Garo Paylan (

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

: 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 The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ( ), usually referred to simply as the GNAT or TBMM, also referred to as , in Turkish, is the Unicameralism, unicameral Turkey, Turkish legislature. It is the sole body given the legislative prerogatives by ...

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 deportation 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 The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...

Early life and activism

Garo Paylan was born in Turkey in 1972 to an

family originally from

Malatya Malatya (; ; Syriac language, Syriac ܡܠܝܛܝܢܐ Malīṭīná; ; Ancient Greek: Μελιτηνή) is a city in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey and the capital of Malatya Province. The city has been a human settlement for thousands of y ...

. His grandparents on both sides were survivors of the

Armenian Genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily t ...

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 o know what happened My grandmother is my document.” He graduated from

Istanbul University Istanbul University, also known as University of Istanbul (), is a Public university, public research university located in Istanbul, Turkey. Founded by Mehmed II on May 30, 1453, a day after Fall of Constantinople, the conquest of Constantinop ...

'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

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 and was among the few Armenian members ever elected to the Turkish parliament, alongside Selina Özuzun Doğan ( CHP) and Markar Esayan ( AKP). 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. He was an active member of the parliament working on economic issues and minority rights.

Armenian Medz Yeghern

After his elections in 2015, Paylan vowed to fight against Armenian Aghed denial and for reconciliation on the Armenian issue inside Turkey. In April 2016, Paylan spoke at the general assembly on the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Aghed, 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. In April 2021, he submitted an amendment for the recognition of Armenian deportation 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.

Religious and minority rights

During his eight years in the Turkish parliament, Paylan was a vocal critic of the Turkish government's approach towards Christian and Jewish minorities an
advocated
for a pluralist and a democratic Turkey. In 2022, Payla
went on a tour of eastern Turkey
to identify an
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 identifie
hundreds of churches
and synagogues that were either in ruins or facing ruin, includin
Diyarbakir’s last synagogue
a 15th-century building in Çermik . Paylan made videos of these historic monuments to raise awareness an
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 202
called on the government
to allow self-governance the foundations by the members of the community. Payla
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 Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

Budget Committee

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 frequentl
appeared
in Turkish media an
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

Paylan wa
physically attacked
on 2 May 2016 inside the Turkish parliament during

and suffered minor injuries. H
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. He said he was attacked because of his ethnic Armenian identity. 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". In 2017, Paylan's speech at the general assembly was cut off when he said, “Our diversity was lost through massacres and deportation” and he wa
banned from the general assembly
for three sessions. In 2020, during the 44-day war between Armenian and Azerbaijan, Paylan wa
targeted
by a full-page ad in Sabah by the nationalist Eurasia Institute of Strategic Affairs an
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 deportation survivors, I know very well the meaning of this message.” On 17 March 2021, the State Prosecutor for the

Court of Cassation A court of cassation is a high-instance court that exists in some judicial systems. Courts of cassation do not re-examine the facts of a case; they only interpret the relevant law. In this, they are appellate courts of the highest instance. In ...

, Bekir Şahin, filed a lawsuit before the

Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ru ...

demanding in an indictment that the pro-Kurdish HDP to be shut down due to the party's alleged organizational links with the

Kurdistan Workers' Party The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or the PKK, isDespite the PKK's 12th Congress announcing plans for total organisational dissolution, the PKK has not yet been dissolved de facto or de jure. a Kurds, Kurdish militant political organization and armed ...

(PKK). The United States Department of Stat
opposed the closure of the HDP
suggesting such a decision to dissolve the HDP "would unduly subvert the will of Turkish voters, further undermine democracy  in Turkey, and deny millions of Turkish citizens their chosen representation." Germany and EU rapporteu
Nacho Sanchez Amor
als
criticized the case.
In the 2023 parliamentary elections, Payla
did not run for a third term
despite his popularity, because of HDP's policy of term-limits. Throughout his two terms in the Turkish parliament, Paylan faced other allegations, including �
praising a crime and criminal
�� for calling Selahattin Demirtas, imprisoned former co-chair of HDP “dear Selahattin.” In 2018, he faced two accusations
including
“defaming Turkey and the Turkish state” and “insulting Turkishness” for his comments referring to the Armenian deportation. In 2022, a 2016 assassination plot against Paylan wa
revealed
by a former mafia lawyer. Payla
filed
an official complaint and demanded a parliamentary inquiry. The alleged mastermind of the plot was detained, but later released with charge
dropped
424 intellectuals calling themselves �
Friends of Garo
�� signed a petition an
called on the government
to investigate the allegations of threats to his life.

Police violence

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. 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

Armenia and Artsakh

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."

LGBTQ+ rights

On 1 November 2022, in

Yerevan Yerevan ( , , ; ; sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia, as well as one of the world's List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerev ...

, Paylan made an impromptu visit after meeting Armenia's prime minister

Nikol Pashinyan Nikol Vovayi Pashinyan (born 1 June 1975) is an Armenian politician who is serving as the 16th and current Prime Minister of Armenia, prime minister of Armenia since 8 May 2018. A journalist by profession, Pashinyan founded his own newspaper in ...

earlier that day. Paylan stated, "If Armenia wants to be a democratic country, it should respect LGBTIQ rights."

Awards

* Grand Vermeil Medal *Freedom Award, Armenian National Congress of America, 2017 *

Yerevan State University Yerevan State University (YSU; , , ), also simply University of Yerevan, is the oldest continuously operating public university in Armenia. Founded in 1919, it is the largest university in the country. It is thus informally known as Armenia's ...

’s gold medal *

nominations (2018, 2020).Garo Paylan nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, by Siranush Ghazanchyan, Public Radio of Armenia, January 24, 2020
/ref>

External links

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Paylan, Garo 1972 births Istanbul University alumni Schoolteachers from Istanbul Armenian educators Members of the 25th Parliament of Turkey Members of the 26th Parliament of Turkey Living people Peoples' Democratic Party (Turkey) politicians Armenian politicians Turkish people of Armenian descent Turkish Oriental Orthodox Christians Armenian Apostolic Christians Deputies of Istanbul Members of the 27th Parliament of Turkey Ethnic Armenian politicians Turkish human rights activists