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Today's Zaman, Turkey
Oct 12 2012
Linking women's stories in Turkey and Armenia
ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ
`In 2010, a young woman living in Masis, Armenia, was beaten to death
by her husband and mother-in-law.'
`Last year a woman's body was found in Mersin, Turkey, stabbed 40
times in the name of honor.'
`Yet women's stories across the Turkey-Armenia border are mostly
invisible and unknown to women living on either side of that border.'
`We have been taught how not to see women across borders.'
`Those women over there, not here, not one of us, are other.'
`That they are easy, sluts, traitors, poor, uneducated, backward,
liars, dumb and ugly.'
`That they are the enemy.'
`Between conflicted borders it is even more difficult to hear an
alternative story.'
`We were not encouraged to be friendly.'
`We live on assumptions about each other's lives.'
`We don't know our neighbors' stories.'
This series of quotations comes from a short animation produced as
part of the project `Beyond Borders: Linking Our Stories,' an
initiative of the Women's Recourse Center in Armenia and volunteers
from AMARGI, a feminist collective in Turkey. As part of the project,
women from Armenia and Turkey come together to collect women's stories
from both sides of the border. You can find more information on the
Internet and support the project if you like.
I found the core idea of this project quite appealing. When women come
together, we all see that, whether Armenian, Turkish or Kurdish, all
victims suffer under the same patriarchal mindset and are vulnerable
to violence. I have always thought that if we are to overcome barriers
between two nations, difficulties passed down through history, we must
do it by eliminating the blinding effect of nationalism from our
understanding of each other. When we start to see that there are good
and bad people, perpetrators and victims on both sides of the border,
we will really experience some progress in reconciliation and
establishing a lasting peace.
No one should forget that women were most vulnerable in both the
Armenian Genocide in 1915 and in the Khojaly massacre in 1992. Turkish
and Armenian perpetrators did unimaginable things to Armenian and
Azerbaijani women in both atrocities.
In both countries, nationalists try to turn a blind eye to wrongs
their side perpetrates against others, trying to make invisible the
pain and suffering of these victims. Turkish nationalists try to
ignore and completely deny what happened in 1915. Armenian
nationalists try to legitimize what the terrorist Armenian Secret Army
for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) did to Turkish diplomats, and
completely deny the Khojaly massacre, in which so many innocent
Azerbaijani women, children and elderly people were killed in a
barbaric way. Likewise, Azerbaijani nationalists recently turned a
bloody murderer, Ramil Safarov, who killed an Armenian soldier in
Hungary, into a saint.
When we start to see perpetrators as perpetrators and victims as
victims, and forget the identity and nationality of these people, we
will start to build something.
I will finish this piece with lines from Rumi quoted on the campaign
page of the `Beyond Borders' project:
`Come, let us be friends for once
Let us make life easy on us,
Let us be lovers and loved ones,
The earth shall be left to no one.'
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnistDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=295168
Oct 12 2012
Linking women's stories in Turkey and Armenia
ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ
`In 2010, a young woman living in Masis, Armenia, was beaten to death
by her husband and mother-in-law.'
`Last year a woman's body was found in Mersin, Turkey, stabbed 40
times in the name of honor.'
`Yet women's stories across the Turkey-Armenia border are mostly
invisible and unknown to women living on either side of that border.'
`We have been taught how not to see women across borders.'
`Those women over there, not here, not one of us, are other.'
`That they are easy, sluts, traitors, poor, uneducated, backward,
liars, dumb and ugly.'
`That they are the enemy.'
`Between conflicted borders it is even more difficult to hear an
alternative story.'
`We were not encouraged to be friendly.'
`We live on assumptions about each other's lives.'
`We don't know our neighbors' stories.'
This series of quotations comes from a short animation produced as
part of the project `Beyond Borders: Linking Our Stories,' an
initiative of the Women's Recourse Center in Armenia and volunteers
from AMARGI, a feminist collective in Turkey. As part of the project,
women from Armenia and Turkey come together to collect women's stories
from both sides of the border. You can find more information on the
Internet and support the project if you like.
I found the core idea of this project quite appealing. When women come
together, we all see that, whether Armenian, Turkish or Kurdish, all
victims suffer under the same patriarchal mindset and are vulnerable
to violence. I have always thought that if we are to overcome barriers
between two nations, difficulties passed down through history, we must
do it by eliminating the blinding effect of nationalism from our
understanding of each other. When we start to see that there are good
and bad people, perpetrators and victims on both sides of the border,
we will really experience some progress in reconciliation and
establishing a lasting peace.
No one should forget that women were most vulnerable in both the
Armenian Genocide in 1915 and in the Khojaly massacre in 1992. Turkish
and Armenian perpetrators did unimaginable things to Armenian and
Azerbaijani women in both atrocities.
In both countries, nationalists try to turn a blind eye to wrongs
their side perpetrates against others, trying to make invisible the
pain and suffering of these victims. Turkish nationalists try to
ignore and completely deny what happened in 1915. Armenian
nationalists try to legitimize what the terrorist Armenian Secret Army
for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) did to Turkish diplomats, and
completely deny the Khojaly massacre, in which so many innocent
Azerbaijani women, children and elderly people were killed in a
barbaric way. Likewise, Azerbaijani nationalists recently turned a
bloody murderer, Ramil Safarov, who killed an Armenian soldier in
Hungary, into a saint.
When we start to see perpetrators as perpetrators and victims as
victims, and forget the identity and nationality of these people, we
will start to build something.
I will finish this piece with lines from Rumi quoted on the campaign
page of the `Beyond Borders' project:
`Come, let us be friends for once
Let us make life easy on us,
Let us be lovers and loved ones,
The earth shall be left to no one.'
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnistDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=295168