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ISTANBUL: Istanbul Armenians

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  • ISTANBUL: Istanbul Armenians

    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

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