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Daily Sabah, Turkey
April 24 2014
TURKISH ARMENIANS: REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
Meryem Ä°layda Atlas 25 April 2014, Friday
Hagop Mintzuri, an Ottoman Armenian, tells us in "Istanbul Anıları:
1897-1940" (Reminiscences in Istanbul) about his family's bakery in
Besiktas and the bread sold along the seaside.
He relates in a way to the cosmopolitan age of Istanbul. Then,
step-by-step all this memory fades away as the Greek (regionally known
as Rum) grocers disappear, very few Armenian bakers are left here and
there. Later, the nation state engages extensively in making the
society uniform.
Arriving in his village in the harvest season of 1915, Mintzuri misses
the ship setting sail from Istanbul by 25 minutes. The next ship
leaves two months later. What befalls his family left in the village
is captured in this unique and fateful line in the book: "If I had set
off 25 minutes earlier, I would have been non-existent like my
family!" At that moment, time becomes something tangible. It pauses at
that 25th minute. While Mintzuri doesn't write about it, we understand
that nothing remains the same after those 25 minutes. We share his
sense of loss.
Another Armenian author, Zaven Biberyan, in his novel "Babam Askale'ye
Gitmedi" (My father did not go to Askale), tells the story of a family
who loses all their assets in Istanbul due to the Wealth Tax passed
during World War II and imposed mainly on non-Muslims in Turkey. Those
who do not pay the punitive tax are sent to Askale for forced labor.
Selling everything he owns to avoid going to Askale results in his
family becoming destitute. Moreover, his conscripted son is serving in
the military of a state that puts this ethnicity-based forced labor
into effect. Upon returning, even though he feels his father is doing
the right thing, his mother and sister do not forgive his father. In
the course of the book, the Wealth Tax Law is not put in words.
Nevertheless, for this family, time is suspended the moment the tax
law comes into effect.A dexterous writer, Mıgırdiç Margosyan, in his
master work "Tespih Taneleri" (Pieces of worry beads) describes an
Armenian district of Diyarbakır in the 1950s. In contrast to Istanbul,
which had lost its diversity by that time, Diyarbakır still remains
mixed. What is told in the book is the story of the lives of the smart
Armenian children picked up from Diyarbakır villages and sent to
Istanbul to study while staying at Armenian orphanages.
In 1953, the first encounters of the Armenian village children
arriving at an Armenian orphanage from Diyarbakır with the native
Armenian children of Istanbul are not all that pleasant. In the eyes
of the children from Istanbul, they are "nasty Kurds." Those years in
which provincialism and urbanity outshined ethnic identification are
just before the events of Sep. 6-7, 1955 against the Greek community
of Istanbul. When we look into these memories, we come to realize how
much we have lost, how much the nation state caused us to lose, and
the difficulty in remembering our loss. All three of these memories
have been addressed in published works by Aras Publications. You can
read stories about human characteristics more than frustration,
revenge and hatred in many of the memoirs published in Turkish by the
same publishing house - lives broken into pieces and scattered, people
lost due to the new state of affairs, kept away from each other and
burying their grievances deep within their subconscious.
That Prime Minister Erdogan officially - and for the first time -
conveyed his condolences yesterday on the occasion of April 23 has
given me hope that maybe there can be a compromise between the
official speech and human stories, novels and memories.
There may be hope for mutual understanding.What we wish to remember
and forget today were everyday facts for those who lived in Istanbul
in 1915. For us, the act of remembering has turned into hard work.
When one considers what the old Turkish state stood for and what it
did, no one could think this process would be easy. That's why it is
possible to consider Erdogan's offer of condolence as an effort to put
the old state's impulses aside. In this tragedy, one side was forced
to forget what happened, while the other side remembered nothing else.
Erdogan's message is a very important step in the process of both
sides recognizing what the other went through.
http://www.dailysabah.com/columns/meryem-ilayda-atlas/2014/04/25/turkish-armenians-remembering-and-forgetting
April 24 2014
TURKISH ARMENIANS: REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
Meryem Ä°layda Atlas 25 April 2014, Friday
Hagop Mintzuri, an Ottoman Armenian, tells us in "Istanbul Anıları:
1897-1940" (Reminiscences in Istanbul) about his family's bakery in
Besiktas and the bread sold along the seaside.
He relates in a way to the cosmopolitan age of Istanbul. Then,
step-by-step all this memory fades away as the Greek (regionally known
as Rum) grocers disappear, very few Armenian bakers are left here and
there. Later, the nation state engages extensively in making the
society uniform.
Arriving in his village in the harvest season of 1915, Mintzuri misses
the ship setting sail from Istanbul by 25 minutes. The next ship
leaves two months later. What befalls his family left in the village
is captured in this unique and fateful line in the book: "If I had set
off 25 minutes earlier, I would have been non-existent like my
family!" At that moment, time becomes something tangible. It pauses at
that 25th minute. While Mintzuri doesn't write about it, we understand
that nothing remains the same after those 25 minutes. We share his
sense of loss.
Another Armenian author, Zaven Biberyan, in his novel "Babam Askale'ye
Gitmedi" (My father did not go to Askale), tells the story of a family
who loses all their assets in Istanbul due to the Wealth Tax passed
during World War II and imposed mainly on non-Muslims in Turkey. Those
who do not pay the punitive tax are sent to Askale for forced labor.
Selling everything he owns to avoid going to Askale results in his
family becoming destitute. Moreover, his conscripted son is serving in
the military of a state that puts this ethnicity-based forced labor
into effect. Upon returning, even though he feels his father is doing
the right thing, his mother and sister do not forgive his father. In
the course of the book, the Wealth Tax Law is not put in words.
Nevertheless, for this family, time is suspended the moment the tax
law comes into effect.A dexterous writer, Mıgırdiç Margosyan, in his
master work "Tespih Taneleri" (Pieces of worry beads) describes an
Armenian district of Diyarbakır in the 1950s. In contrast to Istanbul,
which had lost its diversity by that time, Diyarbakır still remains
mixed. What is told in the book is the story of the lives of the smart
Armenian children picked up from Diyarbakır villages and sent to
Istanbul to study while staying at Armenian orphanages.
In 1953, the first encounters of the Armenian village children
arriving at an Armenian orphanage from Diyarbakır with the native
Armenian children of Istanbul are not all that pleasant. In the eyes
of the children from Istanbul, they are "nasty Kurds." Those years in
which provincialism and urbanity outshined ethnic identification are
just before the events of Sep. 6-7, 1955 against the Greek community
of Istanbul. When we look into these memories, we come to realize how
much we have lost, how much the nation state caused us to lose, and
the difficulty in remembering our loss. All three of these memories
have been addressed in published works by Aras Publications. You can
read stories about human characteristics more than frustration,
revenge and hatred in many of the memoirs published in Turkish by the
same publishing house - lives broken into pieces and scattered, people
lost due to the new state of affairs, kept away from each other and
burying their grievances deep within their subconscious.
That Prime Minister Erdogan officially - and for the first time -
conveyed his condolences yesterday on the occasion of April 23 has
given me hope that maybe there can be a compromise between the
official speech and human stories, novels and memories.
There may be hope for mutual understanding.What we wish to remember
and forget today were everyday facts for those who lived in Istanbul
in 1915. For us, the act of remembering has turned into hard work.
When one considers what the old Turkish state stood for and what it
did, no one could think this process would be easy. That's why it is
possible to consider Erdogan's offer of condolence as an effort to put
the old state's impulses aside. In this tragedy, one side was forced
to forget what happened, while the other side remembered nothing else.
Erdogan's message is a very important step in the process of both
sides recognizing what the other went through.
http://www.dailysabah.com/columns/meryem-ilayda-atlas/2014/04/25/turkish-armenians-remembering-and-forgetting