Turkish Human Rights Organization: Attacks in Istanbul’s Samatya District of Racist Nature

ISTANBUL — Turkish Human Rights Organization (IHD) has published a report about the attacks on ethnic Armenians in Istanbul’s Samatya district.
According to Istanbul-based Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos, the report stresses that the attacks are of racist nature and demanded that police intensify its activity.
“The victims of the attacks are alike – they are old women of Armenian descent. It is obvious that the aim of the attack is not robbery. Old and weak women who may easily be “unarmed” beaten and subjected to violation,” the head of the organization Meral Cildir said.
One of the reporters present at the news conference said on the day of the attack on Sultan Aikar the local Greek church was stoned.
Cildir noted that as long as the word “Armenian” is used as a swearword in Turkey, the assaults against the country’s Armenians will continue.
The Istanbul-Armenian community keeps remaining concerned over the continuing violence against Armenians in the Samatya district.
The Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos has devoted a report to the recent assault against an 80 year-old Armenian woman. It has brought up more details of the incidents.

“The 80-year-old Sultan Akyar was entering the house when a masked man, aged 35, assaulted her. The neighbors, who had heard the woman’s voice, rushed to the scene to save Akyar at the last moment. Injured on the head and face, Akyar had her vision in the right eye deteriorated.
The witnesses, two young girls, said they had seen the perpetrator smoking at the door-entrance. They had also noticed a car, with two men leaning against it and ‘reading a magazine’ while keeping an eye on the scene.
This witness evidence proves that the assault was pre-arranged,” says the publication, adding that a Turkish parliamentarian from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) has sent a note to the country’s interior minister, Idris Naim Shahin, expressing concerns over the assaults against the ethnic Armenians in the Istanbul district.