Kurdified - Turkified Armenians

[Arpa]

My apologies for the length, and that it is in Armenian.

I will not opine, you’re welcome except, observe the highlights below where it is stated that islamization is not a new phenomenon, that it started in the 7th century during the Arab occupation.

Also note where it is said that in this age of the Internet they are coming out of the woodwork.

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http://www.hairenikweekly.com/?p=5930

 

ՀԱՄԱԶԳԱՅԻՆ ՆԻՒ ԵՈՐՔ.- «ԻՍԼԱՄԱՑՈՒԱԾ ԵՒ ԳԱՂՏՆԻ ՀԱՅԵՐԸ ՄԻԱՏԱՐՐ ՉԵՆ», ԸՍՏ ԵՐՈՒԱՆԴ ՄԱՆՈՒԿԻ

 

»Ներկայիս Թուրքիոյ մէջ ամենակարեւոր հարցը ինքնութեան հարցն է«, ըսաւ Երուանդ Պարէտ Մանուկ, Փարիզի եւ Վենետիկի մէջ դասաւանդող պոլսահայ հայագէտ, »Իսլամացուած եւ գաղտնի հայեր« դասախօսութեան ընթացքին Նիւ Եորքի մէջ : »Թէ° հայկական թէ° քրտական թէ ալ ժողովրդավարացման հարցերը ուղղակի կապ ունին երկրի բնակչութեան կարեւոր մէկ մասին իր արմատները փնտռելու եւ ինքնութեան զարթօնքի հարցին հետ«:

Ըստ Մանուկի, որու համալսարանական մասնագիտութիւնն է հայթրքական յարաբերութիւնները՝ իր տարբեր բնագաւառներուն մէջ, »Պատմական եւ մարդաբնական ուսումնասիրութիւնները ցոյց կու տան, որ Թուրքիոյ ներկայ բնակչութեան մեծամասնութիւնը պատմութեան ընթացքին բռնի կամ կամաւոր իսլամացուած, թրքացուած կամ քրտացուած ժողովուրդներու սերունդներէ կը բաղկանայ«:

Նիւ Եորքի Համազգայինի մասնաճիւղի կազմակերպած զեկոյցին մէջ, Մանուկ ըսաւ, որ »Ասոնք ժամանակի ընթացքին իրենց իրական արմատներուն հետ կապերը կորսնցնելով, իրենք զիրենք թրքական շրջաններու մէջ թուրք, իսկ քրտական շրջաններու մէջ ալ քիւրտ կը համարեն«:

»Իսլամացուած հայերու պարագան ալ այս ընդհանուր շրջագծին մաս կը կազմէ: Այս նիւթը բաւական ժամանակ թէ° հայերու թէ° ալ թուրքերու համար »թապու« մը եղած է: »Երկու կողմերն ալ տարբեր պատճառներով նախընտրեցին լուռ մնալ«, ըսաւ դասախօսը:

Մանուկ, որ այս նիւթի շուրջ համապարփակ գրքի մը պատրաստութեան լծուած է, ըսաւ, որ »վերջին 1520 տարիներու ընթացքին Թուրքիոյ մէջ տեսնուող սահմանափակ ժողովրդավարացման գործընթացը, ուրիշ նիւթերու կարգին, մտաւորականներու եւ հայկական ծագում ունեցող մահմետականներու առիթ տուաւ, որ օր մը աւելի համարձակութեամբ արտայայտուին իսլամացուած հայերու այս բարդ նիւթին մասին«:

Այսօր ալ, Թուրքիոյ հանրութեան համար հետաքրքրական նիւթ է կրօնափոխ, իսլամացուած կամ գաղտնի հայերու պարագան: Թրքական մամուլը լեցուն է թէ° դրական թէ° ալ ժխտական զգացումներով գրի առնուած լուրերով եւ յօդուածներով:

Զուգահեռաբար հայկական մամուլն ալ հակազդելով Թուրքիոյ մէջ տեղի ունեցող իրադարձութիւններուն, լրատւութեամբ, թարգմանութիւններով եւ ուսումնասիրական յօդուածներով սկսաւ արծարծել բռնի իսլամացուած հայերու նիւթը:

 

Ներկայիս Թուրքիոյ ազգայնամոլ եւ կրօնամոլ շրջանակներու համար »հայ« բառը շատ անգամ հայհոյանք կամ նախատինք կը գործածուի: Ազգայնականներ մէկու մը նախատելու համար կÿըսեն, թէ ան հայկական ծագում ունի: Այս մթնոլորտին մէջ՝ »Ես հայ եմ«. »Ես մահմետական հայ եմ«, կամ »ես հայկական ծագում ունիմ« ըսելը Թուրքիոյ գաւառներուն մէջ շատ դժուար եւ վտանգաւոր երեւոյթ է: Վերջերս Թուրքիոյ, որոշ չափով, ժողովրդավարացման շնորհիւ շատեր իրենց հայկական ինքնութիւնը բացայայտել սկսան:

Հայերու իսլամացման գործընթացը Է. դարէն, արաբական արշաւանքներու շրջանէն կը սկսի: Հայաստան նուաճելէ վերադարձող արաբական զօրքերը իրենց հետ բազմաթիւ երկսեռ մանուկ եւ երիտասարդ հայ գերիներ ալ կը տանէին իբր աւար: Այս մանուկ եւ երիտասարդները ապրելու համար պարտաւոր էին իսլամանալու: Ասոնցմէ ոմանք ժամանակի ընթացքին արաբական աշխարհի մէջ շատ կարեւոր դիրքերու հասան:

Հայաստան հասնող մահմետականները (թուրք, քիւրտ, արաբ, պարսիկ եւ այլն) տեղացիներուն անմիաբան վիճակէն կÿօգտուէին: Իրենց ներքին հակամարտութիւններուն պատճառաւ հայ իշխանաւորներ երբեմն նախընտրած են իրենց մրցակից հայ իշխանաւորներու դէմ եկուոր մահմետականներուն միանալ: Երբեմն ալ որոշ իշխանաւորներ քաղաքական, տնտեսական եւ այլ տեսակի շահերը մղուած իրենց կամքով ընդունած են Իսլամը եւ միւս հայերու դէմ պայքարած են:

 

Իսլամացումի միջոցներ

Երկուորները երկրին տիրելու եւ տեղացիները իսլամացնելու համար հետեւեալ միջոցներու դիմած են.

Ա. Հայկական նախարարական համակարգի վերացում (այսպէսով, տեղացի հայերը առանց ղեկավարի կը մնային):

Բ. Հայ զանգուածներու բռնի կամ կամաւոր արտագաղթ (այսպէսով, թէ° տեղացի հայերու թիւը եւ ոյժը կը պակսէր, թէ° ալ իսլամական նոր միջավայր արտագաղթած հայերը բռնի իսլամացնելը աւելի դիւրին կÿըլլար):

Գ. Հայերու գիւղերուն եւ քաղաքներուն մէջ իսլամ բնակչութիւն տեղաւորել (այսպէսով, հայկական բնակավայրերը կը կորսնցնէին բնակչութեան միատարրութիւնը):

Դ. Հայ բնակչութեան բռնի իսլամացում (Տեղւոյն վրայ բնակեցուած իսլամ բնակչութիւնն ալ այս գործընթացին կÿօգնէր):

Ե. Իսլամ չեղող բնակչութեան զինուորական ոյժի օգտագործում (Իսլամ չեղող բնակչութեան մէջ կատարուող բռնի մանկահաւաքի եւ բռնի իսլամացման միջոցաւ յատուկ բանակներ կը կազմուէր: »Ենիչերի«ներու մաս կազմող հայերու մէջ շատ բարձր պաշտօններու հասնողներ ալ եղած են):

Զ. Պետութեան վճարուող շատ բարձր հարկեր: Դրացի մահմետական ժողովուրդներու կատարած թալաններու եւ արեւանգումներու անպատիժ մնալը (Օսմանական Կայսրութեան մէջ մահմետական չեղող ժողովուրդները մահմետականներու բաղդատմամբ պետութեան շատ աւելի բարձր հարկեր կը վճարէին: Ասոր վրայ կÿաւելնար նաեւ դրացի իսլամ ցեղախումբերու կատարած թալաններն ու առեւանգումները: Իսլամութիւնը ընդունիլը այս ծանր վիճակէն ազատելու ճամբայ մըն էր):

Պատմաբաններ կÿենթադրեն, որ երբ թուրքերը, սովէն մղուած Մոնղոլական տափաստաններէն, սկսան Փոքր Ասիա ներխուժել, հազիւ 400 հազար հոգի էին: »Ինչպէ՞ս կրցան ամբողջ ազգեր նուաճել«, հարց տուաւ Մանուկ: Ըստ դասախօսին, պարտուած ազգերուն ղեկավար դասակարգը կը գլխատէին —ոչ միայն փոխաբերական իմաստով— եւ կը հպատակեցնէին բռնի կերպով ենթակայ ազգերը, իրենց դաժանօրէն իսլամականացնելով:

»Հայոց Ցեղասպանութեան ընթացքին մեծ թիւով հայերը ընտանեօք իսլամանալով իրենց կեանքը փրկեցին«, ըսաւ Մանուկ, աւելցնելով, որ սկիզբը հայերը իսլամացնելու այս գործընթացը իշխանութեան կողմէ ալ կը քաջալերուէր, բայց աւելի վերջ այս քաղաքականութիւնը փոխուեցաւ: »Երբ որ Եղեռնէն փրկուելու համար իսլամացած հայերու թիւը շատցաւ, իշխանութիւնը որոշեց նոյնիսկ իսլամացած հայերու մէկ մասը տարագրել եւ հալածել«, ըսաւ զեկոյցի ընթացքին, որ տեղի ունեցաւ Նոյեմբեր 29ին Նիւ Եորքի Սուրբ Լուսաւորիչ Մայր Տաճարի սրահին մէջ:

Միատարր զանգուած չեն

Իսլամացուած եւ գաղտնի հայերը միատարր զանգուած մը չեն: Ամէնքը իրարու չեն նմանիր: Իրենց մէջ կան շերտաւորումներ եւ ամէն մէկ շերտի հետ յարաբերուելու ռազմավարութիւնը միւսներէն տարբեր պէտք է ըլլայ:

Ընտանեօք իսլամացածնելու համար իրենց ինքնութեան հետ կապը պահպանել համեմատաբար աւելի դիւրին էր: Անոնք ընդհանրապէս իրարու մէջ կÿամուսնանան, որովհետեւ իրենց ապրած փոքր բնակավայրերու իսլամ դրացիները գիտեն, թէ անոնք հայեր են եւ կÿարհամարեն զիրենք:

Գաղտնի հայերը գիտեն թէ հայ են եւ իրենց կրօնքը քրիստոնէութիւնն է: Յամենայն դէպս, իրենց ապրած այդ վտանգաւոր միջավայրին մէջ գոյատեւելու համար մահմետականի պէս կÿապրին: Վերջին տարիներուն իրենց իրական ինքնութեան եւ կրօնքին վերադարձնողներուն թիւը օրէ օր կը շատնայ:

Իսլամացուած հայերը գիտեն թէ իրենք հայերու սերունդներ են, բայց ալ իսլամութիւնը իրենց իրական կրօնքը եղած է: Վերջերս շատեր իրենց հայկական ինքնութիւնը բացայայտել սկսան: Եթէ ապագային Թուրքիոյ ժողովրդավարացման գործընթացը ալ աւելի զարգանայ, վստահաբար իրենց հայկական ինքնութիւնը ստանձնող մահմետականներու թիւը շատ աւելի պիտի բարձրանայ:

Հինէն իսլամացուածները

Կան նաեւ շատ աւելի հինէն իսլամացուած հայերու սերունդներ: Ասոնց կարելի չէ հայ համարել: Ասոնք թուրք, քիւրտ, արաբ կամ ուրիշ ազգերէ մահմետականներ են, որոնց ընտանեկան տոհմածառին մէջ տեղ մը հայկական ծագում մը կայ: Ժամանակի ընթացքին հայութեան հետ գրեթէ բոլոր կապերը կորսնցուցած են եւ շատ անգամ լուր իսկ չունին թէ հեռաւոր հայկական արմատներ ունին: Այս խումբին թիւը շատ բարձր է: Ասոնց մէջ կայ նաեւ փոքրամասնութիւն մը, որ լուր ունի իր հայկական արմատներէն բայց ինքզինք հայ չզգար:

Պատմութեան ընթացքին իսլամացուած հայեր գոյութեան ունեցած են նաեւ արաբական երկիրներու, Պարսկաստանի, Ատրպէյճանի, Վրաստանի, Աֆղանիստանի, Հնդկաստանի եւ Մոնկոլիայի մէջ: Ներկայիս Սուրիոյ մէջ Հայոց Իսլամական Ցեղախումբ անունով ցեղախումբ (աշիրէթ) մը գոյութիւն ունի:

Հայկական ծագում ունեցող մահմետականներու ընդհանուր թիւը ճշգրիտ կերպով կարելի չէ գիտնալ: Պատմաբաններու եւ ընկերաբաններու ըրած հաշուարկումներու համաձայն կը կարծուի թէ անոնց թիւը 20 միլիոնէ աւելի է: Մահմետական հայերու համար 1էն 2 միլիոն, գաղտնի հայերու համար 300 հազարէն 1 միլիոն թիւերը կը տրուի: Բնականաբար այս թիւերը գիտական եւ ստոյգ չեն:

Բուռն հետաքրքրութիւն

Աւետիս Հաճեան, Նիւ Եորքի Համազգայինի վարչութեան անդամ, ներկայացուց օրուան դասախօսը:

Հաճեան ըսաւ, որ »Զանազան պատճառներով, որոնց բնոյթը տակաւին վէճերու առարկայ է հայրենական եւ սփիւռքահայ գիտական եւ լրագրական շրջանակներէ ներս, վերջին տարիներուս արթնցած է հետաքրքրութիւն, որ հետզհետէ կը խորանայ, թրքաբնակ թաքուն հայերուն մասին«: Հաճեան յայտնեց, որ »արդար չէ, անշուշտ, այս նիւթի շուրջ նորագոյն ուշադրութիւնը միայն մասնագիտական շրջանակներու սահմանափակել, քանի որ գրեթէ շաբաթ չÿանցնիր, որ հայ մամուլը մեր ազգակիցներու այս խումբին չÿանդրադառնայ«:

Չորս շարժառիթ թերեւս կը մղէ հայերս, մանաւանդ սփիւռքահայերս, այս եռանդուն հետաքրքրութիւնը ունենալու համար հանդէպ թաքուն հայերը:

Առաջին առթիւ , համացանցային միջոցներու ընդհանրացումը, մանաւանդ »Դիմագիրքեը« (Ֆէյսպուք) ընկերային համացանցային տոմարը դիւրացուցած է հաղորդակցութիւնը աշխարհի չորս ծագերուն: Այսօր, կարելի է կապ պահել, օրինակ, Արտուինի համշէնահայերու հետ կամ Մուշի զազա թաքուն հայերու հետ »Դիմագիրք«ի (Facebook) միջոցաւ: Նաեւ առաջին հերթի վրայ պէտք է հաշուենք Թուրքիա այցելելու դիւրութիւնը, բռնագրաւուած հողերը ներառեալ, եւ առիթները, որ այս դրութիւնը ստեղծած է թաքուն հայերու հետ շփում ունենալու: Օրինակ՝ վկայութիւններ կան թաքուն հայերու մասնակցութեան մասին վերջերս կատարուած Աղթամարի պատարագին, որ բանակռիւներու տեղի տուաւ հայութեան մէջ:

Միւս երկու պատճառները հաւանաբար թէական են, եւ հաստատօրէն ժխտական. մէկ կողմէն, սփիւռքահայութեան գաղութային կառոյցներու տկարացումը մեզ կը մղէ յոյս փնտռելու մեր կորսուած հողերուն վրայ մնացած իսլամացած հայերուն մէջ, այսինքն՝ թաքուն հայերը իբր վերանորոգման աղբիւր սպառած հայկական ոգիի: Ասիկա կրնայ մեզ յուսախաբութեան մատնել, քանի որ բացասական կերպով չենք կրնար հաստատել ի՞նչ չափով հայ մնացած են: Նաեւ, կարելի է ենթադրել, որ Արեւմուտքի մէջ ընդհանուր եկեղեցասիրութեան տկարացումը –հանգամանք մը որմէ դժբախտաբար հայ գաղութները զերծ չեն– նաեւ նուազած է նախապաշարումը սփիւռքահայերուս մէջ (հաւանաբար պոլսահայ գաղութին բացառութեամբ) կրօնափոխ հայերը մեզի ազգակից համարելու:

Վերջապէս, մեր հետաքրքրութիւնը թաքուն հայերով փոխադարձ է՝ իրենք ալ համացանցային եւ ուրիշ միջոցներով կը փորձեն հայերուս հետ կապ հաստատել կամ, հարիւր կամ հարիւրաւոր տարիներ վերջ, վերահաստատել, ըսաւ Հաճեան բացման խօսքին մէջ:

Մանուկ Վենետիկի Մուրատ Ռաֆաէլեան ճեմարանի շրջանաւարտ է եւ իր վարդապետութեան (տոքթորայի) տիտղոսը ստացած է Վենետիկի Կաֆոսկարի Համալսարանէն արեւելեան լեզուներու մասնագիտութեամբ: Հայերէն եւ հայոց պատմութիւն կը դասաւանդէ Ֆրանսայի եւ Իտալիոյ մէջ, եւ Վենետիկի հայ լեզուի եւ մշակոյթի ամառնային դասընթացքին ուսուցչական կազմի անդամ է 1987էն ի վեր:

Դասախօսը կը նախատեսէ այս նիւթի շուրջ գիրքի պատրաստութեան գործը աւարտել մօտաւորապէս մէկմէկ ու կէս տարիէն: Գիրքին առաջին հրատարակութիւն պիտի ըլլայ թրքերէն: Ներկաներու մէջ կը գտնուէին Հայաստանէն բանասիրական գիտութիւններու դոկտ. Մարգարիտ Խաչատրեան, Համազգայինի Նիւ Եորքի մասնաճիւղի վարչութեան ատենապետ Ընկ. Հրանդ Մարգարեան, Ընկ. Արա Գաբրիէլեան եւ Ալֆրէտ Տէմիրճեան, Պոսթընէն, որ հովանաւորեց Երուանդ Պարէտ Մանուկի ներկայացումը:

Edited January 7, 2011 by Arpa

[Ashot]

The Armenian's population was as high as 4 million and has dropped below 2 million now. Armenia has occupied 20% of Azerbaijan territory and claims deaths of Armenians during war between Turkey and Armenia as genocide complicating any normalization between Turkey and Armenia. The Armenians that converted and became Turkified and Kurdified two generations ago are now being encouraged to be Armenians again so that there would be a "foothold" in Turkey for Armenian claims.

 

The topic of Turkified, Kurdified and Islamicized Armenians has become quite fashionable in recent years, having gained increasing popularity amongst Armenians both in the Homeland and in the Diaspora. The articles which mention Islamicized and Turkified Armenians tend to share two common themes: Turkified Armenians should be redeemed and returned to the Armenian nation, and discuss whether the Armenian people can accept a Muslim component the way it has accepted and integrated Catholic and Protestant communities.

 

The analytical weakness of the articles focusing on Turkified and Islamicized Armenians, however, stems from the fact that these articles do not appear to take into account the opinion of the very people concerned. Also, some of these articles confuse admission of one Armenian grandparent with a desire to become a full-fledged Armenian. How many Kurdified or Turkified Armenians want to return to the fold of Armenianness? Can the upbringing of these individuals as Turks and Muslims be erased on a whim? And even if a Turk or Kurd admits to an Armenian grandmother, does this mean that this person considers herself or himself to be Armenian? With one Armenian grandparent, this individual still has three others who are not. Like Fethiye Çetin who authored a book on the topic, Turks who discover some Armenian ancestry may develop an interest in their origins and even sympathy for Armenians, but this does not imply in any way that they intend to exchange their Turkish identity for an Armenian one. Consequently, the number of individuals with Armenian ancestry willing to return to the fold of Armenianness is probably limited to thousands or a few tens of thousands.

 

This author is certainly not suggesting that Armenians should not develop interest in the Turkified, Kurdified and Islamicized Armenians, as he has himself studied one such group, the Hemshin, or Islamicized Armenians of Hamshen. However, the sudden interest for individuals who, as a result of the tragic events Armenians have faced throughout their history, have been displaced outside or on the margins of the Armenian ethos is rather puzzling, especially when the very core of the Armenian people is under major threat. Indeed, why worry so much on bringing back into Armenianness at most thirty or forty thousand people when the developments of the past two decades in Armenia and the Diaspora are threatening to deplete the Armenian nation of millions of people? Why worry about a few thousand Kurdified Armenians when an increasing number of Armenian families in Lebanon, once the heartland of the Armenian Diaspora, are sending their children to non-Armenian schools or when up to two million Armenians may have left Armenia since the early 1990s? Before hoping and asking for Turkified Armenians to return to the fold of Armenianness, shouldn’t the condition of the Armenian core to which Turkified or Kurdified Armenians are supposed to return be first examined?

 

A confluence of internal and external factors during the past two decades has thrown the Armenian people into turmoil and presented them with a number of challenges not seen since the tragic events the Armenian nation had to face at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, it is perhaps only during this past year that the significance of these trends has begun to be understood, and this by only a very few individuals. Moreover, these few observers appear to have caught only part of the unfolding developments, as their analyses are focused on only one or two issues and lack an overall perspective and synthesis of trends affecting Armenian society in Armenia and the Diaspora.

 

What are the developments we are mentioning, the persistence of which threatens the future of the Armenian people? The demographic decline of Armenia during the past twenty years constitutes without a doubt one of the most important of such developments. Throughout the Soviet period, the population of Armenia steadily increased, with the immigration of Armenians from Azerbaijan and Georgia compensating for the decline in fertility which gradually set in from the 1950s on. As a result of this trend, not only was the number of Armenians in Armenia increasing in absolute terms, but the proportion of Armenians living in their homeland was increasing as a percentage of the worldwide Armenian population as well. The sudden influx of refugees fleeing pogroms against Armenians in Azerbaijan in 1988-1990 brought the population of Armenia to an all-time high of almost four million, almost all of whom, following the exodus of Azeris from the country, were Armenians. This number, however, was not to be sustained for long. Within the next few years, the population of Armenia would fall dramatically as an estimated one-and-a-half to two million individuals would leave the country as a consequence of the economic collapse following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the war with Azerbaijan over Karabagh. Thus, Armenia finds itself, twenty years after its independence, with only half the population it had at the end of the Soviet period. The multiple threats caused by this demographic crisis, be they of a strategic, military or economic nature, are not difficult to imagine. The demographic crisis has not been limited to Armenia but has affected Karabagh as well. Of the 145,000 Armenians inhabiting the province in 1989, at the time of the last Soviet census, losses due to war and migration may have left only half of that number twenty years later according to some estimates. Armenians did win the war over Karabagh, but that victory might have come at the cost of half of Karabagh’s Armenian population should these pessimistic estimates get confirmed.

 

The same last two decades have also witnessed two further interrelated developments threatening the future of the Armenian people, the decline of Diaspora institutions and the acceleration of assimilation trends within Diaspora communities. In particular, the financial crisis which hit the Venice branch of the Armenian Catholic Mekhitarist Congregation took place a few years earlier, in 1984, and hence could be considered some sort of prelude to the decline of Diaspora institutions that would take place in the following years. The Mekhitarist Congregation had played an eminent role in promoting the Armenian cultural renaissance from the early eighteenth century on. Both Venice and Vienna branches were at the origin of a substantial cultural production – including numerous publications – and had founded and maintained a network of schools across the world from South America to the Middle East. Hence the financial crisis was a powerful blow not only to the Mekhitarist Congregation itself, but to the entire Armenian Diaspora, within which the Mekhitarist Congregation enjoyed much prestige. Ill-advised and cheated by a group of dishonest Italian financiers – the same involved in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal that affected the Vatican – to whom they had entrusted the management of their entire assets, the Venice Mekhitarists were almost completely ruined and only saved from bankruptcy by the Vatican. They never recovered from the crisis. In the ensuing years, the Venice Mekhitarists were forced to close down some of the oldest and most prestigious schools they operated, such as the Collegio Armeno Moorat Raphael in Venice, originally established in 1836, and the Collège Arménien Samuel Moorat in Sèvres, near Paris, founded in 1846. Both Mekhitarist branches also put an end to their printing and publication activities, limiting the latter to their flagstaff scholarly journals, Pazmaveb in Venice and Handes Amsorya in Vienna, both now published with great effort as single yearly volumes instead of the multiple, either monthly or quarterly, issues of years gone by. In retrospect, the financial collapse of the prestigious Mekhitarist Congregation and the closing down of its centuries-old educational establishments were a stern warning for the entire Diaspora and a harbinger of challenges ahead.

 

The financial troubles of the Mekhitarists were not entirely to blame for the closing of their schools. Some of the problems of these schools were linked to political upheavals in the Middle East and ensuing demographic trends affecting Armenian communities there. Thus, the Mekhitarist school in Venice suffered during the 1980s from the inability of the parents of Iranian-Armenian students to pay the tuition of their children as money transfers outside Iran were forbidden by the country’s authorities. More generally, the Mekhitarist boarding schools in Venice and Paris, as well as the Melkonian Educational Institute in Cyprus, suffered from the exodus affecting Armenian communities in the Middle East from the mid-1970s on as a result of the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and political instability in Turkey, as it is these Middle-Eastern communities which supplied much of the student body of the Mekhitarist schools in Europe. Short of money and short of students – or at least of students who could afford to pay the tuition – the Mekhitarist Fathers had no option but to close down the oldest and most prestigious Armenian educational institutions in Europe.

 

The closing down of the Mekhitarist boarding schools in Europe was only one of the negative consequences of the Armenian exodus out of the Middle Eastern countries. At the beginning of this out-migration, though, assessments about its effects were mixed. There was obviously lament on the weakening of communities such as those in Lebanon or Iran, which had been strongholds of Armenian identity, but this regret was mitigated by the regeneration of Armenian communities in North America and Western Europe thanks to the new blood brought in by Middle Eastern Armenians. Perhaps with a certain arrogance, the latter hoped to succeed where earlier generations of Armenians in countries such as the USA or France had failed, in creating resilient communities able to sustain the pitfalls of assimilation. The trump card of Armenians migrating from the Middle East in their endeavors to transmit Armenian identity to the younger generation growing up in North America or Australia was the opening of Armenian day schools. The movement to open Armenian day schools in North America had started in the 1960s – with the first school opening in 1964 in the Encino suburb of Los Angeles – but it was in the 1970s that it gained momentum in North America, more particularly in the Los Angeles and Montreal areas with their high concentration of Armenian immigrants from Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Jerusalem and Syria. As a result of this effort, around a dozen schools had opened in the Los Angeles area by the mid-1980s, Toronto, Montreal, Boston and New York/New Jersey counted two to three schools each by the same period, and Philadelphia, Detroit, Fresno, San Francisco and Orange County counted one school each.

 

By the time the movement to open Armenian day schools came to a gradual halt, around the mid-1980s, however, the total enrollment of Armenian days schools in the United States was around six thousand pupils. This number meant that even though the movement had succeeded in the objective of establishing schools where Armenian families willing to do so would have the possibility of providing their children with an education including Armenian language, culture and history, only a rather small minority of school-age children were enrolled in these schools. In Los Angeles, at least sixty thousand Armenian students were enrolled in American public schools – to which should be added an unknown number in private American schools – ten times more than children attending Armenian schools all over the United States. Also, the opening of Armenian schools in North America was certainly not a compensation for the exodus from the Middle-East. In spite of reduced communities of around sixty to eighty thousand Armenians each, the Armenian communities of Beirut and Aleppo, boasted, during the same period, the mid-1980s, more students enrolled in their Armenian schools than were enrolled in all such schools in the United States, even though the Armenian community in the latter country, estimated at between six to eight hundred thousand individuals, was tenfold that of Beirut or Aleppo.

 

Yet, the effort should not be dismissed or underestimated, for it was a valiant one. The mere existence of Armenian schools in North America was no small victory, achieved in spite of overwhelming odds, and the belief, held by many in the American-Armenian community, that Armenian day schools could not and should not operate in the United States. Had the momentum not been lost at the end of the 1980s, new schools might have continued to be opened and existing ones could have been expanded, possibly resulting in a much more successful – or more larger-scale – outcome than the one achieved.

 

Two factors can be mentioned to explain the halt in the growth of Armenian day schools in the United States. The first was the economic downturn that affected California and the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many families could not afford to pay school tuition anymore, and raising donations for new schools or for expanding existing ones became much more difficult. The second, more determinant, and longer-lasting factor, was the precipitous set of events affecting Armenia from 1988 on. The struggle for the reunification of the province of Karabagh (Artsakh) with Armenia, which came to the limelight in February 1988, brought the homeland to the attention of the Diaspora. However, it is the devastating earthquake that shook northern Armenia on December 7, 1988, which most affected the course taken by the Diaspora, its priorities and the allocation of Diaspora resources. The Diaspora suddenly found itself with a new task on its hands, that of coming to the rescue of earthquake victims and of helping to rebuild what the earthquake had destroyed. The task was compounded and the Diaspora’s burden was made heavier when Armenia became independent at the end of 1991 as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and when Armenia’s conflict with Azerbaijan over Karabagh turned into a full-fledged war. Whether the amount of Diaspora support was sufficient to make a difference for Armenia and whether it corresponded to the level of expectation among Armenia’s Armenians is beyond the purview of this article. What is relevant is that the help provided to Armenia by the Diaspora diverted personal and material resources which would otherwise have gone into Diaspora institutions and projects.

 

Busy with Armenia and its troubles, the Diaspora has mostly neglected itself during the two decades following Armenia’s independence in 1991. No serious assessment has been made of its condition and the ailments affecting it during this period, and hence no possible remedies to the Diaspora’s pains have been sought. Yet such an assessment is highly necessary as the challenges faced by the Diaspora were already present during the 1990s and are becoming increasingly visible as time goes by to anyone paying attention.

 

The situation of the Armenian community in Lebanon as it emerged at the end of the civil war in that country in 1990 constituted a striking example of overlooked and unaddressed problems. Considered the heart of the Armenian Diaspora with its dense network of churches, schools, clubs, papers, printing houses, publishers and cultural associations, the Armenian community in Lebanon suffered extensively from the civil war that took place there between 1975 and 1990. A greater part of this community left the country during the War, and emigration continued in the following decades mainly because of the country’s poor economic conditions, under which it was particularly difficult for young people to find employment there.

 

The conditions produced by the Lebanese Civil War generated new social dynamics that allowed assimilation trends to make inroads into a community which until then had appeared immune to them. The reduction in numbers meant that it became increasingly hard for young Armenians to find their spouse within their own community. Mixed marriages were also facilitated by the increased number of links and greater solidarity which developed between Armenians and the other Christians communities of the country, as all found themselves living together in the “Christian Heartland” located to the north and east of Beirut and sharing many of the same social and political concerns. As a result, mixed marriages skyrocketed during the War and afterwards, passing from a mere 10 percent to over half of all marriages. Most of the children born out of these mixed marriages were not sent to Armenian schools and were not taught the Armenian language at home. It is only when these children came of age, during the 2000s, that the realization set in that a new generation of Lebanese-Armenians unable to speak the language of their ancestors had appeared, a development unprecedented in the history of the post-Genocide Armenian community of Lebanon. Thus, according to one study, some 25 percent of students at the American University of Beirut (AUB) with an Armenian last name do not speak Armenian.

 

However, it is not only children born to mixed marriages who are not being enrolled at Armenian schools in Lebanon. Armenian schools did not emerge unscathed from the Civil War, having lost much of their student body to emigration and suffered severe financial strains. They failed to recover after the end of the War as a vicious cycle set in, whereby upper-middle class and middle-class families, worried about the quality of education provided at Armenian schools, withdrew their children from these schools and enrolled them in non-Armenian institutions. The loss of students with the ability to afford tuition led, in turn, to a contraction in the budget of the schools and a further worsening of school conditions, which encouraged more parents to withdraw their children. While Armenian schools in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries had enjoyed financial support from US-based Armenian philanthropic individuals and organizations, such support did not continue in the 1990s and 2000s as American Armenians were diverting their support to Armenia. It was only in 2006, in the aftermath of the conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah, that Lebanese Armenian schools received a donation from the Lincy Foundation.

 

It is not only for the quality of teaching that many parents chose not to enroll their children in Armenian schools in Lebanon. In a country where jobs and careers often depend on personal contacts and patronage, many parents, already worried about the economic uncertainty of the country, chose non-Armenian schools for their offspring hoping the latter would meet and befriend there the children of wealthy or influential Lebanese families. As the following anecdote will show, for some parents, the association with anything at all Armenian is considered as jeopardizing the future of their children. The principal of a non-Armenian school where a large number of Armenian students were enrolled thought he would make these students and their families happy by offering courses of Armenian language and history. He visited the Catholicosate at Antelias, located near his school, and asked the Catholicos to provide him with Armenian teachers, a demand which the Catholicos gladly satisfied. The initiative, however, rather than being welcomed by the families of Armenian students, provoked a riot of discontent. Parents told the unfortunate principal that they had withdrawn their children from Armenian schools so that their children would not have to be taught Armenian language or history anymore, and that they had no intention of letting him set up Armenian classes in his school.

 

It is not only in Lebanon that a once vibrant community has gone into perhaps irremediable decline during the past two decades. Within the former Soviet Union, the Armenian community of Abkhazia, because of the multi-ethnic nature of the population of that province – a mix of Abkhazians, Georgians, Armenians, Russians and other minority groups – enjoyed a privileged status. It retained cultural rights, in particular schools, that were denied other Armenian communities, such as the ones of Baku or Tbilisi; the latter saw their Armenian schools closed down during the 1940s and 1950s. Abkhazia Armenians, as well as those of the neighboring Russian region of Sochi, were mostly composed of Armenians originally from the Black Sea Coast region of Turkey, and hence also had the specificity of speaking a Western Armenian dialect, that of Hamshen. As in Lebanon, the conflict between Abkhazians and Georgians which devastated Abkhazia during the early 1990s left its mark on the Armenian community here as well. Half of the latter left Abkhazia, mostly for neighboring Russia. And as in Lebanon, Armenian schools paid a heavy price to the conflict and to the social and political changes it generated. Not only did schools lose the students who left the country, but an increasing number of parents chose to give their children a Russian education rather than an Armenian one, knowing that the future of their children might well lie in Russia given the poor economic condition of Abkhazia and the uncertainty about its future. The choice of Russian schools over Armenian ones also says a lot about the opinion of Abkhazia Armenians regarding Armenia’s future prospects and any desire, or absence thereof, to resettle there one day.

 

What is unfortunate is that no help – with the one-time exception of the support by the Lincy Foundation to schools in Lebanon in 2006 – came from North America or Europe based Armenian associations or wealthy individual donors to the rescue of troubled Armenian institutions in Lebanon, Abkhazia and elsewhere in the Diaspora. Yet, with a relatively modest effort, the vicious cycles which had been set in motion in various Diaspora communities might have been broken and the decline of these communities stopped before points of no return were reached. In places like Abkhazia, very little amounts of money could have gone a long way during the 1990s and 2000s to support schools and other Armenian community institutions. Similarly, some support could have helped the Armenian community of Bulgaria – which had been victim to repressive measures under the Communist regime, including the mandatory closing down of Armenian schools – to succeed in its efforts at renaissance following the Communist collapse in 1990. Another example is Ajaria, where helping to modernize the Armenian school in Batumi would have prevented many Armenian parents from preferring the nearby Russian school. Such examples abound, but it is not necessary to list them all as the few mentioned above suffice to provide a clear picture of the situation in so many Diaspora communities and the opportunities missed there.

 

It is not only in countries torn by war and affected by large-scale migration that developments worrisome for the future of Armenian Diasporia communities are occurring. In the United States, whatever was achieved with considerable effort from the 1960s to the late 1980s now appears to be in jeopardy. The early signs of decline started to appear around half a decade ago and were limited during that initial period to a few Armenian day schools; during the past couple years the decline has extended to include almost all of these schools. For over two years now Armenian educational institutions in North America have been suffering from a significant drop in the number of students, from budgetary crisis, and from a more general, existential malaise.

 

The economic crisis of 1998 only helped to bring this latent crisis to the surface. Families with modest income are wondering whether they should continue tightening their belts to send their children to Armenian schools, while wealthier ones are choosing expensive private American schools, which they hope may open the doors of Ivy League universities to their children. The truth is that a large number of immigrant Armenian families chose to enroll their children in Armenian schools not so much out of the wish to maintain their children’s sense of Armenian heritage as out of the desire to provide them with a safe environment. Once they became more familiar with the country they had settled in, their self-confidence increased, and they realized that not all American schools were a hotbed of crime and drugs, these families started considering the other options available to them based on their means and needs. Yet the biggest failure is one of leadership, as people in charge of Armenian educational institutions failed to anticipate these problems and look for solutions to them, preferring instead to turn a blind eye.

 

An element of the Armenian Diaspora leadership does not appear to mind the decline of Armenian schools or even rejoices in it. The Armenian General Benevolent Union is as a case in point. It first shut down the small school it owned in the Boston area. Then, in what became a shattering symbol of the Diaspora’s decline, it decided to close down the Melkonian Educational Institute in 2005. Much has been written about the closing down of Melkonian by its parent organization, so it is not necessary to return to it. The AGBU also apparently intends to close down its school in Athens but has been prevented so far from doing so by the local Armenian community, and it wants to reduce classes in the school it operates in Toronto. To its credit, and perhaps to compensate for the criticism it generated throughout the Diaspora by closing down Melkonian, the AGBU opened a new school in Pasadena, a suburb of California. One factor which was neglected in the discussion over the closing of Melkonian, however, was that the Cypriot-Armenians who criticized the AGBU were not entirely blameless, as an increasing number of them had been sending their children to non-Armenian – generally British – schools rather than to Melkonian.

 

It appears now that Diaspora communities in Northern America and Western Europe are headed in the same assimilation-bound direction as they were over thirty ago, prior to the great influx from the Middle East. The pattern is clearly more apparent in smaller communities, such as Geneva or London, yet it is visible everywhere. Mixed marriages are the rule rather than the exception, whether in the East Coast of the United States or in France. A majority of children born in Northern America or Western Europe to parents who migrated from the Middle East speak Armenian poorly if at all. Everywhere, it is only a modest fraction of the estimated numbers of Armenians which maintains any kind of Armenian-related activity, such as attending an Armenian church, belonging to an Armenian association or subscribing to an Armenian paper. A vast majority of the people of Armenian background or heritage have simply no links to or interest in anything Armenian.

 

In the middle of this bleak picture, might some solace be found in believing that the massive migration out of Armenia over the past two decades would reinforce the Diaspora communities of the receiving countries and hence delay the assimilation of these communities? In theory at least, this could have been expected, and it did happen to a limited degree in some communities, such as Moscow, where a relative revitalization of the community has been noted. Furthermore, in some countries where no prior Armenian presence existed, such as Spain, the arrival of immigrants from Armenia led to the creation of new Armenians communities. The positive aspects of migration out of Armenia, however, stop there. The gap in mentality between Homeland and Diaspora Armenians often prevents or makes difficult interaction between the two groups. Yet more problematic is the overarching concern of Armenian emigrants to integrate as quickly as possible in the countries they move to, often at the expense of their own Armenian identity and that of their children. This concern remains very high for the few parents who choose to send their children to Armenian schools. Thus, a teacher at an Armenian school in the Los Angeles region narrated how she is often confronted by mothers of her students, who come to protest when they perceive their children are assigned what they consider to be too much Armenian homework. “Armenian is not important” is a sentence she claimed to have heard regularly from the mouths of these mothers. In their hurry to integrate, immigrants from Armenia appear to have decided to shed the Armenian language and culture in twenty or thirty years, the space of one generation, while it took the post-Genocide Diaspora in Western countries some eighty years to reach that stage, not to mention medieval Armenian migrants to Poland, who preserved their identity for hundreds of years before succumbing to assimilation.

 

In some cases, Armenians emigrants remain hostage to the means they adopted in their desperation to leave Armenia. Thus, some 20,000 Armenians, claiming to have Pontic Greek ancestry, were able to take advantage of the Greek government’s repatriation program offered to Pontic Greeks inhabiting the former Soviet Union. Most of these Armenians, however, were of only partial Greek ancestry, having at most one Greek grandparent or great-grandparent, or had no Greek ancestry whatsoever. Settled by Greek authorities in northern Greece, they prefer to avoid any association with Armenians, worried that such association may betray their lack of Greek credentials. A similar story took place with the few thousand Armenians moving to Israel after having “rediscovered” Jewish origins, and who generally tend to avoid contacts with Armenians, fearing their lack of authentic Jewishness may be betrayed by such contacts. One can only imagine how thoroughly assimilated the next generation of these Armenian migrants in Greece and Israel will become. A 2006 article in Transition Online revealed that in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia, where hundreds of thousands of Armenians from Azerbaijan, Armenia and elsewhere in the Caucasus have settled, it is prevalent racism that is pushing many of these Armenians to exchange their Armenian family names for Russian ones. However, racism is not the only cause of the change in family name. Individuals who were born in Krasnodar or who migrated there at a young age consider the Kuban their homeland and do not feel a similar connection with Armenia. The fifteen or twenty years since their parents moved to the Kuban may be a short period in absolute terms, but to these individuals, this period represents their entire lives. According to the head of a local Armenian association, there may be a more general problem with Armenians settled in the region, who “do not care about their culture, language, or history.”

 

At the beginning of this article, the decline of the Mekhitarist Congregation, the interruption of its publishing activities, and the closing down of its once prestigious schools were mentioned as a symbolic starting point for the decline of Armenian Diaspora communities. Perhaps, then, the shutting down of another prestigious Armenian institution, the daily paper Haratch from Paris, should be mentioned as part of the conclusion of this article. While ten years ago, in 2000, the paper still had a readership of around 3,000 subscribers, this readership was down to 700 by the time it published its last issue in 2009, which says a lot about the decline of the Armenian language in France. Equally telling of the decline of the Western Armenian language in the Diaspora is the recent classification by UNESCO of Western Armenian as a “definitely endangered” language.

 

The saying that one should not throw stones at other people’s home when one’s own home is made of glass is well-known. In the Armenian case, an adapted version of this saying deserves to be crafted, stating that one should not invite people to move in into one’s home when that home is falling apart. Within twenty years, over half of the population of what constituted the “Armenian core,” i.e., Armenia and Middle Eastern communities, have moved out of their homes to settle in countries where they have been engaged in an accelerated process of assimilation and alienation from Armenian culture. With two million inhabitants, Armenia now is a dwarf among nations, while the Diaspora as we know it will be gone in one generation. Under these tragic circumstances, the recent frenzy over Turkified and Kurdified Armenians is hard to understand. It is not very clear why Armenians worry about re-armenianizing Armenians Turkified over a hundred years ago when Armenians who lived until very recently in Armenia are shedding their names and identity right before our eyes in the Kuban, northern Greece and Israel to pose as Russians, Pontic Greeks or Israelis. Rather than naivety or poor judgment, the discussion on Turkified and Kurdified Armenians might be a most telling sign of despair. Armenians hoping to see Turkified Armenians return to the fold of Armenianness may not be oblivious to the condition of the Armenian home. They are perhaps aware of it, and in their despair, hope that these Turkified Armenians will save the Armenian home by moving back into it.

[Arpa]

I did not search far enough to see if the following Video - Hidden Armenians - had already been aired before.

http://asbarez.com/101940/watch-hidden-armenians/

In the video we see the likes of Patriarch Shnohrk and Mutafian of stambol , but fails to tell us what the Champions of the First Christian Nation, the Missionaries of Ejmiatsin and Antelias have to say ..

[Arpa]

Where are our fearless missionaries that used to come here day in and day out preaching Christianity to us.?

===

We don’t know the ethnicity of the author of the below article. She seems to be either furkish or kurdish.

 

 

Relatives would often give away the secret in the heat of household quarrels, calling a father or a grandmother a “dirty Armenian.”**

 

**In their dirty language it is pis ermeni., which is not limited to Armenians but also to pis arab, pis yahudi, pis gavur etc.

 

http://hetq.am/eng/news/24908/turkey’s-islamized-armenians-grapple-with-tragic-roots.html

 

 

Turkey’s Islamized Armenians Grapple with Tragic Roots



14:39, 28 March, 2013

By: Sibel Utku Bila

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Abdurrahim Zorarslan’s world turned upside down at age 25 when his Kurdish clan revealed to him he was Armenian.

His father, a survivor of the Ottoman massacres, saved and Islamized by a Kurdish couple, had already died — without uttering a word about his real self. After much soul-searching, Zorarslan “listened to something inside” and “secretly” embraced his Armenian identity. Aged 53 today, he boldly speaks out and introduces himself as a Christian with the typical Armenian name, Armen.

The self-rediscovery, however, has come with a cost. The retired driver is now at odds with his children and Kurdish wife, a devout Muslim wearing the black chador, but still believes that “one can reach nowhere with fear of his roots.”

Zorarslan is among a small but growing number of brave souls in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast who have come to openly embrace their Armenian origins, emboldened by the breaking of the Armenian taboo in Turkey over the past several years and the message of pluralism spread by the Kurdish political movement in the region.

The re-connection is a painful process — not only because of deep-rooted fears over the 1915-17 massacres, but also the distinct fabric of the impoverished, rural southeast, where strict patriarchal norms rule closely-knit clans and Islam remains a powerful social glue.

At the turn of the 20th century, Kurds and Armenians dominated the population of eastern Anatolia. Bonded to Turks in Islamic fraternity, Kurds joined the massacres orchestrated by their Ottoman rulers and seized the properties of slain or deported Armenian neighbours. Many Armenian children escaped death in the refuge of Muslim homes: Some were saved out of compassion; others were abducted to be raised as labourers or wives. The adoptees were Islamized and assimilated into Kurdish or Turkish culture. It is unknown how many survivors lived on as Muslims, with estimates ranging from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand.

According to the accounts of descendants in Diyarbakir, Turkey’s largest Kurdish city, some survivors kept memory of their Armenian identity, sought out other Islamized Armenians to marry and let their children know their roots. Others sank into silence and tried to obliterate their past, haunted by the horror of the massacres and eager to shield their progeny against persecution.

Neighbours, however, never forgot. A common childhood memory of descendants is how their peers would taunt them as “gavur” or “infidels” in street games. Relatives would often give away the secret in the heat of household quarrels, calling a father or a grandmother a “dirty Armenian.”

Some complain that because of their Muslim faith they are often ostracized also by Turkey’s Christian Armenians, who are concentrated in cosmopolitan Istanbul and number about 60,000.

“The [descendants of] Islamized Armenians are 100% assimilated. But there is always someone to remind them who they are. They are not fully accepted by either side. It’s dramatic,” Gafur Turkay, the grandson of an Armenian survivor, told Al-Monitor in the yard of the ancient Surp Giragos Church in Diyarbakir, a monumental reminder of the city’s once-thriving Armenian community.

After decades of silent awareness, Turkay now introduces himself directly as “an Armenian.” His father remains a devout Muslim who has made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Out of 18 siblings, only he and a brother have converted to Christianity.

The 47-year-old insurer sits also on the board of the foundation that runs the Surp Giragos Church, rebuilt from ruins and re-opened for worship in October.

He estimates that at least 1 million people in Turkey’s southeast bear Armenian blood today, even though mixed marriages and natural population growth have diluted Armenian ancestries. The acknowledgement of Armenian roots, he explains, is a difficult matter since descendants remain strongly bound to Islam and equate Armenianness to Christianity.

“More often than not those people are rigid Muslims — a trait they probably developed in order to gain acceptance and dispel suspicion. Let them be Muslims, but I wish they could at least accept their Armenian origins,” Turkay said. “But I can’t persuade even my own sister. ‘God forbid! You can’t make me call myself an Armenian’ is all she says.”

For Zorarslan, the resentment of his own family is no match to his resolve to discover his roots. On his mobile phone, buzzing with the ringtone of an Armenian tune, he proudly displays pictures of cousins he has tracked down in France, the Netherlands, the United States and Istanbul. His eyes sparkle with excitement and then well up with tears as he recounts how some relatives were happy to reconnect, but others refused to answer letters and return calls. “Is it about religion? Do they worry we may not be really relatives or do they think I am after money? I’m still trying to figure out,” he said.

Behcet Sayan, 47, remembers how his grandfather would keep company with six other survivors in their native village near Diyarbakir and how the elderly men would chat in Armenian. A former construction worker who now greets visitors at Surp Giragos, Sayan says he has endorsed Christianity “at heart.” He wishes other family members follow suit but is pessimistic. “My elder brother is a haji. You cannot change his mind even if you shred him to pieces. I wish my children follow me, but I know life will be difficult for them if they do. Let everybody make their own decision,” he said.

Surp Giragos, one of the largest Armenian churches in the Middle East, is still without a priest and a congregation. Nestled behind stone walls on a narrow cobbled street in the ancient heart of Diyarbakir, the edifice serves mostly as a tourist attraction.

Al-Monitor’s interview with Turkay in the churchyard was occasionally interrupted by young people, who, after touring the church, wanted to say hi and confide they also had an Armenian ancestor. Some inquired about the Armenian language courses launched in the city last year.

Kevork Calis, the Armenian teacher who flies every week from Istanbul to teach the course, politely turned down a request by this reporter to attend one of the classes. “I have about 20 students. They are all descendants of Islamized Armenians. Many are attending secretly,” he explained.

Compared to Turks, Kurds have been more forthcoming in efforts to reconcile with Armenians, driven by their own suffering in post-Ottoman Turkey and eager to advance their cause for pluralist democracy. Diyarbakir’s Kurdish-held local administration, for instance, provided financial assistance to renovate the Surp Giragos Church and sponsored the Armenian language courses in the city.

In February, prominent Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk admitted that “our grandfathers have blood on their hands” and apologized to Armenians. The apology, however, backfired as the veteran lawmaker appeared to reject direct Kurdish responsibility in the massacres, saying that Kurds were “manipulated” by Turks.

Armenian opinion leaders cast further doubt over Kurdish sincerity, irked by remarks that jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan made in his fledgling peace process with Ankara. In a transcript leaked to the media in late February, Ocalan emphasized Islamic bonds between Kurds and Turks, and spoke in hostile terms about Armenians and other non-Muslims.

Amid the soured climate, the Diyarbakir municipality is preparing for a fresh gesture. A monument dedicated to communities that have suffered persecution in Anatolia is expected to be unveiled in the city in the eve of April 24, the Armenians’ genocide remembrance day.

AL MONITOR – The Pulse of the Middle East; March 27, 2013

(Sibel Utku Bila is a freelance journalist based in Ankara, who has covered Turkey for 15 years. She was a correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP) from 1999 to 2011, and articles she wrote during that period have been published in many newspapers around the world. She has worked also as an editor at the Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey’s oldest English-language newspaper.)

[Arpa]

No comment. The reason I see red every time I see Armenians with furkish family names. Observe the name of that murderous boat captain below.

Note. On Thursday June 6 our local PBS will air a two hour long program about the Orphans. How about your PBS stations?

======

http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2013-05-24-time-to-consider-the-hidden-armenians-of-turkey

http://www.reporter.am/images/ThumbnailImage/11591454.jpg

http://www.reporter.am/images/ThumbnailImage/11591454.jpg

Abp. Ateshian of Bolis and his muslim relatives.

 

Time to consider the hidden Armenians of Turkey

by Raffi Bedrosyan

Published: Friday May 24, 2013

During the endless Turkish arguments and Armenian and international counter-arguments about the number of massacred Armenians in 1915, Hrant Dink would repeatedly remind both sides about a more critical topic: ‘We keep talking about the gone dead, let's start talking about the remaining living...'

The remaining living meant the unknown number of Armenians remaining in Anatolia, remaining not as Armenians, but as Turks, Kurds, Alewis, Moslems, and other identities. Ninety eight years after the attempted destruction of a nation, it is time to talk more about the hidden Armenians, mostly orphans of 1915 assimilated into identities other than their own Armenianness.

Hrant had the courage to reveal the real identity of one of the most well-known Turkish heroes as an Armenian orphan. Sabiha Gokcen, the first female military pilot and Ataturk's adopted daughter, was in reality Hatun Sebilciyan, an Armenian girl orphaned in Bursa in 1915. We all know that this revelation was the beginning of the end for Hrant, triggering a massive hate and threat campaign against him by the government, the military and the media, resulting in his assassination three years later.

But Sebilciyan/Gokcen was only one of tens of thousands of Armenian girls and boys torn away from their parents during the 1915 events. What happened to these orphans? How many were there? This article will cite some examples from different parts of Anatolia.

The horrors of Trabzon

It is a well-documented fact that during the deportation of the Armenian population from all corners of Anatolia to the Syrian desert, as the convoys approached their towns or villages, local Turks and Kurds snatched Armenian children from their parents to take them home as servants or wives. Many children were sold as slaves by them or the gendarmes escorting the convoys. There were also a few children entrusted by their parents to Kurdish and Turkish neighbours before starting on the deportation route. There were some children initially rescued by European or American missionaries or Pontian Greek religious leaders, but inevitably they were also later seized and sent away or murdered.

We can cite one of many documented tragic incidents in Trabzon, where 600 Armenian orphan children were taken to the Greek monastery with the government's permission after their parents were massacred by drowning in the Black Sea. But after three months, by the order of the Trabzon governor Jemal Azmi, the police forcefully removed the orphans from the monastery and handed them over to a Turkish boat captain, Rahman Bayraktaroglu, who placed each child in a flour sack, securely tied the top and dropped them one by one into the Black Sea. It is documented Governor Jemal later joked saying that: 'Harvest of smelt (hamsi) will be plentiful this season with all the drowned as fish feed'.

But as I said previously, the focus of this article will not be the hundreds of thousands murdered orphans in 1915, but instead, the surviving orphans, who were perhaps subjected to much worse suffering than the murdered victims.

Since I already mentioned the Trabzon Governor Djemal Azmi, I will continue citing his dealings with the surviving orphans. He selected about 450 of the best looking girls from the Armenian community of Trabzon, and converted the local Red Crescent Hospital to a whorehouse for the selected Turkish elite and visiting dignitaries, even sending some of the girls as treats to his superiors in Istanbul.

The supply of the orphans got replenished as needed. He kept a supply of 15 Armenian girls for himself but also gave one to his 14 year old son, Ekmel, as a present. Most of the girls were forcefully Islamicized; few eventually escaped or committed suicide.

A Turkification program

These experiences came to light from witnesses during the trials of the Ittihat Terakki leaders after the war, but also were told in 1921 by Djemal Azmi's son himself to his close friend, alias Mehmet Ali, who happened to be an Armenian named Hratch Papazian, disguised and even circumcised as a Moslem. Papazian succeeded in infiltrating the Ittihad Terakki circles hiding in Berlin, in preparation for assassination of Djemal Azmi and Bahattin Shakir, head of the Special Organization (Teskilat-i Mahsusa), on April 17, 1922, right in front of the bewildered widow of Talat *****, a year after Talat himself was brought to justice.

The Ittihat Terakki government had special plans for the surviving orphans. In an organized operation, most of the surviving orphans were rounded up and sent to orphanages set up in multiple locations, with the objective of converting them to Islam and to be assimilated as Turks.

One of these special Turkification orphanages was in Ayn Tura, near Zouk, an hour's drive from Beirut in Lebanon, where 1000 Armenian orphans were kept, etween the ages 3 to 15. By the orders of Djemal *****, governor of Syria and Lebanon, and under the supervision of Turkish intellectuals and teachers, including the newly appointed principal, well known Turkish novelist Halide Edip Adivar, these orphans were converted to Islam and Turkified. The boys were circumcised, and were given Turkish names, but preserving the initials of their Armenian names and surnames, so that Haroutiun Najarian became Hamid Nazim, Boghos Merdanian became Bekim Muhammed, Sarkis Sarafian became Saffet Suleyman.

The orphanage was converted from a Christian school after expelling the Lazarist Catholic priests. While famine prevailed everywhere in Lebanon and Syria during the war, abundant food was provided to the orphanage, with the objective of raising well fed and healthy newly Turkified children.

Based on the memoirs of one of the orphans, Harutiun Alboyajian, the children were expected to speak Turkish only; if the supervisors heard any Armenian spoken, the boys would be beaten severely. They were dressed as Turkish children and were taught Islam. It was Djemal *****'s firm belief that the Armenians had superior intellect and capabilities, which would help the Turkish nation immensely through the Turkification of thousands of Armenian children. Despite efforts to keep the orphanage sanitized, about 300 Armenian orphans died from leprosy and other diseases until 1918. Some of the orphans were placed with Moslem families in towns where there were no Armenians left, and some were distributed to other orphanages. At the end of the war, when Near East Relief took over the orphanage, there were 670 orphans, 470 boys and 200 girls, who still remembered their Armenian names.

Another example of Turkification experiment was in Eastern Anatolia, successfully implemented by Eastern Front commander Kazim Karabekir. He estimated that there were about 50,000 desperate orphans after the war in his regional area of operations. It is documented that about 30,000 of them were circumcised and Turkified. He rounded up about 6,000 Armenian children in Erzurum, 2,000 girls and 4,000 boys, and placed them in an army camp. Some were given training similar to a military school; others were taught trades essential for army supplies such as sewing and boot-making. These orphans had become completely Turkified and named 'The Healthy Children Army'.

The real talented ones among these boys were later sent to higher military academies in Bursa and Istanbul. Without going into the psychology of the assimilation and conversions, it is alleged that these converted military officers became the most fanatical ultra-nationalists in the Turkish army, with some of them participating in the May 1960 military coup which toppled the civilian government of Adnan Menderes.

20th century slaves

Apart from the orphanages, tens of thousands of young girls and boys became slaves after 1915, bought and sold in bazaars and markets. Although slavery was officially abolished in the Ottoman Empire in 1909, slavery markets re-opened after 1915 in order to trade Armenian women and children.

Kidnapping Armenian children from the deportation convoys not only supplied the Turks and Kurds with servants, free labour or sex objects in their own homes, but also a marketable commodity that could be sold for profit in these markets. The markets were set up in Aleppo, Diyarbakir, Cizre, Urfa and Mardin. It is reported that the Mardin market had the lowest prices.

After being branded and tattooed as a slave, Armenian children aged 5-7 found buyers for 20 cents, similar to the price of a lamb. Girls or boys aged 14-15 went for 50 cents, whereas an adult Christian woman was worth about one Turkish lira. But if the slave came from a well-known wealthy family, the price went up significantly, as owning the slave could also bring the future potential of claiming the wealth of the slave's family. There are several documented cases from the later Turkish republic era when Kurdish and Turkish families attempted to legalize the ownership of many real estate properties, previously owned by their 'wives' or 'daughters'. Needless to say, all these wives and daughters were forcefully Islamicized and Turkified.

There are also documented cases when kind-hearted Assyrian priests or European or American missionaries purchased several Armenian children from these markets, with the objective of rescuing them by placing into Christian orphanages.

Assyrian Archbishop Tappuni of Mardin purchased and saved nearly 2000 Armenian children in 1916. While some Moslems treated the Armenian slaves humanely, most owners savagely beat them, as they believed 'Christians only deserve beatings'. The women and girls ended up being second wives for the Moslem owners, who received harsh treatment not only from their husbands but also from the other Moslem wives of their husbands. But eventually they all got absorbed into the Moslem households, bearing children, learning the Quran, praying piously as Moslem women, however always hiding their Armenian roots.

According to a post-war report of the League of Nations Rescue Commission for Armenian Women and Children, at least 30,000 Armenian girls were sold in the markets to be placed in the 'harems' of Moslem homes, or to be used as slave labour. Documented histories of some 2,000 Armenian girls, boys and young women rescued from Turkish and Kurdish households after the war are archived in the League of Nations offices in Geneva. Rescuing the Armenian orphans became one of the first tasks of the League of Nations after the armistice in 1918.

Following pleas of the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate, the Allied Forces and the League of Nations representatives organized the transfer of most Armenian orphans from Anatolia and Syria to Istanbul, and started searches of Armenian orphans kept in Moslem homes. As there was no room to place all the orphans in existing orphanages in Istanbul, several schools were used to house the Armenian children, including the French Notre Dame de Sion, St Joseph, the Italian school, the Russian monastery, and Turkish Kuleli Military Academy.

As some of the orphans were circumcised and already had Turkish names, there started heated discussions between the Armenian Patriarchate and the government authorities as to the real identity of the children. In fact, some of the orphans were already transferred to Turkish homes in Istanbul as maids and servants; among them, 50 orphans sent to the farm of Ittihad Terakki leader Enver *****. The children were conditioned and intimidated not to speak Armenian, nor to reveal their Armenian identities during the war years. They were 'observed' by neutral third party experts to determine whether they were really Armenian or not. Documents show that between 1920 to 1922 there were about 3,800 Armenian children brought to Istanbul, 3,000 sent to Cyprus, 15,600 taken to Greece, and 12,000 transferred to Syria from Marash, Urfa, Antep, Malatya and Harput. Significantly, the Istanbul Patriarchate records indicated that there were still at least 63,000 Armenian orphans documented as 'Not Rescued' in Moslem Turkish and Kurdish households.

Two million hidden Armenians?

In recent years, genocide scholars have stated that genocide perpetrators not only aim at the 'destruction' of the oppressed group but also the 'construction' of the oppressor group. The 1915 events and the consequences clearly show that the Armenian orphans became a source of pro-creation for the Turkish nation by enriching their genetic pool. There are now tens of thousands of Turkish and Kurdish families, with a hidden Armenian grandmother.

It is remarkable that, even ninety eight years after attempts of forced Turkification, assimilation and conversion, there are signs of hidden Armenian identity in various places in Anatolia starting to emerge. There is a somewhat graphic term defining these people in Turkey - 'remnants of the sword' (kilic artigi).

Hrant Dink's lawyer Fethiye Cetin's life story in her book 'My Grandmother', Aysegul Altinay and Fethiye Cetin's book 'The Grandchildren', and many other books, documentaries, movies have come out in recent years, describing the existence and emergence of the hidden Armenians in Turkey, carried from one generation to the next, all originating from the 1915 Armenian orphans.

It is of course very difficult to estimate the number of hidden Armenians in Turkey today. One can assume that perhaps up to 100,000 Armenian orphans survived but got Turkified, converted and assimilated. Scholars estimate another 200,000 adult Armenians avoided deportation in various Anatolian villages by converting to Islam. It is therefore conceivable that 300,000 Armenian souls survived the 1915 events. The population of Turkey increased seven fold since then. Using the same multiple, one can extrapolate that there may exist 2 million people with Armenian roots in Turkey today.

In closing, I would like to share one of my own personal experiences with a hidden Armenian, albeit indirectly. When I was in Armenia in 1995 as a voluntary engineer inspecting Hayastan All Armenian Fund financed construction projects, I also visited Spitak where the church destroyed in the 1988 earthquake was being rebuilt. I was informed that the financing came from Turkey from a still confidential unidentified donor, as specified in the will of a grandmother of a very wealthy Turkish family, who had only revealed her Armenian roots at her deathbed.

In recent years and especially after the reconstruction of the Surp Giragos Armenian Church in Diyarbakir, there has been a resurgence of the hidden Armenians in revealing their identities. It is hoped that the Turkish government sees this as a positive consequence of the recent steps of liberalization and not as a threat, and eventually finds the courage to face its past.

Selected Sources:

Sait Cetinoglu, '1915 Soykirim Surecinde Ermeni Gen Havuzuna El Konmasi ve Seks Koleligi' (The Capture of the Armenian Genetic Pool and Sex Slavery During the 1915 Genocide), Seyfo Center, 09.04.2013

Ayse Hur, '1915ten 2007ye Ermeni Yetimleri' (Armenian Orphans from 1915 to 2007), Radikal, 20.01.2013

Eren Keskin, 'Soykirimin Ortaklari' (Partners in Genocide), Ozgur Gundem, 22.01.2013

Ruben Melkonyan, 'Attitude of the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul Towards the issue of the Forcibly Islamicized Armenians', Noravank Foundation, 09.03.2010

Ruben Melkonyan, 'The Islamization of Armenian children at the period of the Armenian genocide', Miacum,11.08.2007

Keith David Watenpaugh, 'The League of Nations' Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920-1927' , American Historical Review, December 2010

 

 

© 2013 Armenian Reporter

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[Arpa]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/06/03/Outlook/Images/DSC_0879.JPG

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/06/03/Outlook/Images/DSC_0879.JPG

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-a-turkish-town-that-had-10000-armenians-now-there-is-only-one/2013/06/06/d893197a-c93e-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html

===

George Aghjayan - Asiya** is what some people call a hidden Armenian, thought to be the last surviving Armenian in Chunkush, a small village in southeastern Turkey.

====

By Chris Bohjalian,

Published: June 6

Chris Bohjalian is the author of 16 books. His new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” comes out on July 9.

===

A woman I met last month in southeastern Turkey is going to die, probably sometime soon. Asiya’s death will not be covered by any news service, and for all but a few people in her small village of Chunkush, she will not be missed. Even the relatives who love her will probably think to themselves, well, she was 98 years old. Or 99. Or, if she survives until 2015, somewhere in the neighborhood of a century. She will have lived a long life.

When I met Asiya in May, her daughter brought me strong Kurdish tea and fresh strawberries from their yard, and when I return to her village someday and find that she has indeed passed away, I suspect I’m going to weep.

Why cry for a woman I met but once, who lived a long life and who couldn’t understand a word I said? Who spoke only Turkish, a language in which I know how to say only “please” and “thank you”?

Because Asiya is what some people call a hidden Armenian, and she is the last surviving Armenian in Chunkush.

I met her when I was traveling with six Armenian American friends through a part of Turkey that many Armenians (including me) refer to as Historic Armenia. We were in a region that today is largely Kurdish but as recently as 98 years ago was a mixture of Kurds, Turks, Assyrians and Armenians. We were making a pilgrimage to view the ruins of Armenian churches and monasteries, the remnants of a culture obliterated from this corner of the Earth in the Armenian genocide. During the First World War, 1.5 million Armenians were systematically annihilated — three out of every four living in the Ottoman Empire.

On our fifth day, we visited Chunkush, where until 1915 there was a thriving community of 10,000 Armenians. The ruins of the church loom over you. The town was almost entirely Armenian. Over a few nightmarish days that summer, Turkish gendarmes and Kurdish chetes — killing parties — descended on the village and marched almost every Armenian two hours away to a ravine called Dudan, where they shot, bayoneted or simply threw them into a chasm of several hundred feet. One of the gendarmes pulled Asiya’s mother from the line at the edge of the ravine, however, because he thought she was pretty. He decided he’d marry her. And so she was spared — one of the very few Armenians who were saved that summer day in 1915.

My companions and I hadn’t expected to find Asiya when we journeyed to Chunkush. We simply wanted to see the ruins of the church. Most of the villagers acknowledged that once upon a time Armenians had lived in Chunkush, but they were quick to add — whenever we asked what had happened to them — that at some point they had all “moved away.”

The truth was, they were still there, whatever remained of their bones deteriorating at the bottom of the Dudan chasm. We didn’t think there were any living Armenians in the town.

But as we were leaving, a thin fellow in his 60s, with a deeply weathered face and a ball cap, raced up to our van and banged on the door. We had been there an hour, and word had spread that Americans were in town. We had to meet his mother-in-law, he said

 

Our Kurdish driver worried that this was the beginning of a nasty international incident: Seven Americans kidnapped or killed. But the fellow was desperate, so we agreed to come meet Asiya. My friend Khatchig Mouradian, editor of the Armenian Weekly in the United States, speaks Turkish and translated.

I have met survivors of the Armenian genocide before, including my grandparents. But meeting Asiya was different. She wasn’t in Washington or Paris or Beirut. She wasn’t a part of the Armenian diaspora, where we usually find the few remaining survivors of the genocide. Here was someone whose mother had been at the edge of the gorge — and who was still living where, more than likely, her grandparents and her father had been executed. Where her ancestral culture had been exterminated.

After the massacre, the town of 10,000 Armenians was reinvented as a town of 10,000 Kurds. Here was someone whose mother had heard the endless gunshots. The crash of the bodies on the rocks. The wails of the children.

She and her mother had grown up and grown old, aware of who and what they were — Armenian

— but forced to conform and remain silent. That was the price of survival in the days after the genocide, and it’s a custom that, in small villages such as Chunkush, endures today. That is, perhaps, the very definition of a hidden Armenian.

Whenever we asked Asiya about being Armenian, she would shake her head ruefully and grow silent. One time her daughter chimed in: “No. We can’t talk about that.”

Whenever we asked what her mother had told her of the chasm, she would look down and murmur: “I was too young. I don’t remember.” Sometimes she would begin a sentence, “My mother said . . .” but then her voice would trail off.

At one of those moments when she paused, I took her hand. It was a reflex, and I had no idea if this was a cultural faux pas. But she wrapped my fingers in hers; her grip was powerful. She looked at me from beneath her headdress with eyes that were at once among the saddest and the strongest I’ve ever seen. I understood instantly why her son-in-law, a very good man, wanted us to meet her: It was because she wanted to meet us. She wanted to meet other Armenians.

Today there are but a handful of living survivors of the Armenian genocide. When the centennial arrives in 2015, there will be fewer still. I hope that Asiya will be with us, because I plan to return to Chunkush that year. No one from the village is going to commemorate the 10,000 who died in that chasm, so it will be up to people like me to

 

** We will get back to the name Asiya in a separate topic.

====

I have no idea what the village was called in Armenian, before its tukification.

See where Chunkush/Cunkus is at east of Mlatia, south of Kharberd/Elazig and Tigranakert/Diarbakir.

http://www.adiyamanli.org/MapofTurkey/c7.htm

http://www.adiyamanli.org/MapofTurkey/bhtml/c_7_1.htm

[onjig]

This is sad, I'll have to come back to this later, when I can.

[Arpa]

This is sad, I'll have to come back to this later, when I can.

Just who is this onjig who in over six months has not said anything in more than three words?

Edited August 23, 2013 by Arpa

[Yervant1]

Just who is this onjig who in over six months has not said anything in more than three words?

Three words are better than zero words of silent members!!!! Don't you think so?

[Yervant1]

Islamized Armenians: Coming to Grips With a New Reality

Hrant Gadarigian


21:50, November 3, 2013

3 Day Istanbul Conference seen as a first step in opening a much
needed discussion

Over the centuries, untold numbers of Christian Armenians have
converted to Islam. The vast majority have done so under various
degrees of pressure and given the exigencies of the time.

While relatively subtle on occasion, the imperative to convert to a
religion mostly regarded as the faith of the `enemy' was often
clear-cut - convert or perish.

Over the past decade or so, a new sub-grouping of Armenians, either
called Islamized of Muslim Armenians, has come to the fore.

While the existence of such Armenians is not new per say, the issue of
who they exactly are in terms of overall Armenian identity has been
gaining greater exposure, both in Armenian circles and in Turkey.

One such attempt to grapple with this issue is the conference now
taking place in Istanbulthat I've been attending.

Entitled, `Islamized (Islamicized) Armenians' and organized by the
Hrant Dink Foundation, the conference began yesterday and will end
tomorrow.

The scope of the conference is immense and has attracted a number of
prominent scholars and heretofore unknown speakers commenting and
analyzing the centuries-old conversion process of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire, with a special focus on the 1915 Genocide and its
aftermath.

Bogazici University's Albert Long Hall was packed the other day when
the conference kicked off.

I would estimate that there were at least 700 people in the hall to
listen to what speakers like Taner Akcam, Ayse Gul Altinay, Hranush
Kharatyan, Laurence Ritter and Anoush Suni, and Adnan Celik, amongst
others, had to say on the subject.

Rakel Dink, representing the Hrant Dink Foundation, welcomed speakers
and audience alike, stressing that the conference was merely an
initial step in discussing both the history, and more importantly, the
present reality of Islamized Armenians.

Religion, identity, memory, ethnicity, are just a few of the
intertwined topics that the speakers touched in their presentations.

Naturally, I cannot delve into all the subjects that the 30 speakers
will raise over the course of three days, but I can give readers a
concise overview.

After an opening conversation amongst Fethiye Cetin, Nabahat Akkoc and
Sibel Asna, the first day saw three separate panels exploring such
topics as: Burden of History, politics of Naming; The Recent and
Distant History of the Islamization; and Islamized in 1915.



Avedis Hadjian, an independent journalist based in New York, spoke
about Constantinople Patriarch Shnork Kaloustian's `Four categories of
Anatolian Armenians and Today's Muslim Armenians.'

It was interesting to hear that some 40 years ago, Kaloustian had come
up with different classifications of Armenians who had converted based
on when the conversion had taken place, whether it was a conscious
decision or not, and whether they had converted back to Christianity
when conditions allowed them to do so.

Hadjian, who has been touring Western Armenia for the past two years,
is in the process of writing a book entitled `A Secret Nation' that
will present his findings regarding Islamized Armenians he has come
into contact with.

The author, a native of Aleppo who then moved to Argentine at an early
age, says his work is a journalistic investigation into the lives of
these people and will serve as an introduction for a wider audience.

`My purpose is not to proselytize or to make judgmental declarations.
We must first come to recognize one another without preconditions or
preconceived notions. This conference is a step in the right
direction,' Hadjian says, adding that the book should be out in a few
months. The first edition will be in Turkish and then translated into
English.

Hadjian added that tragically, the Armenian diaspora lacks the
facilities to engage this new group of Armenians given that the
Church, as a religious organization, cannot by its nature initiate a
dialogue with individuals who profess another religion.

Another speaker whom I caught up with was Vahe Tachian, an historian
and chief editor of the website Houshamadyan.

Tachjian spoke at this morning's panel entitled `Islamized in 1915:
History and Bearing Witness'.

His focus was on how many Armenian women during the Genocide entered
into mixed marriages and prostitution as a means of survival. Tachjian
talked about attempts to reintegrate these women into post-Ottoman
Armenian communities and how many were ostracized and shunned by the
dominant Armenian society and organizations.

`Many of these women could never return to the larger Armenian fold,
especially if they had children with Muslim men,' Tachjian noted,
adding that the fact that so many `converted' Armenians were present
at the conference underscored the need for a platform on this issue
that has now taken on a greater sense of urgency.

`These individuals, naturally, are interested to hear what the wider
world, especially Armenians, have to say on the subject. We must
approach this issue on a human level and shy away from making snap
judgments as to whether these people are Armenian or not,' Tachjian
stressed.

During our conversation, Rakel Dink walked by and hearing the word
`judgment', noted that identity is a concept that is not merely based
on religion and that all of us have a duty to build bridges between
these newly discovered Armenians and the traditional communities.

I also had the chance to briefly speak with Hilmar Kaiser, a German
historian, whose presentation dealt with the assimilation of Armenian
deportees between 1915 and 1917.

In his presentation, Kaiser noted that the CUP (Committee of Union and
Progress), was split on the issue of converting Armenians to Islam.
One grouping tolerated such conversions, which physically `saved' many
Armenians from certain death, while others in the CUP saw it as
presenting a future danger to the state.

During my conversation with Kaiser, the historian noted that this
conference an earlier one in Diyarbekir has returned the Armenian
debate back to Turkey where it naturally belongs.

`We are witnessing the reemergence of the Armenian community of
Constantinople as the intellectual powerhouse that it once was.
Armenian intellectualism is returning to the very place that it was
cut down in 1915. And the Turkish colleagues are back. Thus the logic
of the killers is denied,' Kaiser argued.

He also pulled no punches in criticizing the academic work carried out
in Armenia for the past twenty years, labeling it as not only
academically inferior but also damaging giving its nationalist, even
racist overtones. Luckily, Kaiser noted, there is a new generation of
academics coming of age in Armenia who are raising the bar when it
comes to academic scholarship, pointing to the presence of two young
scholars from Armenia as panelists.

Kaiser then turned his criticism to Armenian academics in the States
who, he argues, haven't produced anything new in the past forty years.

`Tell me one publication on the extermination, as I call it since I
don't like the term genocide anymore, which has been published in the
last ten years in the U.S. What comes to mind? You really have to
scratch your head. And this is after millions of dollars and
university chairs. It's basically a declaration of intellectual
bankruptcy. They are stuck in their own mental prison,' Kaiser said.

I last spoke with Raymond Kevorkian, the prominent Genocide scholar
based in Paris, who moderated yesterday's `Islamized in 1915' panel.

An old friend, I had no problem convincing Raymond to share his
thoughts on the issue.

`This is an issue that will only grow in significance in the future.
And it is an issue that blows away the Turkish state's decades old
argument of a homogenous populace. As such, the issue of Islamized
Armenians should be seen as an integral part of the overall internal
Turkish process now going on in various ethnic communities regarding a
search for identity, and that there are actually several Turkish
identities,' Kevorkian said.

He stressed that the entire issue demands greater research on a social
level and that the anecdotal studies carried out to date aren't
sufficient.

`The diaspora must come to grips with the fact that the bulk of these
converted Armenians will remain as they are. So how do we relate to
them and, in particular, how shall we relate to those who display a
willingness to come into contact with traditional Armenian communities
and structures,' Kevorkian added.

Summing up the challenge that these converted Armenians now pose to
the greater Armenian community, Kevorkian said, `We face a new reality
today. A significant segment of us had disappeared and are now
resurfacing, but in a new form.'

When I asked my friend, if we are able, and willingly, to come to
grips with this new reality, he responded, `We have to come up with an
answer, better yet, a set of answers. This conference is a preliminary
step in the search for answers, and I have no doubt that the search
will continue.

http://hetq.am/eng/news/30441/islamized-armenians-coming-to-grips-with-a-new-reality.html

[Yervant1]

Today's Zaman, Turkey
Nov 3 2013

Islamized Armenians in Turkey represent age-long assimilation policy

3 November 2013 /LAMÄ°YA ADÄ°LGIZI, Ä°STANBUL


The Islamization of Armenians in Turkey is the product of a long-term
and systematic political strategy of assimilating and Turkifying the
Armenian community, according to documents from the late Ottoman era,
said Taner Akçam, a Turkish-German historian and sociologist, at the
Conference on Islamized Armenians held in Ä°stanbul over the weekend.

`The term `genocide' has always been defined in relation to the
Holocaust. The genocide of European Jews has always been at the center
of discussions. Whether a mass killing should be called genocide or
not has always been decided by comparison with the Holocaust. If the
case resembles the Holocaust it is a genocide; if not, it cannot be a
genocide,' said Akçam on Saturday, adding that the same applies to the
mass killing of Armenians that some call the Armenian genocide. The
Conference on Islamized Armenians was held by the Hrant Dink
Foundation, which is named after a Turkish-Armenian journalist who was
fatally shot outside his office by an extremist in 2007.

Many academics and analysts came together at Ä°stanbul's BoÄ?aziçi
University for a three-day conference which addressed the overlooked
and unknown stories of Armenians who converted to Islam since 1915,
when Armenians say the Ottoman Turks began to commit an alleged
genocide against more than 1 million Armenians.

Speaking at the conference's opening ceremony, Rakel Dink, the widow
of Hrant Dink, illuminated the conference's purpose, saying, `We are
going to open the pages of history that have so far never been
questioned and hear and witness the riddles that have never been put
into words.'

`We never want to hear what they have done. We never talk about what
has happened to them and how it occurred. Our conscience was only able
to deny the genocide,' Dink said in her opening speech, adding that
the facts should not be kept hidden in the dark.

Dink's widow emphasized that Dink was paying special attention to the
issue of Islamized Armenians, saying, `Hrant wanted this issue to be
discussed, not only for the ones who passed away but for the ones who
are alive.' There is a claim that Dink was killed because he began to
research Islamized Armenians across the Ottoman Empire.

Addressing the conference, Akçam said that as the alleged Armenian
genocide had for a long time been researched and defined in connection
with the Holocaust, the very important issue of assimilation was
disregarded and the events were understood only in terms of the number
of dead and exiled Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during
World War I.

The alleged Armenian genocide is a sensitive issue in Turkey, as Turks
and Armenians have not reached a common understanding of events. While
Armenians all over the world urge the international community to
recognize the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide, Turkey denies
that those deaths constituted genocide. Ankara says both Christian
Armenians and Muslim Turks died in large numbers during the war while
the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

Akçam, who is the first Turkish academic to acknowledge and openly
discuss the topic, said that the Armenian community has been crushed
by the denial of the `genocide' by the Turkish government, and that
for quite a while Armenian academics have studied the issue by drawing
parallels between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust. `And thus
they have ignored and separated some parts of the genocide such as
forcible conversions to Islam, forced relocation of Armenian kids into
the orphanages and accommodation of Armenians in certain regions of
the country, as they did not fit into the framework of the Holocaust,'
Akçam said. He also added that the Turkish policies of assimilation
for Armenians were not considered systematic for a long time, as
Armenians who converted from Christianity to Islam were even moved
from modern Turkey to other parts of the empire. `However,
assimilation was an integral part of the genocide since its start,' he
underlined.

In Armenian society, those who converted from Christianity are
generally not considered to be Armenians. Sergey Vardanian, an
Armenian scholar from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, began with this
topic in his speech.

Saying that the history of Armenians has been a "history of
victimization," Vardanian told the audience about the Islamized
Armenians of HemÅ?in, a town in Rize province in the Black Sea region
of Turkey. He said that HemÅ?in Armenians were forcibly converted to
Islam, and that they converted "in order to survive." However, "they
have never forgotten that they are Armenian, and they never married
with other Muslim groups," according to Vardanian.

Neither diaspora Armenians nor those in Armenia have fully studied and
discussed Islamized Armenians yet. However, academic research has
begun in recent years, and the Conference on Islamized Armenians aims
to raise public awareness of the issue and will be continuing until
Nov. 4.

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-330509-islamized-armenians-in-turkey-represent-age-long-assimilation-policy.html

[Arpa]

　

At the comments section there are some valid points., even if most of them emphasizing the religious aspect of the issue, very few if any talking about language., and other cultural issues.

One observation is the total silence of the church and hierarchy. Some say, If they say they are Armenian then they are Armenian regardless of religion or culture. Will we accept them as they are? Will we let them build a grand mosque in Vagharshapat ?

Regardless of what I have said in the past, I must give credit to Gadarigian for a well balanced article.

One commentator makes a valid observation, that we should use the term "turkified" , not Islamized as many of us live in Islamic countries with no pressure, be it open or tacit to convert.

All in all it is a good projrct as according to the article many so called so far hidden Islamized Armenians attended the conference. It seems to be a good beginning.

Edited November 4, 2013 by Arpa

[Yervant1]

　

At the comments section there are some valid points., even if most of them emphasizing the religious aspect of the issue, very few if any talking about language., and other cultural issues.

One observation is the total silence of the church and hierarchy. Some say, If they say they are Armenian then they are Armenian regardless of religion or culture. Will we accept them as they are? Will we let them build a grand mosque in Vagharshapat ?

Regardless of what I have said in the past, I must give credit to Gadarigian for a well balanced article.

One commentator makes a valid observation, that we should use the term "turkified" , not Islamized as many of us live in Islamic countries with no pressure, be it open or tacit to convert.

All in all it is a good projrct as according to the article many so called so far hidden Islamized Armenians attended the conference. It seems to be a good beginning.

Wow what a beautiful surprise, Arpa is this you or someone else writing this balanced post? I'm truly impressed.

[Yervant1]

FRENCH ARMENIAN HISTORIAN NOT EXPECTING DRASTIC MOVES FROM TURKEY BEFORE GENOCIDE CENTENARY

http://www.armradio.am/en/2013/11/04/french-armenian-historian-not-expecting-drastic-moves-from-turkey-before-genocide-centenary/
13:52 04.11.2013

French-Armenian historian Raymond Kevorkian says the conference held
on Islamized Armenians is a result of Turkey's positive progress
in democracy, but remains pessimistic about the country to take any
step towards breaking "dogmas" regarding the 1915 incidents before
its 100th anniversary.

"Turkey has been changing for the good and it would be unfair not
to see that, this conference is a result of that," Kevorkian told
Hurriyet Daily News on the sidelines of three-day conference regarding
Islamized Armenians that started Nov. 2 in Istanbul.

Despite hailing the opening of archives, Kevorkian implied he still
does not expect drastic moves from Turkey before the 100th anniversary
of the 100th anniversary of the 1915 incidents (the Armenian Genocide),
which is anticipated as a breaking point for Armenian Diaspora. "2015
is an opportunity to break this dogma, but Turkey doesn't look like
it will take a step toward it."

Speaking about the idea of the establishment of a Historian's
Commission to be consisted of the two countries' historians,
Kevorkian said he is against the formation of a commission under a
state's guidance.

"Historians should be independent; they don't wait for the state's
approval to start working. Besides, we, Armenian and Turkish
historians, are already in cooperation and congregate together in
scientific meetings."

"Moreover, there is no need to discuss the presence of the Armenian
genocide as the result is obvious. The Armenian genocide is a reality
acknowledged by the international community as well," he added.

[Arpa]

About the author of the article below Verjihan Zilifoglu/Zilfian. Vercihan/Verjihan? You mean Vergine?

I have seen her in various Armenian media, like the Armenian Weekly etc. I finally looked up to see who she is.

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=55974#entry311937

In an interview at HETQ

http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2010/05/3072-i-am-neither-accepted-by-turks-nor.html

=====

3072) "I Am Neither Accepted By Turks Nor Armenians" Vercihan Ziflioglu

Vercihan Ziflioglu, a 35 year-old reporter, has been working at "Hurriyet Daily News" for the past twelve years. Her Armenian family name is Zilfian. She was recently in Armenia to cover the events surrounding the 95th Anniversary of the 1915 Genocide. While here, she was kind enough to grant an interview with Hetq.

My mother didn't know Armenian well, just the level that was spoken in Anatolia. My father was a fluent speaker, but we didn't live at home with him for too long. I went to school, but conditions for learning Armenian weren't the best. We had nothing, but I had the awareness at an early age to learn. By fifteen, I was reading the Armenian papers "Marmara", "Jamanak" and "Bagin".
I and some friends put out a serious Armenian periodical on Istanbul Armenian writers. It was called "Nor San" and lasted some ten years.
Then it closed down; everyone moved to different countries.
We were in the first group at "Agos". I wrote a column there and then moved to the Turkish press. Conditions are better for reporters in the Turkish press. If I stayed with the Armenian papers I wouldn't have reached anywhere. I had goals and was able to find my spot in the larger press field.
You have to think more and do more. If I had stayed in that little group of ours, I would have had the same thoughts for years. I was really interested to know what the Turkish press was thinking.
There is no such thing as the Armenian press in Istanbul anymore.
"Agos" doesn't only cover news about Armenians. What it does isn't reportage. As a reporter you must be impartial.
"Hurriyet" was important for me because it was the leader when it came to covering issues of the national minorities. I faced many difficulties over the years, but gradually, I get my point across even to the most nationalist of individuals because I disseminate news.
For example, 3-4 years ago I started a series regarding the road travelled by Armenians in the Ottoman era. They found it strange that I should write such a thing. They had no idea what Armenians had accomplished during that period.
Then, one day, a fervent nationalist began writing about me, saying how lucky they were to have Verjihan, so that now we can understand what happened during the Ottoman era.
Sometimes, the Turks alter the news. Here, in Armenia, they think that it's done on purpose with enmity. Yes, sometimes they have nefarious aims but other times they just don't understand. But I can use both sides in my news items. I see it all and can comment in an appropriated manner. There's an advantage to being in the middle of both sides. But it's also problematic. Neither the Turks nor Armenian accept me. I have no identity, no religion, as a reporter. The news is what's important to me because that's how I'll get by. The Turk wants a Turkish reporter to write and the Armenian wants me to be silent and not to write. You will see the mistakes of the Istanbul Armenian community over time, but the community doesn't accept its mistakes.
They see you as a lamb that has gone astray and they start to label you; a "spy" and who knows what. And the Turkish side gradually starts to open up and thinks more deeply.
Do you feel that you are being used by the Turkish press?
Some Dashnak guys ask me the same question. If you have this mentality, as an Armenian why can't you comprehend the fact that your forbearers founded papers in Anatolia and helped develop the Turkish press? Why is it that we always see ourselves as being used? Isn't it better to swim in a big sea and tell others who you are and what you have done? I voluntarily switched over to the Turkish press. If you have a brain and use it, then no one can use you.
In your opinion, are the Armenian and Turkish societies ready to freely relate?
Armenians and Turks will intermingle. There will be literary and artistic events, concerts. There is an Armenian community in Istanbul of 50,000. Armenia now says there are 15,000 of its own citizens in Turkey, but I believe the figure is more. Turks are more intimate with Armenians from the RA and not just due to "football diplomacy" but much earlier. Serzh Sargsyan came after Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Kocharyan. We only see what is presented to us but there is much more.
The Armenian and Turkish communities will be able to unite in the near future but what is more important is a final verdict on the events of 1915.
We must start talking, sharing our pain, as to what happened. The issue must be given closure in order to create friendship. It will be very difficult. Armenia must craft a culture and the youth must change many things. They must look to the future more boldly and not be used by others, but rather use others themselves.
Both in Armenia and in the Istanbul Armenian community, we live with pain. My forbears lived such pain. I wasn't dropped from the heavens.
It's sad but how many days can I relive the Genocide. They have turned me into a lamb. One mustn't constantly grieve. They have turned it into something psychological. We must be saved from that. For example, I was visiting the Genocide Museum here. A family had brought along a five or six year-old boy and telling him - See...a genocide happened.
Fine, tell about it, but it's not asthma. You will be creating a sick new generation that won't be able to look to the future. They will always be in the midst of grief. The West has come a long way and is no longer operates on emotions. Things have changed in the 21st century. We must change much in our lives.
Perhaps the pain will soften when Turkey recognizes the Genocide and apologizes.
Why is everything we do linked to Turkey? For example, if Turkey were to one day recognize the Genocide, what will we do? We will create something new. Now, we are all focused on the Genocide.
Armenians and Turks are quite similar; the same glances, the same craziness. Even the mentalities are the same. Only in the political and "elite" strata are there differences. Thetwo sides will enter a stage of even greater nationalism. I came to Armenia in 2008; during an interview with the Dashnaks I asked one how he perceived me. He simply laughed and replied that in his eyes, I was a Turk.

Yes, I am a citizen of Turkey on paper, my official nationality is Turkish. But I am Armenian. If I go to Turkey and ask "who am I", they will answer, "you are a national minority". If I come to Armenia, I also become a minority. Wherever you go, you will become a minority,

Do you ever harbor fears that Turkish nationalists might one day cause you harm? Have there been such threats?

What can they do? Threats are made but it is normal. In the end, every field of work has its consequences. Reporters must use their pencils very adroitly. You can use a sharp word or a rather delicate one in order to get a story told.

[Yervant1]

http://www.al-monitor.com/modules/almcontent/a-img/elements/logo.png

 

turkey Pulse

 

 

 

http://www.al-monitor.com/files/live/sites/almonitor/files/images/almpics/2013/11/RTXYYDA.jpg?t=thumbnail_570

Human rights activists hold pictures of Armenian victims at Taksim Square in central Istanbul, April 24, 2013, during a demonstration to commemorate the 1915 mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. (photo by REUTERS/Osman Orsal)

What happened to Turkey’s Islamized Armenians?

AuthorOrhan Kemal CengizPosted November 10, 2013

Back in 2005, a bid to hold Turkey’s first ever “Armenian conference” had sparked nationwide tensions. Then-Justice Minister Cemil Cicek accused the organizers of “stabbing Turkey in the back,” while Sukru Elekdag, a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, branded the organizers as “traitors” in a speech in parliament. Yielding to heavy pressure, Istanbul’s Bogazici University backed down from hosting the conference, and the event had to move to the private Bilgi University. The detractors, however, did not stop there. Furious demonstrators bullied the participants as the conference opened, and the event could barely be completed.

Summary⎙ Print A conference on Armenians, Islamized during the genocide years, is an encouraging sign that Turks are facing up to a painful chapter of their history.

AuthorOrhan Kemal CengizPosted November 10, 2013

Translator(s)Sibel Utku Bila

Since then, the atmosphere in Turkey has changed significantly. Commemorations are now being held on April 24 to remember the

1915 Armenian genocide. Scores of books are being published on the issue, which has become also a frequent topic in newspapers and TV programs. Even though the government maintains the official Turkish thesis on the 1915 events, the subject is no longer a taboo in the country.

A conference on Armenians Islamized during the genocide was held Nov. 2-4 in Istanbul, demonstrating that the genocide is now up for a free discussion in Turkey. The venue of the event was the same Bogazici University that had backed down from hosting the first Armenian conference eight years ago. This time, there were neither demonstrators outside the venue nor politicians bashing the organizers. That the event was free of incidents and tension signifies the notable progress Turkey has made in openly discussing the Armenian genocide.

Participants included Turkish, Armenian, American and European academics, intellectuals and descendants of genocide victims from Turkey, Armenia and many other countries. The conference, which attracted huge interest, discussed the fate of the Armenians who survived the genocide as Muslims.

“No one called them by their real names again. They had to destroy and efface themselves to save their existence,” Rakel Dink, the widow of slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, said in her opening speech at the conference, organized by the Hrant Dink Foundation.

About 200,000 Armenians are estimated to have survived the massacres and deportations by becoming Muslims, according to the presentation of academic Ayse Gul Altinay. She estimated that several million people in Turkey are today the children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and daughters- or sons-in-law of Islamized Armenians.

“For 90 years, those people led an invisible existence outside the family and sometimes even within the family. They completely lost their Armenian names and their bonds with their families and the Armenian community. And even when they kept those names and bonds, they were unable to do so openly,” Altinay said.

According to the conference paper of historian Taner Akcam, the Islamization of Armenians was not religiously motivated as religious fanaticism was alien to the Committee for Union and Progress, the Ottoman party whose members perpetrated the genocide. Akcam described Islamization as an assimilation tool used in the genocide. “Assimilation was a truly systematic policy, and forced conversion to Islam was one of its essential elements,” Akcam said.

University of California scholars Arda and Doris Melkonian explained how a large number of Armenian women survived the genocide by marrying Muslim men and were forced to convert. They noted that very few Armenian men had the chance to convert to escape death, and that survival through marrying Muslim women was out of the question for men.

The audience was deeply moved by the presentation of academic Nevin Yildiz Tahincioglu, who recounted the story of an Armenian woman named Sara. Her story (as told by Tahincioglu): “Sara was a 15-year-old from an Armenian village in the Viransehir district of Sanliurfa province. Eyup Agha — or 'Ayip Agha,' as he was called in the local dialect — was among the notables in the area. It was the time when the Hamidiye Corps were being set up. The aghas were encouraged to plunder Armenian villages and drive the inhabitants out. One day, a group including Ayip Agha raided Sara’s village. They rounded up the village men and led them away. A month later, Sara was washing laundry in a nearby stream when she spotted a mutilated arm. She recognized the watch on the arm as her uncle’s before a dog grabbed the limb. Sara followed the dog into a cave, which locals still call 'the Armenian cave.' What she discovered there were the corpses of the village men, mutilated by dogs.

“The survivors then decided to leave the village, but they were also rounded up by Ayip Agha. He locked them up in a depotlike place, keeping them without food and water for days. Then, among the captives, he spotted Sara, who was reputed for her beauty, and 'fell in love' with her. Ayip Agha, who already had two wives, announced to Sara he would marry her, but she refused. He threatened to kill Sara’s mother and eventually did so, but Sara remained adamant. Ayip Agha then threatened to kill her father and did so. Sara was still refusing to marry him. He said he would kill her brother, too. As the boy clang to her skirt, Sara acquiesced with two conditions: 'First, my brother shall not be killed. Second, you shall not change my name, which was given to me by my father.' Sara’s name was to haunt her throughout her life.

“Even though Ayip Agha accepted Sara’s wishes, her brother died in suspicious circumstances a year later. Ayip Agha then began to torture Sara, the wife who refused to change her name and was rumored to have never accepted Islam, continuing to carry a cross. He would inscribe crosses on Sara’s flesh with the dagger he had used to kill scores of Armenians. He would rape her each time he wanted sex, because Sara refused to go to bed with him. According to witness accounts, Sara’s screams during those rapes would echo in the yard of the house.”

The story went on along those lines. The biggest surprise, however, came at the end when Tahincioglu uttered the following sentence: “The bad men in this story are my family.”

Tahincioglu put this story together from the accounts of four witnesses as part of an oral history research. She studied her own family’s past. Both Ayip Agha and the narrators were her relatives. Putting her mark on the conference, Tahincioglu concluded, “It’s not the victim who should speak up and say 'I am a victim.' The past can be reconciled [only] when the perpetrator speaks up and says, ‘I am the perpetrator.’”

The conference on Islamized Armenians was a meaningful, though small, step for Turks in facing up to their history. It is encouraging to see that various aspects of the Armenian genocide are being discussed as the 100th anniversary approaches.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/11/turkey-armenians-islamized-genocide-acknowledgement.html##ixzz2kMaqZvFs

[Arpa]

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/11/14/bastards-of-the-infidels/

------

Calling one ermeni, or saying one’s mother is ermeni is the ultimate insult in their vocabulary tantamount to saying “son of a whore”.

======

Reflections on the Hrant Dink Foundation’s Conference on Islamized Armenians

“Bastards,” “infidels,” “remains of the sword” were the derogatory words directed at Armenian survivors of the genocide in Turkey as well as their offspring. Under this same umbrella was another set of “bastards” who were Christian Armenians forcibly or willingly converted to Islam in the wake of the genocide.

 

Photo by Eric Nazarian

This was one of the many topics covered over the course of three eye-opening days at the Hrant Dink Foundation’s Conference on “Islamized Armenians” on the Bogazici University campus in Istanbul. We heard lectures and panels comprised of international scholars presenting a myriad of oral and academic histories about forcibly Islamized Armenians, as well as the histories of the willingly converted that bridge and divide these communities. The conference was a platform for these unofficial minorities, a sort of “People’s History of Islamized Armenians,” to borrow half of Howard Zinn’s title. This percentage of the Turkish population is the resurfacing “remains of the sword.”

The conference began with a remarkable and open-hearted speech by Rakel Dink that echoed the humanist ideals of her late husband, Hrant. The president of the university then enthusiastically welcomed the attendees and made it clear she supported this conference. Hrant’s spirit hovered everywhere. The energy, respect, and openness of his legacy was palpable as we watched and listened to the mellifluous voice of Fetiye Cetin tell the story of how her grandmother had survived the genocide. And of a certain spot on a river where her grandmother had seen her own mother drowning two of her siblings during the marches, to prevent them from the terror that befell the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. When Fetiye was a child, her grandmother would take her to this river and say nothing of what she remembered except, “If only these mountains had eyes and could say what happened here.”

This was one of the countless stories that made it into the public consciousness thanks to Fetiye’s 2008 book, My Grandmother, one of the most important personal family histories of our time, as well as the follow-up book Grandchildren, which she wrote with Ayse Gul Altinay. We learned from the articulate opening panels how historians in the past had neglected the lives of women and children, who were seen as objects of a masculine nation and not subjects independent of themselves. There was a freedom and a deep earnestness in most of the presentations that was moving to experience. Nobody gave a damn for the most part about mincing words or reiterating euphemisms, and there were no gendarmes to stop or censor the free flow of ideas and the innumerable times “genocide” was used in the panels and discourse.

The conference unspooled snippets and overviews of oral histories and tales gathered from the field research of the scholars present, including Laurence Ritter, Umit Kurt, Helin Anahit, Avedis Hadjian, and Anoush Suni.

One of Suni’s stories was about an Armenian man who converted, was given the name Mehmet, married an Arabic woman, and had a son named Jemal who was taken in as a son by an “agha” after his father’s death. Through this and other stories we learned how the process of renaming the converted was a step in creating a new religious identity. There was also the presence of Turks who, over time, found out they were Kurds, who later found out they were Armenians.
The perception of Armenians in Kurdish novels; the 1915 Besni Armenian orphans who were Islamized; the issue of Kurdish complicity in the Armenian Genocide; as well as the current state of relations and possible methods of reconciliation were discussed at a panel entitled, “Memory, Ethnicity, Religion: Kurdish Identity.”

During the coffee breaks, there were occasional tears on the campus lawn, a genial warmth among most of the attendees, and something quite the sight for sore eyes, especially for a Diasporan—a stack of loudspeakers and a live-feed set on campus overlooking the Bosphorus echoing the word “Soykirim” (the Turkish word for “genocide”) openly during Taner Akcam’s presentation.

In this aura of minorities telling their layered and Byzantine stories, the familial taboos and ethnic histories braided and dovetailed into a very complicated and illuminating fresco of what it means to be an “Islamized Armenian.” This process of unveiling family secrets through the act of storytelling became a source of healing for the teller of these stories. As a filmmaker, this was a very touching and inspiring moment to witness. Stories have the power to heal and educate the public about the unsung and unheard experiences of uncharted histories. The questions from the audience were prescient and spoke to the resurfacing anger at a state that has shunned multi-ethnic identity and diversity instead of celebrating it. This small minority of the Dink generation took an intelligent and engaged stand by directly examining the traumas of the past and nurturing an aura of empathy and respect for the history of the oppressed wanting and deserving to be heard. This is the clearest ray of light in an otherwise still darkness in Turkey when it comes to the issue of acknowledging the far-reaching, multi-faceted immediate and long-term effects of the genocide.

Victor Hugo once said, “An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted.” And at this conference, this “invasion” of ideas was certainly welcome and critically articulated.

I felt torn between hope and possibility that ebbed into the gnawing, perhaps unjustified, pessimism that all the analysis, research, and incredible hard work done by countless scholars loyal to these voices of history and the corroborate-able truth of the genocide still would change nothing for the ocean of bones in the sands of Der-Zor, which a hundred years ago were living, breathing families. We will never know their names or stories. We will never know their voices or what they might have been.

There will never be any panel capable of granting them justice for what they endured. They will remain the nameless and abandoned dead.

“How can we Armenians heal from this trauma?” is the first note I wrote in my notebook, inspired by the always warm and gracious Fetiye Cetin. I still don’t have a convincing answer, but maybe a large part of the healing lies in establishing ties with willing Turks and Kurds ready to face and discuss the past openly and empathetically. I remember the tale of the Turkish village “kasap” (butcher) who said he knew that most of the Armenian men in the village were heavily addicted to tobacco and nicotine, as their throats and esophagi were tar-yellow after the wholesale village beheadings he took part in. This, too, is part of the taboo history that affects the consciousness of those who live on the lands where the atrocities took place. As Cicero said, “The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living.”

Projected images, be they photographic or cinematographic, have the power and capacity to trigger stories and ideas in the eye of the beholder. These knee-jerk ideas can evoke a realization or an inner epiphany that otherwise would not have been conjured. This unintended interpretation churning within the mind’s eye of the moviegoer has the capacity to hold up a mirror into our inner lives and show the need for quiet self-reflection.

The stream-of-consciousness images triggered by the panelists cast my memories back to Van and Bitlis in May of this year on my journey to Historic Armenia. Since the conference centered on “Islamized Armenians,” whose religious conversions can be broken down into a garden variety of sub-sets of the forced and the willingly converted, I couldn’t help but stray back to the churches and cemeteries we witnessed in Van, Edremit, and Bitlis that had undergone their own forced spatial conversions from places of ancient spiritual worship to barns where donkeys and livestock bred in villages off the map.

These seemingly irrelevant memories lingered in the back of my mind as I listened to tale after tale of survivalist horror, identity politics, and skeletons surfacing after generations of denial, self-censorship, and violent repression. I began to feel a very unpleasant certainty in my gut that the next time we returned to Van, Bitlis, and the ancient lands of our ancestors, we would still witness the neglect and plunder of the remains of our culture and faith. This was triggered by the projection of a black-and-white image of the Church of Surp Garabed in Dersim before it was bombed in the late 1930's. And yet, the stones remain. They have an uncanny, almost supernatural way to stay rooted in some battered and ravaged form of quasi-existence. Perhaps its that Armenian stubbornness refusing to go away, refusing to stop fighting, refusing to be silenced, always wanting to be heard and acknowledged in the dark waters of those in power quietly silencing truth.

The more brazen the indignities of chameleonic politics that recognized the genocide over a generation ago during the time of Reagan, then flips to the official position of banning the now controversial “Armenian Orphan Rug” from public display to appease Ankara. Everything is indirectly or directly part and parcel of history’s ironic and cruel cycles. And all of the stories in this conference were in some shape or form tied to the tapestry of this region’s history and future. If everything is connected then nothing is irrelevant, especially in human rights and the silencing of crimes against humanity, including the discrimination today’s Islamized Armenians continue to face. This must change, and it will take one person at a time looking into their own conscience and respecting the right of the other to exist and be heard in the name of true, sincere human diplomacy, not meaningless photo-ops and fickle handshakes.

The common thematic denominators that I took away from the panels included the unsettling realization that very little is accepted on its own merits when it comes to a human being’s right to exist in the state of nature they were born into. This is the troubling and ugly truth. What I’ve gathered from people I’ve met over numerous travels to make a film in Bolis is that if you are not born into the ethnic and religious majority, then you will forever be subordinate and an object of oppression. This comes from most of the people I have spoken to that hail from Anatolia or from minority families living in Turkey: Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Kurd, or Chaldean, it does not matter. With the exception of the Kurdish people and their colorful ethnic and cultural traditions, the majority of these ancient cultures are gone from their ancestral land. This is nothing new, and the obvious sometimes needs to be reiterated in order not to be forgotten or neglected. Their pasts, their schools and neighborhoods, have been deleted the further east you go. But the cemeteries and the churches remain in various conditions of decay or damage through neglect. In the case of the Islamized Armenians, they are considered subordinates in the eyes of the converters, and religious traitors in the eyes of Christian Armenians. They are, in perpetuity, in a state of limbo. The roots of almost every family story told from Mush to Artvin to Sassoon traced back to this common denominator of Armenians and ethnic minorities tossed into the grinder of history and forced to accept belief systems and lifestyles in order to survive.

Will there be more of these conferences in the east and south of Turkey, and will they continue to convert ignorance into knowledge and knowledge into respect for all cultures and faiths? Is that too idealistic a notion to hope for given the irreversible magnitude of the bloody history that birthed this generation of minorities wanting to be given a place to stand, to be heard, and, more importantly, to be accepted on their own merits without precondition? Will there be another conference on the braided and inter-related histories of the Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian Genocides? Some day, in a possibly more democratic future, will these conferences be converted into the impetus to grant official civil and human rights to these people, and all remaining religious properties and foundations in Anatolia?

Will there come a time for the “others” culture, faith, and history to be respected, preserved, and taught in schools, instead of plundered by grave-robbers fancying themselves as treasure hunters of the fabled Armenian gold? Where will the commission be in the Kurdish areas to help stop this rampant and insulting quest for the so-called buried treasures that has dug hole after hole in our churches, spurring only more pillage? In the process of trying to form the building blocks of reconciliation through cultural diplomacy and meaningful dialogue, respect for cultural landmarks and touchstones are fundamental to the trust-building process.

This incredible conference was a much-needed gift in giving voice to the voiceless and unofficial histories of the Islamized Armenians. And through this first of what will hopefully be many conferences to come, the tangible results require time and will be measured in the long run. This region has a long way to go until it comes to grips with its own Civil Rights Movement on a massive national scale. But the important work of converting ignorance into beads of knowledge braided together into inspiration and the meaningful exchange of ideas has begun, and continues quite nobly thanks to the Hrant Dink Foundation.

==

About Eric Nazarian

Eric Nazarian is a screenwriter, filmmaker and photojournalist. In 2007, Nazarian wrote and directed “The Blue Hour,” a first feature film that won six international awards. In 2008, Nazarian received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences® (home of the Oscars) prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for his original screenplay, “Giants.” In turn, Nazarian’s film “Bolis” was the recipient of the Best Short Film Award at the 14th Arpa International Film Festival in 2011. He is currently adapting Chris Bohjalian’s critically acclaimed novel, The Sandcastle Girls, for the big screen. More Posts

[Yervant1]

Half of Turkey's Islamized Armenians silent on ethnic origins - expert

13:44 - 16.11.13


Of the 4 million Islamized Armenians residing in Turkey today, nearly
half remain silent on their ethnic origins, an expert has said,
addressing the problems of Turkey's crypto-Armenians.

`Who is a crypto-Armenian? The one who knows who he or she is. They
wed their children between themselves and know the Armenian traditions
better than we do,' Haykazun Alvrtsyan, the director of the Center for
Western Armenian Studies, told a news conference on Saturday.

The expert said that his studies of Turkey's Islamized Armenians have
revealed that the Crypto-Armenians, whose number is about 1.5 - 2
million, reside mainly on the territory of the historical Kingdom of
Armenia. Yet there is another half that never identifies itself as
descendents ethnic Armenians and never wishes to remember the past for
fear of losing what they have, Alvrtsyan added.


`This is first of all a political issue, as Islamized Armenians have
become a kind of problem for Turkey,' he explained. `Turkey feels an
urge to show something to the West. And to do that it is important [to
promote] religious freedom and human liberties. We are first of all
interested in the Islamized Armenians problem which is something they
must be able to solve.'

`First, there is the government viewpoint and the scientific studies
confirming that. In the second place, we deal with nationalist `gray
wolves' etc, the attitude of different circles and trends. And
thirdly, there is the demand of the humanity understanding this
problem in the best way and urging that it be raised and a solution is
found.'

Alvrtsyan further referred to the Turkish constitutional provision
saying that all people residing in the country are Turks. But that, he
said, does not mean at all they know nothing about Islamized
Armenians.

`All the Ismalized Armenians - whether hiding [their origins] or not -
are registered. And we learned recently about the codes which are
effective even today and whose initiator is Talaat [*****]. They know
that quite well, and not only; all the Armenians are controllable, and
that gives hints as to the policies conducted today,' Alvrtsyan said,
noting that Islamized Armenians in Turkey are often denied promotion
in the military or the state sector.

http://www.tert.am/en/news/2013/11/16/haykazun-alvrcyan/

[Arpa]

　

 

A slight correction if I may.

Note that the title of this thread is Kurdified - Turkified Armenians

The latest buzz, that we see daily several news and articles about is “ismaized Armenians”. There may be otherwise islamized Armenians, but they are not specifically turkifed. We may understand the reason as not all islamized are not all necessarily only turkified. Here we are talking mainly about tutkified ones.

Hopefully this note, campaign will be seen by those concerned and amend their wording.

We have had other campaigns that seems to have borne FRUIT. I see ore ans more talk about the Tricolor where the third color is called Tsirani. I would likez to think that our campaign has finally made difference. Rven if we cannot shake off old habits, when some fel obligated to that useless suffix of “guyn” after every description of colors. Yes, at times we do use that suffix, mostly poetically like in kaptaguyn, krmraguyn etc. Yet simply Karmir,Kapuyt Tsirani will be sufficient all by itself, and so much more poetic.

Edited November 19, 2013 by Arpa

[Yervant1]

FORCED ISLAMISATION OF ARMENIANS RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT TODAY'S TURKEY

Asia News, Italy
Nov 26 2013

by NAT da Polis

Ethnic and religious cleansing accompanied the genocide
perpetrated by the Young Turks and the construction of Ataturk's new
Turkey. Millions of Turks are related to Armenians. Crypto-Armenians
and Crypto-Christians are now breaking their silence.

Istanbul (AsiaNews) - Turks are getting ready for a hot election in
March when they will cast their ballot to elect a new parliament
and, for the first time, a new president. Almost certainly, Sunni
ethics will certainly inform the debate. Not much coverage has gone
to a conference held in early November on the forced islamisation of
Armenians before and after the 1915 genocide.

Organised by Istanbul's Bogazici University and the Hrant Dink
Foundation, which is named after Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink, the editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos. He
was assassinated in 2007 by Turkish nationalists with the tolerance
of elements within the Turkish state.

Although some 600 people from around the world attended the conference,
the Turkish media failed to give the event the attention it deserved.

In their presentations, various speakers noted that forced Islamisation
was not visited only on individual children and women survivors but
on entire families forced to convert in order to survive in the new
Turkey born out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

The founding of the new Turkish Republic was premised on the policies
of Islamisation and genocide pursued by the Young Turks and the
Committee of Union and Progress. This occurred after Armenian members
of the Young Turks and the Committee split from ethnic Turks in 1913.

Based on various reports, the goal of the Committee of Union and
Progress in 1915 was to reduce the Armenian population (5 to 10 per
cent of the empire's population) where it had its strongest and oldest
roots - the central, southern and eastern regions of the Ottoman
Empire - since its aim was to establish a new Turkey that would
be Sunni Muslim. Even Kemal Ataturk, founder of Turkey's so-called
secular republic, appealed to Muslim solidarity to consolidate his
power. In short, a real Turk was a Muslim Turk.

Not surprisingly, after the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), Turkish-speaking
Orthodox Christians known as Karamanlis were uprooted from Anatolia
and sent to Greece.

Turkish historian Taner Akcam, who teaches at Clark University in
the United States, is one of the foremost specialist on the Armenian
Genocide. In his address, he spoke of 200,000 Islamised Armenians,
noting that the assets of the genocide victims went to the Turks.

Overall, historians focused on a very important issue. Because of
forced islamisation, millions of Turks have ties to the Armenian
and/or Christian communities. Some call them 'crypto-Armenians' or
'crypto-Christians;.

In her lecture, French sociologist Laurence Ritter presented research
showing that 100 years after the Armenian Genocide, the descendants
of Islamised Armenian survivors, the so-called crypto-Armenians of
Anatolia, are beginning to break their silence.

AyÅ~_e Gul Altınay, who teaches at Sabanci University, a private
college in Istanbul, said that Hrant Dink, the murdered editor of
the Istanbul-based Turkish-Armenian newspaper Armenian Agos, back
in 2004 called for the Armenian Genocide to be revisited in light of
the descendants of Islamised Armenians.

AyÅ~_e Gul Altınay and Fethiye Cetin edited a book, The Grandchildren,
released in 2007, in which they note that the Turkish state knew
about the ethnic make-up of the population. Contrary to the official
ideology, Turks were not as homogenous as the government wanted them
to be.

In light of these steps, Turkey is beginning to question its true
character and the multi-ethnic nature of its population.

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Forced-Islamisation-of-Armenians-raises-questions-about-today's-Turkey-29642.html

[Yervant1]

AGHJAYAN DELIVERS TALK ON 'HIDDEN ARMENIANS' IN ANKARA (FULL TEXT)

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2014/01/18/aghjayan-ankara/
By George Aghjayan // January 18, 2014

On Jan. 18, writer and activist George Aghjayan delivered a talk in
Ankara on Turkey's "hidden Armenians." He was speaking during a panel
discussion held in memory of Hrant Dink. Below is the full text of
his talk.

***

The first time I traveled to Turkey was in 1996. I spent three weeks
covering the length and breadth of the country, from Istanbul to Van,
from Erzurum to Musa Dagh. The land had been calling me for some time,
yet the trip was extremely difficult emotionally and physically. Even
though I had left many things undone, it took 15 years before I could
even begin to put behind the emotional scars from that trip.

It was the re-consecration of the Surp Giragos Church [in
Diyarbakir/Dikranagerd] and the conference on the social and economic
history of the Diyarbakir province organized by the Hrant Dink
Foundation that brought me back in 2011. I found a much different
reality in Turkey and have now returned 4 additional times since 2011.

I am profoundly thankful to the organizers of this event for providing
me yet another opportunity to be here and to reflect on the cruel
murder of Hrant Dink.

Hrant observed, "When we talk of 1915, we should not just speak
of those who perished, but also of the experiences of those who
survived." Over the almost 20 years now that I have been traveling
to Turkey, I have met many Armenians, and I would like to share a
few of their stories.

I think of my first trip to Keserig where we met a very old Armenian
woman. My uncle, whose family was from Keserig, was asking if she
recognized our family name. As the conversation progressed and the
crowd around us grew, I remember a man getting very angry with us
and screaming, "Why do you ask about the Armenians?" I distinctly
remember another man shouting him down, telling him to go away, and
kindly offering to show us where the church and other significant
places had been. It occurred to me that, quite reasonably, the first
of these men represented the descendants of those who committed the
genocide. If not literally, surely in spirit, those who deny the
genocide and reveal their racism today are linked to the criminals of
the past. The second man, in turn, represented those whose humanity
demanded that they rescue Armenians.

I think of the visit to my grandmother's village of Uzunova where one
of the leading men revealed that both his grandmothers were Armenian.

My own grandmother was a young girl when she was taken as a slave to
a Muslim family. Her father murdered, her mother and two sisters sent
on the death march never to be seen or heard from again, she survived
six years in servitude before her sole surviving sister rescued her.

When I met this man, I felt the bond of two sons of the village-his
grandmothers were taken and never escaped, while mine was rescued. We
were two sides of the same coin.

I think of our wonderful friend Armen who has bravely embraced his
Armenian and Christian heritage, and his brothers who have remained
Muslim. They open their home time and time again to Armenians visiting
their village, and share their knowledge of the history of the region.

This family, like so many others, has seen the crimes against both
Armenians and Kurds...crimes of hate and racism.

I think of Asiya from Chungush, about whom my friend, Chris Bohjalian,
so eloquently wrote in theWashington Post. On one visit to Chungush,
as we were about to drive away, her son-in-law tapped on the window
of our van. Upon rolling down the window, he indicated that his
mother-in-law was Armenian. Not knowing exactly who or why this man
had approached us, we began to drive away. He stopped us again by
banging on the window, this time with greater anxiety. As the window
was being rolled down, he thrust his phone to my friend Khatchig
Mouradian, and on the phone was a video of Asiya telling the names
of her Armenian relatives. We would meet Asiya that day.

I think of entering a village near Moks, where I knew Armenian were
still living in the recent past. On the main road to the village, we
stopped a man who was walking by and asked if he knew of any Armenians
living there. He said there was an elderly Armenian woman who was very
sick and homebound. He indicated this woman's son was working in the
field just up ahead of us. So we drove on and eventually came upon a
man working in the field. However, when we inquired about his mother,
he indicated she was too ill to talk to anyone and was not Armenian
in any case. His explanation for the confusion was that the other
man had something against him and that is why he had claimed that
his elderly mother was Armenian.

So, you see, those who descend from the remaining Armenians deal
with their heritage in very different ways. The reception they have
received from the Armenian community and their Muslim neighbors has
been equally varied.

I recall the genocide survivor memoir titled, In the Shadow of the
Fortress. It is a fascinating account from the village of Hussenig of
what it was like for those who survived the genocide in hiding. The
author recounts how after each round of deportation, there would be a
period of calm followed by pronouncements that it was now safe for the
Armenians to come out of hiding. After a period of time, the Armenians
who naively believed such promises would be rounded up and marched
off. This happened time and time again. Similarly, many of those who
hide their identity today have survived over the decades by remaining
silent, by not believing that the climate had in fact changed.

Throughout the years, they have learned that those who believe in
change and reveal themselves ultimately suffer persecution.

The Islamized Armenians must be welcomed back to their Armenian
heritage. Not as second-class citizens, and definitely not to
experience a new kind of discrimination. Every single Islamized
Armenian is a precious miracle of the survival of identity and is the
key to the return of the Armenian presence to these lands. Armenian
culture and heritage was born of this land, and after a thousand years
of assimilation and purposeful destruction, we demand the right of
its return.

Today, there is a window of opportunity that has opened a crack. It is
our challenge-those of us here today and others who are like-minded-to
open the window wider, and permanently. If we fail, we may never have
another opportunity. That is what the criminals are counting on.

[hagopn]

Good man, George. Agree 100%

[Yervant1]

French journalists launch TV project on Turkey's Islamized Armenians - Video

April 19, 2014 | 03:29


French freelance journalists Anna Benjamin and Guillaume Clere have
been working already for eight months on a documentary film titled
Turkey: Heritage of Silence, Islamized Armenians.

The film will tell the stories of Turkey's citizens who find out about
their Armenian roots, Nouvelles d'Arménie reported.

According to Benjamin and Clere, `it's difficult to speak about this
topic,' tell the forgotten story of the Armenian Genocide survivors,
and present the events that occurred in 1915.

The documentary will officially be presented in April 2015, and it
will be interactive, as audience participation will be required.

All Armenians across the globe will be able to post announcements to
find their relatives who have scattered around the world as a result
of the genocide.

`We aim to present this Internet platform in English, Armenian, and
Turkish,' the film's co-producers stated.


http://news.am/eng/news/205153.html

[Arpa]

Muslim Armenians?

Below we read that the Ministry of Diaspora has held a session with Islamized Armenians, inviting them to COME HOME ԱՐԻ ՏՈՒՆ.

DEAR MS HRANOUSH, HOW ABOUT YOU RE-INVITE THOSE 2 MILLION THAT HAVE ABANDONED SHIP AND EMIGRATED SINCE THE ADVENT OF THE SO CALLED INDPENENDENCE.

HOW ABOUT THOSE RATS ABANDONING SHIP?

http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/files/legacy/warren%20cartoon%20rats.jpg

 

 

WHO REPLACES THOSE RATS WHO ABANDON SHIP AND SEARCH GREENER PASTURES IN OTHER SHORES?

http://hetq.am/eng/news/55918/greener-shores-the-travails-of-armenians-seeking-refuge-in-france.html

 

http://www.yerakouyn.com/?p=60824

Իսլամացած Հայեր Արի Տուն Ծրագրի Մասնակից

08/05/2014Posted in: Հայաստան, Սփիւռք

 

Արի տուն ծրագրի 6-րդ փուլի բացման մասնակցած է 182 սփիւռքահայ` 15 երկրներէ, անոնց շարքին կան նաեւ պատմական Տիգրանակերտէն ժամանած իսլամացած հայեր: Այս մասին կը յայտնէ yerkirmedia-ն։

Խումբի ղեկավար Գաֆուր Թուրքայ` Օհաննէս Օհանեան, ըսած է, որ Ցեղասպանութենէն մազապուրծ եղած եւ աշխարհով մէկ տարածուած հայերու մէջ ամենադժուարը իրենց` Արեւմտեան Հայաստանի մէջ մնացածներու համար էր, անոնք իրենց հողի վրայ կորսնցուցած են անունը, ազգանունն ու կրօնը: Թուրքայ նշած է, որ Տիգրանակերտի մէջ արմատներուն վերադառնալու մեծ շարժում սկսած է: Ինքը եւս վերջերս վերադարձած է քրիստոնէական արմատներուն` վերագտնելով իր հայկական` Օհանեան ազգանունը: Տիարպեքիրի հայերը Արի տուն ծրագրին մասնակցելու հնարաւորութիւնը ստացած են գանատահայ ճարտարագէտ, բարերար Ռաֆֆի Պետրոսեանի աջակցութեամբ:

Edited August 5, 2014 by Arpa

[Yervant1]

http://www.armenianweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/cropped-armweeklyheader.png

Poetic Justice: Diyarbakir Armenians Baptized at Etchmiadzin

By Raffi Bedrosyan on August 8, 2014

Special for the Armenian Weekly

The homecoming trip of the (no more) hidden Armenians from Diyarbakir to Armenia finally began this week, after months of planning, preparation, resolving issues, and seemingly endless three-way long distance discussions from Diyarbakir to Yerevan and Toronto.

http://www.armenianweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Etchmiadzin-Raffi-Group-pic-by-Gulisor.jpg

Diyarbakir Armenians baptized at Etchmiadzin (Photo by Gulisor Akkum/The Armenian Weekly)

One moment they burst into dancing in the streets as soon as they hear a playful tune, and the next moment they cry uncontrollably at a scene which may mean nothing to passersby but has reminded them of something, someone – all the way back to 1915.

And now, the “new” Armenians of Diyarbakir are strolling in the streets and museums of Yerevan, tiptoeing into the various churches scattered all over Armenia. Emotions are near the surface… One moment they burst into dancing in the streets as soon as they hear a playful tune, and the next moment they cry uncontrollably at a scene which may mean nothing to passersby but has reminded them of something, someone – all the way back to 1915.

Yerevan is full of Armenian kids from all over the world as part of the “Ari Dun” program at the invitation of the Ministry of Diaspora, which has also helped organize our itinerary. Government officials arranged to meet the Diyarbakir group on our first day, along with hundreds of the Diaspora kids. The Diyarbakir group was extremely anxious about how they will be greeted. The Armenian officials were equally curious about these Turkish/Kurdish speaking individual— ranging in age from 18 to 83—mostly middle-aged, and representing all socio-economic and education levels. Among them are teachers, students, doctors, housewives, and retired individuals. Some of them are sophisticated urban dwellers; others are going abroad for the first time.

I am acting as the translator (from Armenian to Turkish and back), but my task needs to be more than just to relay statements and messages. On the one hand, I have to be able to convey, from Turkish to Armenian, the incredible desire and courage of these individuals in becoming new Armenians; and on the other hand, I have to be able to convey, from Armenian to Turkish, the honest sincerity of welcome of the government officials. But I am happy to report that by the end of the meeting, the previously anxious Diyarbakir Armenians and the previously serious-looking government officials were dancing the Diyarbakir “halay” together to Armenian music, while the kids from the Diaspora, Russia, the U.S., France, Iran, and elsewhere, watched these grown-up kids in amazement. A government official says his parents are from Mush, another one says from Sasun, then one of the Diyarbakir Armenians screams “My father is from Sasun, too,” and the common stories from Sasun pour forth. They don’t need my translation anymore, they have already started comparing Sasun village names and hugging one another…

I had been a bit apprehensive when the Diaspora Ministry representatives told me they had planned two hours of Armenian language lessons each day as part of the itinerary, thinking that our group would be more interested in sightseeing. To my surprise, they all burst into enthusiastic applause and were deeply grateful for the lessons.

When we visited the Madenataran with its manuscript treasures and the village of Oshagan where Mesrob Mashdots, the creator of the Armenian alphabet, is buried, they understood better the mystery of the strange letters that they saw for the first time in their lives just two years ago.

As I reported in previous articles, almost all of the group members have some degree of “Armenianness” in their family, some from one parent, some from both. They have mostly decided to come out as Armenians, but not as Christians—yet. Two of them have already been baptized in Diyarbakir’s Sourp Giragos Church, changing names, identity and religion. Gafur Turkay has become Ohannes Ohanian, his wife Nurcan has become Knar, proudly wearing not one but all three cross necklaces given to her as presents after her baptism. One of the teachers in the group is determined to be baptized at Etchmiadzin. The risks he is taking are enormous. He is a primary school teacher in a government school. He may lose his job, friends’ circle, or worse; but his mind is made up. In addition, if he is baptized in Etchmiadzin instead of back home at Sourp Giragos, he will gain bragging rights over Gafur/Ohannes as being a more complete Christian Armenian… I have arranged for the ceremony beforehand with Bishop Pakrad Galstanian of Etchmiadzin, formerly the Canadian Diocese Primate.

We also have a lady who has spent many sleepless nights trying to decide whether she should also get baptized. Her dilemma is even more dangerous. She feels she has an obligation to her long-suffering late father, a hidden Armenian, who had encouraged her to become a Christian Armenian before he passed away. But her devoutly Moslem Kurdish husband has forbidden her from taking this step. The night before our trip to Etchmiadzin, she tells me she will not be able to go ahead with the baptism.

In the morning, we are off to Sardarabad, visiting the Victory Museum, understanding the significance and consequences of the 1918 events. As we approach Etchmiadzin, the lady with the dilemma walks from the back of the bus to where I am sitting, and tells me her final decision: “My father suffered a lot. I know he is still suffering even though he is dead. I need to do this to end his suffering. If I will suffer as a result of this, I am prepared for it.”

“My father suffered a lot. I know he is still suffering even though he is dead. I need to do this to end his suffering. If I will suffer as a result of this, I am prepared for it.”

So we end up witnessing a double baptism ceremony at Sourp Asdvadzadzin Church in Etchmiadzin for the “new” Stepan who took his Armenian grandfather’s name, and for the new “Anjel” who took her Armenian grandmother’s name. I am certain this was the first time in Etchmiadzin, or all of Armenia, where the Armenian baptism ceremony was carried out in Armenian along with the Turkish translation word-for-word. At the end, Pakrad Srpazan concluded with the statement: “To become a Christian, one needs to be brave, to become both an Armenian and a Christian, one needs to be doubly brave.” Everyone had tears in their eyes, including PakradSrpazan.

Isn’t it ironic that these individuals chose to become Armenian on the same day when Turkish Prime Minister and presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated on national TV: “They [opposition] said I was of Georgian origin. Even uglier, they accused me of being an Armenian, sorry to say” ?

And isn’t it doubly ironic that if Erdogan does become President, the presidential mansion that he will reside in was once owned by an Armenian family known as the Kasapyan family?

Our reporting of the journey through Armenia toward a new life for the (no more) hidden Armenians will continue.

To read Bedrosyan’s previous article, click here.