. She said, “It is a question of life and death in Turkey because they are murdered. Unfortunately, there are a very limited number of parliamentarians who deal with this issue. This is also because of the current situation in Turkey, but this is something that cannot wait, because they are dying — it is not like fashion, or a trend.”

Of the 550 members of parliament, only 87 are women. There is a commission on gender equality in it, but the ruling Justice and Development Party, Dogan said, works “to make women stuck at home with kids, and if possible, to stay there forever, so this is an endless fight.” She added, “It is not that much different in the Armenian community. We maybe do not have this violence provoked by religious motives, but we have the same obstacles as other women. We have to raise our child, the family. It is more important for us to take care of grandma and grandma.”

More generally, due to the state of emergency imposed in Turkey, fundamental rights are being violated. She said that thousands have their passports cancelled so they cannot travel. Dogan related that “the contacts between those arrested and lawyers are not respected. Lawyers cannot even bring in money with them because they could take notes [on the money]. Can you imagine? They are recording with cameras the contacts with clients. So we are trying to keep these things alive so that public opinion can remain aware of them.”

A big problem in this situation, she said, is that “all media is controlled by the ruling party. We don’t have any media. That is why I think it is very important to be in the field in contract with NGOs, with people on the street. We have our social media accounts. Physically we visit with them.”

Dogan said that she had good relations with the other two Armenian deputies in the Turkish National Assembly. About Garo Paylan of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), she exclaimed, “He is my friend. Even before we were candidates he was my friend.” On Markar Esayan of the Justice and Development Party, she said, “Markar is in my district. He is also a friend of mine. I ask his collaboration for some things.”

When asked about the differences between her political party and that of Paylan, she said, “We defend that anybody is equal before the law. Our discourse is not based on any ethnic identity. Their discourse is based mainly on Kurdish identity. And we are always trying to raise the issue of the economy. We want to share the wealth. They do not have such discourses that target everybody, other than peace.” She summarized her approach as follows: “We believe that as long Turkey becomes more democratic and we make the local administrations stronger, as long as we discuss everything in the parliament in a healthy way, it is going to be helpful for any ethnic identity, and we hope that one day we will stop talking about ethnic identity.”

Dogan said that she has homes in Istanbul and Ankara. Her father’s side is from Marzovan or Merzifon in Amasya Province. She had just visited Amasya around a month before her trip to the US, and was able to find the house of her father’s grandmother, Arshaloys. While fleeing from the attacks of Topal Osman in 1921, Arshaloys gave birth to her daughter Berjuhi at Anatolia College run by American missionaries in Merzifon. Dogan’s mother was born in Istanbul but her maternal grandfather was from Kastamonu and her grandmother from Sinop.

When asked what can Armenians in the diaspora do to help the situation in Turkey, she replied, “I realized here that among the participants [in the AIWA conference] there were many people who did not even know what the RPP is. So the first thing is that they should follow what is going on in Turkey. This will let them discover how they can contribute.”

She concluded that there were many ways to promote cultural exchange to build a new bridge, since, she said, “Unfortunately the diaspora has a very pejorative meaning in Turkey. The very first day I went to parliament for registration they asked me things about genocide. I said, please we need to rescue the diaspora from this pejorative meaning. What we are calling diaspora is from Anatolia. Their ancestors are from Anatolia. We have to find a way to speak the same language.”