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RECONCILING THE IRRECONCILABLE: TURKISH-ARMENIANS FACE THE CHALLENGES OF STATUS AND IDENTITY
NAZIK ARMENAKYAN
ArmeniaNow
14.12.11 | 12:26
By Gayane Abrahamyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
"You are happy, you have Ararat," says Istanbul-based Armenian Janet
Petrosoglu
After visiting Armenia, Istanbul-Armenian Janet Petrosoglu felt the
controversy of her national identity issues even stronger than before,
against her prior expectation of finding some relief.
"In Armenia I felt that I would keep on living with an internal split.
Turkish-Armenians are identified with Turks here; and we are still
confined to living between three fires: in Turkey we are not treated as
full-right citizens, because we are Armenians; in Armenia we are not
treated as full-right Armenians because we are citizens of Turkey;
and we are chastised by the Diaspora, because we do not voice the
issue of the Armenian Genocide," she says.
"Nobody understands us," says 28-year-old Janet, with a choked
feeling of anger and looks at Mount Ararat. "You are happy, you have
Ararat," she says bluntly, and then smiles, as the contradiction in
the statement she just made dawns at her (as, in fact, the biblical
mountain is on Turkish soil).
Many Turkish-Armenians live with the pain caused by their peculiar
identity and the lack of understanding of their motives and lifestyle.
Keeping silence has very often been a means of survival, and Hrant
Dink (editor-in-chief of Istanbul-based Agos daily, assassinated in
front of his office in 2007) who broke that silence paid with his
life. And the same Dink suffered from the dual attitude: called a
traitor by Turkey, and a spy by Diaspora.
The majority of about 50,000 Turkish-Armenians currently lives in
Istanbul; there are also Islamized Armenians (estimated 200,000)
residing in various parts of the country. Armenia-based specialists
in Turkish Studies presented these figures based on archives data,
according to which some 100,000 women and children were forced
to convert to Islam in 1915, and the approximate number of their
offspring is 200,000.
"Armenians are the biggest yet the most ignored Christian ethnic
minority in Turkey," says Ozge Genc, Program Officer at the Turkish
Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), regretting that the
great potential of Armenians is being wasted.
"The main problem of Armenians remains to be the fact that they are
not perceived as true citizens of Turkey. Armenians are treated with
distrust much more than the other Christian minorities here," Genc
told ArmeniaNow.
Many of the fearful and cautious Armenian community members still
have Turkish surnames and even now, as they confess, often refrain
from speaking Armenian in public and have, traditionally, never voiced
their issues.
"Recently, my ear caught some Armenian words at an Istanbul underground
station. Surprised, I turned around and saw that it was Armenia-based
Armenians speaking. Only then it hit me full-strength the extent of
fear we had been living in for many years, afraid to speak Armenian
in public, afraid to speak Armenian even at church. I am not sure if
we can ever fully overcome this fear," says Janet.
Fear eventually turned into a habit, and as Arus Yumul, renowned
Istanbul-Armenian sociologist from Istanbul Bilgi University, says
"the language has become important only symbolically; it is not used
but is preserved as a value."
Even the sermon that follows the liturgy in about 36 churches
functioning in Istanbul is preached in Turkish, so that it is fully
comprehensible to everybody. Many do not even hide that they pray in
Turkish, justifying it by the fact that it's their 'everyday language'.
This is an almost impossible-to-overcome controversy for
Turkish-Armenians: they pray in a language the carriers of which
massacred them for praying to that very God they are praying to today;
indeed, an irony of fate.
Controversies are plentiful, but the biggest criticism against
Turkish-Armenians is related to their silent and in some cases even
denialist posture when it comes to the Armenian Genocide.
"The Turkish-Armenians' silence is often unacceptable to Armenia-based
Armenians, but for years it has been our survival strategy," Yumul told
ArmeniaNow. "But this status is hard for us too: to the Diaspora we are
like a lost sheep, an outsider; strangers both at home and outside."
Silence stopped being a survival strategy in the 1990s and Hrant
Dink's assassination became the biggest breakthrough.
"It's like Hrant's death woke everyone up and made them remember their
identity again and drop their fear of being Armenian," says Yumul.
However many Istanbul-Armenians stress that there is still a long way
to go before they can reconcile the irreconcilable concept of being
an Armenian citizen of Turkey.
"When a year ago, during one of his meetings with the Diaspora,
Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan said 'a good Armenian is a good
citizen of the country of his/her residence', it was a real riddle to
us: we can never meet that criteria," says Janet, half-jokingly, and
pattering like a tongue twister: "If we are good citizens of Turkey,
we will look bad to the Diaspora, and if we try to be good Armenians,
we cannot be good citizens of Turkey".
NAZIK ARMENAKYAN
ArmeniaNow
14.12.11 | 12:26
By Gayane Abrahamyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
"You are happy, you have Ararat," says Istanbul-based Armenian Janet
Petrosoglu
After visiting Armenia, Istanbul-Armenian Janet Petrosoglu felt the
controversy of her national identity issues even stronger than before,
against her prior expectation of finding some relief.
"In Armenia I felt that I would keep on living with an internal split.
Turkish-Armenians are identified with Turks here; and we are still
confined to living between three fires: in Turkey we are not treated as
full-right citizens, because we are Armenians; in Armenia we are not
treated as full-right Armenians because we are citizens of Turkey;
and we are chastised by the Diaspora, because we do not voice the
issue of the Armenian Genocide," she says.
"Nobody understands us," says 28-year-old Janet, with a choked
feeling of anger and looks at Mount Ararat. "You are happy, you have
Ararat," she says bluntly, and then smiles, as the contradiction in
the statement she just made dawns at her (as, in fact, the biblical
mountain is on Turkish soil).
Many Turkish-Armenians live with the pain caused by their peculiar
identity and the lack of understanding of their motives and lifestyle.
Keeping silence has very often been a means of survival, and Hrant
Dink (editor-in-chief of Istanbul-based Agos daily, assassinated in
front of his office in 2007) who broke that silence paid with his
life. And the same Dink suffered from the dual attitude: called a
traitor by Turkey, and a spy by Diaspora.
The majority of about 50,000 Turkish-Armenians currently lives in
Istanbul; there are also Islamized Armenians (estimated 200,000)
residing in various parts of the country. Armenia-based specialists
in Turkish Studies presented these figures based on archives data,
according to which some 100,000 women and children were forced
to convert to Islam in 1915, and the approximate number of their
offspring is 200,000.
"Armenians are the biggest yet the most ignored Christian ethnic
minority in Turkey," says Ozge Genc, Program Officer at the Turkish
Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), regretting that the
great potential of Armenians is being wasted.
"The main problem of Armenians remains to be the fact that they are
not perceived as true citizens of Turkey. Armenians are treated with
distrust much more than the other Christian minorities here," Genc
told ArmeniaNow.
Many of the fearful and cautious Armenian community members still
have Turkish surnames and even now, as they confess, often refrain
from speaking Armenian in public and have, traditionally, never voiced
their issues.
"Recently, my ear caught some Armenian words at an Istanbul underground
station. Surprised, I turned around and saw that it was Armenia-based
Armenians speaking. Only then it hit me full-strength the extent of
fear we had been living in for many years, afraid to speak Armenian
in public, afraid to speak Armenian even at church. I am not sure if
we can ever fully overcome this fear," says Janet.
Fear eventually turned into a habit, and as Arus Yumul, renowned
Istanbul-Armenian sociologist from Istanbul Bilgi University, says
"the language has become important only symbolically; it is not used
but is preserved as a value."
Even the sermon that follows the liturgy in about 36 churches
functioning in Istanbul is preached in Turkish, so that it is fully
comprehensible to everybody. Many do not even hide that they pray in
Turkish, justifying it by the fact that it's their 'everyday language'.
This is an almost impossible-to-overcome controversy for
Turkish-Armenians: they pray in a language the carriers of which
massacred them for praying to that very God they are praying to today;
indeed, an irony of fate.
Controversies are plentiful, but the biggest criticism against
Turkish-Armenians is related to their silent and in some cases even
denialist posture when it comes to the Armenian Genocide.
"The Turkish-Armenians' silence is often unacceptable to Armenia-based
Armenians, but for years it has been our survival strategy," Yumul told
ArmeniaNow. "But this status is hard for us too: to the Diaspora we are
like a lost sheep, an outsider; strangers both at home and outside."
Silence stopped being a survival strategy in the 1990s and Hrant
Dink's assassination became the biggest breakthrough.
"It's like Hrant's death woke everyone up and made them remember their
identity again and drop their fear of being Armenian," says Yumul.
However many Istanbul-Armenians stress that there is still a long way
to go before they can reconcile the irreconcilable concept of being
an Armenian citizen of Turkey.
"When a year ago, during one of his meetings with the Diaspora,
Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan said 'a good Armenian is a good
citizen of the country of his/her residence', it was a real riddle to
us: we can never meet that criteria," says Janet, half-jokingly, and
pattering like a tongue twister: "If we are good citizens of Turkey,
we will look bad to the Diaspora, and if we try to be good Armenians,
we cannot be good citizens of Turkey".