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Today's Zaman, Turkey
March 10 2013
Istanbul Armenians
ETYEN MAHÇUPYAN
e.mahcupyan@todayszaman
It is hard to be an immigrant...These people rejected and isolated in
their own country have to travel to an unknown country and culture,
probably without sufficient financial means to survive. This adventure
undertaken by them without knowing the language, rules, traditions of
the country they are going to, leads them to lands in which they will
be strangers and will always remain strangers... Their only hope and
point of resistance is the new and secure life they will give to their
children. The first generation sacrifices itself and expects this
sacrifice to be praised even if it does not say it openly. However,
even though it is somewhat possible to keep the next generation under
cultural discipline, the grandchildren, in particular, adapt to this
new culture and are detached from the traditional culture. Hence,
alienation among generations surfaces and past sacrifices become a
topic of conversation remembered only by its funny aspects.
Elderliness for the first generation immigrants always implies sadness
and solitude...
Just as the elderly in the family perceive this act of scattering that
takes place before the very eyes of the people as a kind of
deculturalization, the immigrants also seek ways of becoming a
community. Because a community means an organization producing common
grounds and values. The communities established remind the immigrants
of their language, religion and artistic accumulation and to teach
their children about these. Marriages within the community make this
common culture concrete and reinforce it. However, all these are not
enough for the community to reproduce itself the same way: Facing the
crushing effect of the host culture, the gap between home and street
widens, the immigrant family becomes a stranger to the public sphere
in the street, makes this alienation normal in its inner world and
creeps into its own shell, into its home.
This process triggers an identity need that exceeds the daily
lifestyle which surrounds it and also makes it more meaningful.
Because, every human being needs the `street,' that is to say, the
public sphere and the public sphere that cannot be acquired in the new
country is new being sought in the motherland... Social and political
events of the abandoned country become more and more the basic focus
of attention and a `diaspora' comes into being... This position
peculiar to itself, uniting the policies of the old country and the
daily life of the new one, produces an identity that is equal to the
power of the motherland. Therefore, in examples where the motherland
is weak, the diaspora turns to an additional source of identity,
generally to history...
However, I must confess that the night organized by Istanbul Armenians
in Melbourne, Australia reflected more than this state of mind. I have
just returned from this trip, and I will probably not be able to
forget one of the peak points of the trip, that night when nearly 200
people danced the `halay' in the accompaniment of Armenian, Greek and
Arabic songs, sang songs in Turkish in a chorus and wept... An elderly
Istanbul Armenian young at heart, dropping his walking stick and
dancing as the `misket havasi' ( a Turkish folk music) began, will
remain engraved in my mind. Istanbul Armenians are both inside and
outside the line that goes from immigrantship to the diaspora... It is
impossible not to perceive a thousand-year Anatolian resistance behind
all those years they have spent in another land; however, what is more
important is their supporting this past as a whole, their becoming the
real men of that land... This is what presumably makes them healthy...
Dec 2, 2005
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnistDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=27062
March 10 2013
Istanbul Armenians
ETYEN MAHÇUPYAN
e.mahcupyan@todayszaman
It is hard to be an immigrant...These people rejected and isolated in
their own country have to travel to an unknown country and culture,
probably without sufficient financial means to survive. This adventure
undertaken by them without knowing the language, rules, traditions of
the country they are going to, leads them to lands in which they will
be strangers and will always remain strangers... Their only hope and
point of resistance is the new and secure life they will give to their
children. The first generation sacrifices itself and expects this
sacrifice to be praised even if it does not say it openly. However,
even though it is somewhat possible to keep the next generation under
cultural discipline, the grandchildren, in particular, adapt to this
new culture and are detached from the traditional culture. Hence,
alienation among generations surfaces and past sacrifices become a
topic of conversation remembered only by its funny aspects.
Elderliness for the first generation immigrants always implies sadness
and solitude...
Just as the elderly in the family perceive this act of scattering that
takes place before the very eyes of the people as a kind of
deculturalization, the immigrants also seek ways of becoming a
community. Because a community means an organization producing common
grounds and values. The communities established remind the immigrants
of their language, religion and artistic accumulation and to teach
their children about these. Marriages within the community make this
common culture concrete and reinforce it. However, all these are not
enough for the community to reproduce itself the same way: Facing the
crushing effect of the host culture, the gap between home and street
widens, the immigrant family becomes a stranger to the public sphere
in the street, makes this alienation normal in its inner world and
creeps into its own shell, into its home.
This process triggers an identity need that exceeds the daily
lifestyle which surrounds it and also makes it more meaningful.
Because, every human being needs the `street,' that is to say, the
public sphere and the public sphere that cannot be acquired in the new
country is new being sought in the motherland... Social and political
events of the abandoned country become more and more the basic focus
of attention and a `diaspora' comes into being... This position
peculiar to itself, uniting the policies of the old country and the
daily life of the new one, produces an identity that is equal to the
power of the motherland. Therefore, in examples where the motherland
is weak, the diaspora turns to an additional source of identity,
generally to history...
However, I must confess that the night organized by Istanbul Armenians
in Melbourne, Australia reflected more than this state of mind. I have
just returned from this trip, and I will probably not be able to
forget one of the peak points of the trip, that night when nearly 200
people danced the `halay' in the accompaniment of Armenian, Greek and
Arabic songs, sang songs in Turkish in a chorus and wept... An elderly
Istanbul Armenian young at heart, dropping his walking stick and
dancing as the `misket havasi' ( a Turkish folk music) began, will
remain engraved in my mind. Istanbul Armenians are both inside and
outside the line that goes from immigrantship to the diaspora... It is
impossible not to perceive a thousand-year Anatolian resistance behind
all those years they have spent in another land; however, what is more
important is their supporting this past as a whole, their becoming the
real men of that land... This is what presumably makes them healthy...
Dec 2, 2005
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnistDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=27062