Turkish students fraternize with minority pals

Students from a high school in Istanbul have launched a project to establish contact and fraternize with their peers from Turkey’s minority communities, including Armenians, Rum (Anatolian Greek) and Syriacs, through a special permission they obtained from the Education Ministry.

“We chat over daily matters with our peers. We sip on our tea and meet outside. For instance, I wear a headscarf. Perhaps they were never going to make contact with a person wearing a headscarf in their lives, and I was not going to make contact with an Armenian, Rum or Syriac. We are trying to share a glass of tea away from the shadows of [past tragedies,]” Sena Şahbaz, one of the 10th grade students who initiated the project, told the Hürriyet Daily News.

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