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MY JOURNEY FROM HATE TO HOPE
By Line Abrahamian
Reader's Digest, Canada Edition
October 2006
The Armenian Genocide almost annihilated my ancestors. How could I
not hate Turks?
When I heard in April that Turkey threatened economic sanctions against
Canada and recalled its ambassador because Prime Minister Stephen
Harper publicly recognized the Armenian Genocide, all the anger I've
felt towards Turks came rushing back. Why do they use scare tactics
on anyone who acknowledges that, between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman
Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians in the first genocide of the 20th
century? Twenty-one countries have recognized it, and the European
Union has been urging Turkey to face up to its past if it wants to
join. I know you should never hate, but how else am I supposed to
feel about a nation that tried to annihilate my ancestors-and is
still denying it?
Instinctively I cringed when a co-worker first told me his wife was
Turkish. As an Armenian-Canadian, I'd been raised with stories of the
Genocide. I was five when I first saw a black-and white photo from the
massacre, of a crying Armenian boy so emaciated his ribs were sticking
out. That kid could've been me. So at age five, I decided to hate all
Turks. At my Armenian school in Montreal, the worst insult you could
hurl at another kid wasn't a four-letter word, it was "Turk lover."
Three years ago, at 28, I met my co-worker's wife. She was the first
Turkish person I had ever met. I shook her hand and smiled. She was
lovely, but when we sat down and talked, it was not about the past.
And that bothered me. I think I expected her to apologize profusely
for what her ancestors did in 1915 or to slam her government for
nearly a century of denial. She didn't. So I decided to hate her, too.
It might have been irrational, but I wasn't alone in feeling this
way. When I asked an educated Jewish woman how she felt whenever
she met a German, she offered up a guilty smile. "Whenever I meet
an older German, I wonder, Were you the one who pushed my aunt into
the oven? And if it's a young German, I can't help but think, Did
your grandparents kill any Jews during the Holocaust? In my mind,
I know I shouldn't feel this anger. But my heart won't let me forgive."
This, even after Germany apologized and made restitutions. All over
the world, Holocaust deniers are shunned and put on trial. Yet Turkey
has gotten away with denying the Genocide for 91 years because most of
the world doesn't know that before Sudan, Rwanda, Cambodia and Nazi
Germany, the Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians in massacres
and deportation marches through the deserts of Mesopotamia (parts of
today's Turkey, Syria and Iraq). Many people don't even know what an
Armenian is-"So you speak Arabic?" "No, I speak Armenian." "Right. Your
country is Russia." "No, my country is Armenia." The victims are
largely unmourned. And last year Turkey dragged its most renowned
novelist, Orhan Pamuk, to court for "insulting Turkishness" after he
was quoted as saying a million Armenians were killed in his country.
Can you blame me for holding a grudge?
I walk into Manoug Khatchadourian's apartment and hug him. We've
never met, yet I feel an instant connection. Manoug, 104, is a
Genocide survivor.
He asks me to make Armenian coffee, expecting that since I'm Armenian,
I must know how to brew it-like baking choereg (Armenian bread)
or cooking dolma (stuffed vegetables). I don't. Still, I have a go,
but it turns out thick and gloppy. Manoug takes a sip and cringes,
not subtly. I smile apologetically. But he has survived far worse
than bad coffee.
My eyes fix on a painting above Manoug's head. A Turkish soldier is
stabbing an Armenian woman. Another is ripping a baby from his pleading
mother's arms. An Armenian mother is cradling her dead daughter.
"How could I not hate them?" says Manoug, his body trembling. "They
killed our mothers, fathers, children! No, I can't forgive them. I
still live it today." His mind races back to a day in his childhood,
on the deportation march in Mesopotamia, in July 1915.
"Have you seen Mama?" 13-year-old Manoug asked pleadingly, but the
haggard Armenians mutely trudged past him, their tongues lolling,
and threw themselves into a puddle of rain mingled with animal urine.
They hadn't had a drop for two days. Manoug had wriggled through the
throng to fetch water for his family but had now lost them. "Have
you seen Mama?" he asked anyone who would listen. But no one had.
The caravan set off once more. It had been four weeks since they'd
been dragged from their homes in Kharpert, and every day marchers died
of hunger, thirst, heat-or the dagger of a guard. Now Manoug was alone.
Suddenly a band of Turkish and Kurdish marauders came riding down with
a roar. The frightened marchers scattered, but many were trampled
under crushing hooves. Horsemen snatched up pretty girls and looted
marchers; a few fell on a woman and began breaking out her gold teeth
with a hammer.
Then a Turk started chasing Manoug. The boy ran, but his legs were
weak. His assailant caught up, throwing Manoug to the ground, beating
him fiercely with his bayonet, then stripping off his clothes.
Bloody and naked, Manoug staggered behind a boulder and collapsed.
Some Armenian boys rushed to help him. "Leave me," Manoug breathed.
"I've lost my family. This is where I want to die."
The phone rings in Manoug's apartment. As he answers it, I think,
How could he not hate the Turks? My eyes stray back to the painting. I
hate them all over again.
As I enter the Ararat carpet store in Montreal, I can almost hear
the giggle of my six-year-old self, climbing up carpet mountains and
through carpet tunnels with store owner Kerop Bedoukian while Dad
was with clients.
"This place hasn't changed much since you were last here, has it?"
asks Kerop's son, Harold, who inherited Ararat when Kerop died in
1981. But it has. The carpets are neatly displayed on the floor
instead of rolled into fun tunnels for the pint-sized and pigtailed.
Kerop's office looks different, but his original desk is still there.
And tucked in a bookshelf is The Urchin, the book he wrote about his
experiences on the deportation march. When I was a girl, I had no
idea the man who playfully scaled carpet hills with me had climbed
different kinds of mountains in the summer of 1915.
Nine-year-old Kerop couldn't remember the last time they were allowed
to rest. They clambered up yet another mountain, flanked by a steep
drop. His eyes were fixed on a donkey swaying dangerously under its
load. It lost its footing and toppled over the edge. The boy peeked
down to see if donkeys land like cats do. They don't. But he wondered
why the lady who'd been leading it hadn't let go of its halter when
it fell. So many marchers tripped and toppled, reminding Kerop of
shooting stars.
It was almost dusk. Still they ploughed on. Kerop noticed a Turkish
guard creep over. He seemed intensely interested in someone in the
caravan. The guard quickened his pace, slunk deep into the crowd-and
pounced on a girl, drag-ging her behind a boulder as she kicked and
screamed. Soon, the guard reappeared, pulling up his pants, and strode
away. Kerop waited for the girl to emerge, too. But she didn't. She
must have been 15.
"I hated them for destroying an innocent and beautiful girl," Kerop
later wrote in The Urchin.
Harold tells me now, "That was the first time my dad said he felt
hatred for Turks. But he didn't hate all Turks." His family had
Turkish friends who trudged with them as far as they could on the
deportation road, Harold explains. "I'm less generous in my anger than
he was. Still, your generation seems to feel the strongest. When my
son was ten, he came home one day with 'Death to all Turks' written
on his arm. We were stunned. We'd told him about the Genocide but
hadn't taught him to hate."
Every April 24-Genocide commemoration day-thousands of Armenians
converge in front of the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa and chant,
"Recognize the Genocide!"
I was there as a five-year-old. At that age, do we even know what
we're fighting for? We do. Every one of the 27 years she has been a
teacher at an Armenian kindergarten, my mom has taught children about
the Genocide.
I ask her if she thinks five is too young to hear about this. "You
have to put it in their blood early on," she says, "otherwise they
won't grow up with that fire in their belly to fight for our cause.
That's what we did with you."
"So would I be less loyal to my heritage if I didn't hate Turks?" I
ask her.
"Yes," my mom replies unflinchingly.
"So it's okay for me to hate another human being?"
"No, not just anyone," she says. "But after what they did, how could
you not hate a Turk?"
"But is it fair not to distinguish between the generations?" I venture.
"Fair?" she snaps. "When they were massacring the Armenians, did they
distinguish between the women, the children, the elderly? And today's
Turk is just as bad, for denying it happened."
I'm watching the documentary The Genocide in Me, in which 32-year-old
Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Araz Artinian tries to understand her
father's obsession with his heritage through a personal journey that
leads her back to the roots of it all.
Five-year-old Vartan Hartunian clutched his father's hand as Turkish
soldiers herded hundreds of Armenians into a church in Marash,
in the southern Ottoman Empire. Suddenly, horrifying shouts issued
from nearby. Vartan peered outside and saw Turkish soldiers pouring
kerosene on a neighbouring church and setting it on fire, ignoring
the cries of the men, women and children inside.
A woman emerged from the flames. A soldier shot her down. The fire
soon silenced the voices within the church.
Now, inside Vartan's church, thick smoke was filling the air. The
men madly tried to contain the blaze, but it was too wild. Suddenly,
bullets whizzed overhead-Turkish soldiers had opened fire. The
Armenians flung themselves to the floor, but the gunfire intensified.
There was no escape. Tears streaming down his face, Vartan's father
huddled with his family and cried, "My dear ones, don't be frightened,
soon all of us will be in heaven together."
"I'll never forget that," Vartan, 86, recalls. His voice trails off.
The camera keeps rolling. A moment later Artinian asks, "Do you hate
the Turks?"
I listen closely, expecting to hear "Of course! They tried to burn
us alive!"
"No," he says. "I don't hate the Turks. Hatred is like putting poison
in your own psyche. If you hate a Turk, you don't hurt a Turk; you
hurt yourself. My criticism of the Turks is in their [government's]
official denial of the Armenian Genocide. I think this hurts the Turks
because it prevents them from coming up into the class of civilized
nations who are admitting past errors. I don't feel angry.
I feel sorry for them.
"Armenians must learn that there are good Turks, and many Armenians
will testify that Turks helped them survive. Unless we break through
the walls of hatred, the question of Genocide is never going to
be resolved."
I couldn't believe it. How could this survivor feel no hatred, yet
I do?
Since my first meeting with his wife had soured, my co-worker found
me a new Turkish friend. Born in Istanbul, she moved to Canada three
years ago. "You're going to love her!" he said. I doubted it.
I call her, and she immediately invites me to her apartment. Walk
into the enemy's turf? "Sure, I'll see you soon," I say hesitantly.
I knock on her door, and a short brunette with a warm smile opens it.
"Come in," she stretches out an enthusiastic hand. The apartment
is Bohemian and homey-save for a mannequin in her living room. She
chuckles, saying she often dresses it and it has become part of
the family.
I laugh-I never imagined a Turk could have a sense of humour. My
anxiety melts. I tell her of my reservations about coming over and
ask if she feels any animosity towards Armenians.
The woman (who agreed to use her name but later changed her mind) tells
me her parents never brought her up to hate, but in school there was
an implicit hatred. She hadn't even heard about the Genocide there;
no teacher dared talk about it, and history books taught them that
during World War I, the Armenians were stirring for independence,
revolting against an already crumbling Ottoman Empire by joining forces
with the Russians. So in self-defence the Ottoman Turks "relocated"
these rebellious Armenians.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. If they were deporting the
"rebellious" Armenians, why deport women and children? Why were
Armenians deprived of food and water? Why were girls raped and babies
killed? If they were being "relocated," why had most Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire disappeared?
I finally find my voice. "How did they justify what happened on the
deportation marches?"
"They say, 'It was wartime, you have to accept that.' But," she
presses on, "I found myself questioning, Why are we supposed to hate
Armenians? If [their deaths] were a terrible consequence of a terrible
war, why cover it up?"
She found the answers in university, during the classes taught by
influential Turkish historian, Halil Berktay.
"Then it started to dawn on me that it really was genocide," she
reveals. "I realized there wasn't one single interpretation of
history, as the nationalist ideology claimed. What do nationalist
leaders do? They choose a scapegoat. In this case, the Armenians. The
other side is, the Ottomans were responsible for what went wrong,
which is true, but the government is having a hard time saying that
because the Ottomans are where we come from; how can we be associated
with murderers?"
"Has any Armenian told you, 'Your ancestors killed my ancestors'?" I
ask.
"No. And if they did, I don't know how I'd react. If you dismiss me
like that, you're closing dialogue forever."
The problem, she says, is the majority thinks the Ottomans back then
are the same as Turks today. "Now when I meet an Armenian, I feel like
making an explanation that I'm not associated with Ottoman Turks or
people who deny the Genocide."
I must have a look on my face somewhere between admiration and
confusion that Turks like her exist: She asks, "Hasn't it occurred
to you that not all Turks are bad? That there might be Turks who
recognize the Genocide?"
"Honestly...no," I reply.
She tells me there are more of them than I think. "Then, why don't
we hear more from you guys?" I ask heatedly.
"When you talk about this in Turkey, there's the danger of going
to prison or being persecuted. But I do feel responsible for doing
something in Turkey to open up discussion."
Still, many Turkish youth know nothing about the Genocide, "because the
only side they've been exposed to is what's in their history books,"
she says. "Should they be blamed? Perhaps, for not being curious about
all sides, for blindly accepting as truth what they're being told."
We talk for hours, about everything from the Genocide to our careers
to relationships. As I leave, she asks, "It was strange to hear
that you hated all Turks. So when you meet a Turk you actually like,
do you start questioning hating all of them?"
The word Turk still sends chills up my spine. But when I left the
young Turkish woman's apartment, I didn't hate her.
In her I no longer saw that soldier in Manoug's painting, ripping
the baby from his mother's arms; I saw a friend.
But later, when she told me she couldn't be part of this article, my
heart sank. My first instinct was to dismiss her as being "like every
other Turk." But then I read that another Turkish scholar is facing
trial for referring to the Genocide in her book. How can I dismiss
an entire nation when there are some fighting for us? How can I hate
a Turk who tells me she's striving for Genocide recognition-even if
it's in the privacy of her living room?
I'm not ready to say I don't hate Turks in general. But I don't want
to hate. I don't want to teach my kids to hate. In this violent world,
I don't want to believe blind hatred is the solution.
Hopefully that makes me no less of an Armenian-but more human.
http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2006/10/ha te_to_hope.php
By Line Abrahamian
Reader's Digest, Canada Edition
October 2006
The Armenian Genocide almost annihilated my ancestors. How could I
not hate Turks?
When I heard in April that Turkey threatened economic sanctions against
Canada and recalled its ambassador because Prime Minister Stephen
Harper publicly recognized the Armenian Genocide, all the anger I've
felt towards Turks came rushing back. Why do they use scare tactics
on anyone who acknowledges that, between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman
Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians in the first genocide of the 20th
century? Twenty-one countries have recognized it, and the European
Union has been urging Turkey to face up to its past if it wants to
join. I know you should never hate, but how else am I supposed to
feel about a nation that tried to annihilate my ancestors-and is
still denying it?
Instinctively I cringed when a co-worker first told me his wife was
Turkish. As an Armenian-Canadian, I'd been raised with stories of the
Genocide. I was five when I first saw a black-and white photo from the
massacre, of a crying Armenian boy so emaciated his ribs were sticking
out. That kid could've been me. So at age five, I decided to hate all
Turks. At my Armenian school in Montreal, the worst insult you could
hurl at another kid wasn't a four-letter word, it was "Turk lover."
Three years ago, at 28, I met my co-worker's wife. She was the first
Turkish person I had ever met. I shook her hand and smiled. She was
lovely, but when we sat down and talked, it was not about the past.
And that bothered me. I think I expected her to apologize profusely
for what her ancestors did in 1915 or to slam her government for
nearly a century of denial. She didn't. So I decided to hate her, too.
It might have been irrational, but I wasn't alone in feeling this
way. When I asked an educated Jewish woman how she felt whenever
she met a German, she offered up a guilty smile. "Whenever I meet
an older German, I wonder, Were you the one who pushed my aunt into
the oven? And if it's a young German, I can't help but think, Did
your grandparents kill any Jews during the Holocaust? In my mind,
I know I shouldn't feel this anger. But my heart won't let me forgive."
This, even after Germany apologized and made restitutions. All over
the world, Holocaust deniers are shunned and put on trial. Yet Turkey
has gotten away with denying the Genocide for 91 years because most of
the world doesn't know that before Sudan, Rwanda, Cambodia and Nazi
Germany, the Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians in massacres
and deportation marches through the deserts of Mesopotamia (parts of
today's Turkey, Syria and Iraq). Many people don't even know what an
Armenian is-"So you speak Arabic?" "No, I speak Armenian." "Right. Your
country is Russia." "No, my country is Armenia." The victims are
largely unmourned. And last year Turkey dragged its most renowned
novelist, Orhan Pamuk, to court for "insulting Turkishness" after he
was quoted as saying a million Armenians were killed in his country.
Can you blame me for holding a grudge?
I walk into Manoug Khatchadourian's apartment and hug him. We've
never met, yet I feel an instant connection. Manoug, 104, is a
Genocide survivor.
He asks me to make Armenian coffee, expecting that since I'm Armenian,
I must know how to brew it-like baking choereg (Armenian bread)
or cooking dolma (stuffed vegetables). I don't. Still, I have a go,
but it turns out thick and gloppy. Manoug takes a sip and cringes,
not subtly. I smile apologetically. But he has survived far worse
than bad coffee.
My eyes fix on a painting above Manoug's head. A Turkish soldier is
stabbing an Armenian woman. Another is ripping a baby from his pleading
mother's arms. An Armenian mother is cradling her dead daughter.
"How could I not hate them?" says Manoug, his body trembling. "They
killed our mothers, fathers, children! No, I can't forgive them. I
still live it today." His mind races back to a day in his childhood,
on the deportation march in Mesopotamia, in July 1915.
"Have you seen Mama?" 13-year-old Manoug asked pleadingly, but the
haggard Armenians mutely trudged past him, their tongues lolling,
and threw themselves into a puddle of rain mingled with animal urine.
They hadn't had a drop for two days. Manoug had wriggled through the
throng to fetch water for his family but had now lost them. "Have
you seen Mama?" he asked anyone who would listen. But no one had.
The caravan set off once more. It had been four weeks since they'd
been dragged from their homes in Kharpert, and every day marchers died
of hunger, thirst, heat-or the dagger of a guard. Now Manoug was alone.
Suddenly a band of Turkish and Kurdish marauders came riding down with
a roar. The frightened marchers scattered, but many were trampled
under crushing hooves. Horsemen snatched up pretty girls and looted
marchers; a few fell on a woman and began breaking out her gold teeth
with a hammer.
Then a Turk started chasing Manoug. The boy ran, but his legs were
weak. His assailant caught up, throwing Manoug to the ground, beating
him fiercely with his bayonet, then stripping off his clothes.
Bloody and naked, Manoug staggered behind a boulder and collapsed.
Some Armenian boys rushed to help him. "Leave me," Manoug breathed.
"I've lost my family. This is where I want to die."
The phone rings in Manoug's apartment. As he answers it, I think,
How could he not hate the Turks? My eyes stray back to the painting. I
hate them all over again.
As I enter the Ararat carpet store in Montreal, I can almost hear
the giggle of my six-year-old self, climbing up carpet mountains and
through carpet tunnels with store owner Kerop Bedoukian while Dad
was with clients.
"This place hasn't changed much since you were last here, has it?"
asks Kerop's son, Harold, who inherited Ararat when Kerop died in
1981. But it has. The carpets are neatly displayed on the floor
instead of rolled into fun tunnels for the pint-sized and pigtailed.
Kerop's office looks different, but his original desk is still there.
And tucked in a bookshelf is The Urchin, the book he wrote about his
experiences on the deportation march. When I was a girl, I had no
idea the man who playfully scaled carpet hills with me had climbed
different kinds of mountains in the summer of 1915.
Nine-year-old Kerop couldn't remember the last time they were allowed
to rest. They clambered up yet another mountain, flanked by a steep
drop. His eyes were fixed on a donkey swaying dangerously under its
load. It lost its footing and toppled over the edge. The boy peeked
down to see if donkeys land like cats do. They don't. But he wondered
why the lady who'd been leading it hadn't let go of its halter when
it fell. So many marchers tripped and toppled, reminding Kerop of
shooting stars.
It was almost dusk. Still they ploughed on. Kerop noticed a Turkish
guard creep over. He seemed intensely interested in someone in the
caravan. The guard quickened his pace, slunk deep into the crowd-and
pounced on a girl, drag-ging her behind a boulder as she kicked and
screamed. Soon, the guard reappeared, pulling up his pants, and strode
away. Kerop waited for the girl to emerge, too. But she didn't. She
must have been 15.
"I hated them for destroying an innocent and beautiful girl," Kerop
later wrote in The Urchin.
Harold tells me now, "That was the first time my dad said he felt
hatred for Turks. But he didn't hate all Turks." His family had
Turkish friends who trudged with them as far as they could on the
deportation road, Harold explains. "I'm less generous in my anger than
he was. Still, your generation seems to feel the strongest. When my
son was ten, he came home one day with 'Death to all Turks' written
on his arm. We were stunned. We'd told him about the Genocide but
hadn't taught him to hate."
Every April 24-Genocide commemoration day-thousands of Armenians
converge in front of the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa and chant,
"Recognize the Genocide!"
I was there as a five-year-old. At that age, do we even know what
we're fighting for? We do. Every one of the 27 years she has been a
teacher at an Armenian kindergarten, my mom has taught children about
the Genocide.
I ask her if she thinks five is too young to hear about this. "You
have to put it in their blood early on," she says, "otherwise they
won't grow up with that fire in their belly to fight for our cause.
That's what we did with you."
"So would I be less loyal to my heritage if I didn't hate Turks?" I
ask her.
"Yes," my mom replies unflinchingly.
"So it's okay for me to hate another human being?"
"No, not just anyone," she says. "But after what they did, how could
you not hate a Turk?"
"But is it fair not to distinguish between the generations?" I venture.
"Fair?" she snaps. "When they were massacring the Armenians, did they
distinguish between the women, the children, the elderly? And today's
Turk is just as bad, for denying it happened."
I'm watching the documentary The Genocide in Me, in which 32-year-old
Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Araz Artinian tries to understand her
father's obsession with his heritage through a personal journey that
leads her back to the roots of it all.
Five-year-old Vartan Hartunian clutched his father's hand as Turkish
soldiers herded hundreds of Armenians into a church in Marash,
in the southern Ottoman Empire. Suddenly, horrifying shouts issued
from nearby. Vartan peered outside and saw Turkish soldiers pouring
kerosene on a neighbouring church and setting it on fire, ignoring
the cries of the men, women and children inside.
A woman emerged from the flames. A soldier shot her down. The fire
soon silenced the voices within the church.
Now, inside Vartan's church, thick smoke was filling the air. The
men madly tried to contain the blaze, but it was too wild. Suddenly,
bullets whizzed overhead-Turkish soldiers had opened fire. The
Armenians flung themselves to the floor, but the gunfire intensified.
There was no escape. Tears streaming down his face, Vartan's father
huddled with his family and cried, "My dear ones, don't be frightened,
soon all of us will be in heaven together."
"I'll never forget that," Vartan, 86, recalls. His voice trails off.
The camera keeps rolling. A moment later Artinian asks, "Do you hate
the Turks?"
I listen closely, expecting to hear "Of course! They tried to burn
us alive!"
"No," he says. "I don't hate the Turks. Hatred is like putting poison
in your own psyche. If you hate a Turk, you don't hurt a Turk; you
hurt yourself. My criticism of the Turks is in their [government's]
official denial of the Armenian Genocide. I think this hurts the Turks
because it prevents them from coming up into the class of civilized
nations who are admitting past errors. I don't feel angry.
I feel sorry for them.
"Armenians must learn that there are good Turks, and many Armenians
will testify that Turks helped them survive. Unless we break through
the walls of hatred, the question of Genocide is never going to
be resolved."
I couldn't believe it. How could this survivor feel no hatred, yet
I do?
Since my first meeting with his wife had soured, my co-worker found
me a new Turkish friend. Born in Istanbul, she moved to Canada three
years ago. "You're going to love her!" he said. I doubted it.
I call her, and she immediately invites me to her apartment. Walk
into the enemy's turf? "Sure, I'll see you soon," I say hesitantly.
I knock on her door, and a short brunette with a warm smile opens it.
"Come in," she stretches out an enthusiastic hand. The apartment
is Bohemian and homey-save for a mannequin in her living room. She
chuckles, saying she often dresses it and it has become part of
the family.
I laugh-I never imagined a Turk could have a sense of humour. My
anxiety melts. I tell her of my reservations about coming over and
ask if she feels any animosity towards Armenians.
The woman (who agreed to use her name but later changed her mind) tells
me her parents never brought her up to hate, but in school there was
an implicit hatred. She hadn't even heard about the Genocide there;
no teacher dared talk about it, and history books taught them that
during World War I, the Armenians were stirring for independence,
revolting against an already crumbling Ottoman Empire by joining forces
with the Russians. So in self-defence the Ottoman Turks "relocated"
these rebellious Armenians.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. If they were deporting the
"rebellious" Armenians, why deport women and children? Why were
Armenians deprived of food and water? Why were girls raped and babies
killed? If they were being "relocated," why had most Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire disappeared?
I finally find my voice. "How did they justify what happened on the
deportation marches?"
"They say, 'It was wartime, you have to accept that.' But," she
presses on, "I found myself questioning, Why are we supposed to hate
Armenians? If [their deaths] were a terrible consequence of a terrible
war, why cover it up?"
She found the answers in university, during the classes taught by
influential Turkish historian, Halil Berktay.
"Then it started to dawn on me that it really was genocide," she
reveals. "I realized there wasn't one single interpretation of
history, as the nationalist ideology claimed. What do nationalist
leaders do? They choose a scapegoat. In this case, the Armenians. The
other side is, the Ottomans were responsible for what went wrong,
which is true, but the government is having a hard time saying that
because the Ottomans are where we come from; how can we be associated
with murderers?"
"Has any Armenian told you, 'Your ancestors killed my ancestors'?" I
ask.
"No. And if they did, I don't know how I'd react. If you dismiss me
like that, you're closing dialogue forever."
The problem, she says, is the majority thinks the Ottomans back then
are the same as Turks today. "Now when I meet an Armenian, I feel like
making an explanation that I'm not associated with Ottoman Turks or
people who deny the Genocide."
I must have a look on my face somewhere between admiration and
confusion that Turks like her exist: She asks, "Hasn't it occurred
to you that not all Turks are bad? That there might be Turks who
recognize the Genocide?"
"Honestly...no," I reply.
She tells me there are more of them than I think. "Then, why don't
we hear more from you guys?" I ask heatedly.
"When you talk about this in Turkey, there's the danger of going
to prison or being persecuted. But I do feel responsible for doing
something in Turkey to open up discussion."
Still, many Turkish youth know nothing about the Genocide, "because the
only side they've been exposed to is what's in their history books,"
she says. "Should they be blamed? Perhaps, for not being curious about
all sides, for blindly accepting as truth what they're being told."
We talk for hours, about everything from the Genocide to our careers
to relationships. As I leave, she asks, "It was strange to hear
that you hated all Turks. So when you meet a Turk you actually like,
do you start questioning hating all of them?"
The word Turk still sends chills up my spine. But when I left the
young Turkish woman's apartment, I didn't hate her.
In her I no longer saw that soldier in Manoug's painting, ripping
the baby from his mother's arms; I saw a friend.
But later, when she told me she couldn't be part of this article, my
heart sank. My first instinct was to dismiss her as being "like every
other Turk." But then I read that another Turkish scholar is facing
trial for referring to the Genocide in her book. How can I dismiss
an entire nation when there are some fighting for us? How can I hate
a Turk who tells me she's striving for Genocide recognition-even if
it's in the privacy of her living room?
I'm not ready to say I don't hate Turks in general. But I don't want
to hate. I don't want to teach my kids to hate. In this violent world,
I don't want to believe blind hatred is the solution.
Hopefully that makes me no less of an Armenian-but more human.
http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2006/10/ha te_to_hope.php