Turkish Red Crescent, Patriarchate aid poor

Vercihan Ziflioğlu ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

1,000 boxes of clothing and foodstuffs were carried to the Patriarchate. DAILY NEWS photo

The Turkish Red Crescent will provide food and clothing aid to 3,500 immigrants and needy families living near the Kumkapı district of Istanbul with the help of the Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey as they did in 2010.

The acting Turkish-Armenian Patriarch Aram Ateşyan asked that the aid not be referred to in a political way, in his statement to Hürriyet Daily News.

“It is said that last year the Patriarchate helped the Armenians who came to Turkey in illegal ways, but it is not true. We [Armenian community] already have been providing help to needy immigrants and families for years without any religious, linguistic or ethnic discrimination in the past years,” Ateşyan said.

Ahmet Lütfi Akar, president of the Turkish Red Crescent, said there were further motives attached to the aid.

No third countries

A total of 500 boxes of clothing and 500 boxes of foodstuffs were carried to the Patriarchate by the Turkish Red Crescent yesterday, said Avedis Hilkat, board member of the Turkish Red Crescent Adalar office.

Hilkat mentioned the approved bill in French Parliament to criminalize any denial of an Armenian “genocide” in 1915, saying the “Turkish Red Crescent is giving a good message about that. My family suffered in 1915, but 96 years passed from then.”

Archbishop Ateşyan also commented on the issue and said “We do not want third countries to be a side of this matter. We need to talk and figure out our common problems. These kinds of interventions harm the ties which are to be constructed between Turkey and Armenia.”