IDENTITY CRISIS: JOURNALIST EXPLORES THE ROOTS OF HAMSHEN ARMENIANS
NEWS | 03.07.13 | 09:29
Photo: Anahit Hayrapetyan
By GAYANE MKRTCHYAN
ArmeniaNow reporter
“Who were they? Were they actually Armenian? Did they look like us?
Were they different, very different? What an exotic thing – people who
are Muslim, but speak Armenian,” these were the questions and thoughts
that prompted journalist Vahan Ishkhanyan to search for answers in the
land of disputed identity and present it all in his lengthy new
commentary about Hamshen Armenians.
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Ishkhanyan’s grandfather was from Hamshen, as the reporter learned
when Hamshen expert Hovan Simonyan took a gene sample from Ishkhanyan
for his Armenian gene project.
“It turns out that my genetic group is G1, the same group to which
Avik Topchyan, another Hemshin belongs. While I do not know Mr.
Topchyan, it would appear that we are in fact related and that
generations ago our relatives were brothers.
“I was just a young child when I heard others in the house talk about
how there were still Muslim Hamshens living along the Black Sea coast
and that they spoke the Hamshen dialect. Different numbers were tossed
about as to how many there were – one hundred thousand, one million,”
recalls Ishkhanyan.
Two years ago, Iskhanyan won a Eurasia Partnership Foundation grant
and took a trip to Turkey’s eastshore of the Black Sea, where he spent
12 days at the Armenian-speaking Muslim Hemshen settlements and wrote
a story, titled “Who Are They? The Muslim Hamshens Who Speak
Armenian”.
Based on Ishkhanyan’s “Muslim Hemshin Armenians” project a trilingual
(Armenian, English, Turkish) CD and website () have
been created, where besides texts, multimedia aids, such as video
material and photographs, interactive maps, tell the fascinating story
of the Hamshens, their lifestyle, cuisine, perception of their
identity, political outlook, and their dialect.
Historical Hamshen is located in the northeast region of present-day
Turkey. Scholarly research says that the Islamization process of the
Hamshens began in the 1700s. Many scattered to settlements along the
Black Sea Coast – Trabzon, Ordu, etc – to avoid religious conversion.
There are no records preserved from that period as to why and how they
converted to Islam. All such information was recorded some 100-150
years later.
The Hamshen people today can be divided into three main groups: The
Christian Armenian Hamshens, who live in Abkhazia and Russia’s
Krasnodar District. They speak the Hamshen Armenian dialect; the Sunni
Muslim Armenian-speaking Hamshens, (Hopa-Hamshens) who live in the
Hopa and Borcka regions of the Turkish province of Artvin and call
themselves, Hamshetsi or Homshetsi; and Sunni Muslim Turkish-speaking
Hamshens (Bash-Hamshens) who mostly live in the Turkish province of
Rize and call themselves, Hamshil.
“Hopa-Hamshens have lost the religion and many traditions, they have
taken everything from the Turkish environment, but have preserved
their own language, and it is due to that language that they know
about their Armenian roots, many consider themselves Armenian. This
shows that any community, having lost everything else, but having
preserved the language, will not merge and can always return to its
roots,” says Ishkhanyan.
Ishkhanyan’s guideswere his Turkish colleagues, CemilAksu, President
of the BirYaÅ~_am (One Life) Cultural and Environmental Organization,
and Harun Aksu.
63 year-old Cemal Vayic, (the father-in-law of Hopa researcher Cemil
Aksu) considers himself Hamshen, says he knew the language since
childhood and wants to preserve it.
“We knew that language as young kids and want to preserve it. We
aren’t renouncing our identity. I will live as a Hamshen till the end.
We know that the Hamshens are descended from Armenians. If Armenians
visit and relate with us more often, we will be able to improve our
language skills.” says Cemal Vayic.
At his house all present told that before going to school they did not
know Turkish and spoke only Hamshesnak. They learnt Turkish at school.
Aksu says the assimilation policy of Hopa-Hamshens started in the
1980s and the Hamshen dialect gradually gave in to the Turkish
language.
At the revolutionary Hayteh Bar owned by Harun Aksu, Ishkhanyan meets
Mumi Yılmaz. As soon as they step foot into the bar he holds out his
hand in welcome and says – I’m also Armenian. “We know about your
cause, we are of the same blood,” he says.When asked how he knew he
was Armenian without knowing any of thehistory, Yilmaz responds:
“I don’t need to know the history to say that I’m Armenian. My
grandfather is my history. He told me that it’s the truth. Whatever I
know comes from him. My grandfather came down from the mountains to
sell whatever he had, a bit of milk, oil, whatever. They caught him,
called him Armenian, and bashed his head in. They stole his
belongings, his horse, everything.Before, in the mountains, they made
our life miserable. We were hungry. When we came down they beat us
constantly. They singled us out as Armenians. But now we’ve come down
and they can’t persecute us anymore”.
A shop owner glows upon learning that the reporter was Armenian and
asks whether people in Armenia know about them. Then he adds “Eh…we
sold our religion. We sold our Christianity and became Muslims.”
Even those Hamshens who avoid calling themselves Armenian and regard
themselves as Turks can’t escape the scorn heaped upon them by the
other peoples of the region, calling them ermeni (“Armenian” in
Turkish) in contempt.
As opposed to Hopa-Hamshens, who accept their Armenian identity,
Turkish-speaking Bash-Hamshens deny their Armenian descent, but
celebrate Vardavar (an Armenian Christian holiday with elements dating
back to pre-Christian era) and bury the deceased in coffins, unlike
Muslims who only use a shroud.
“If you ask a Hamshentsi what he is, he will answer “Hamshen’. If you
then ask what a Hamshen is, he’s at a loss. In this country, not
calling yourself a Turk is an act of courage,” says Bash-Hamshen
Selcuk Guney, who owns the guesthouse in Samsun.
Ishkhanyan writes that on the one hand the Turkish authorities made up
their version of history to cut the Hamshens from their Armenian
roots, while on the other hand the local government and residents of
other Muslim nationalities called Hopa-Hamshens Armenian and oppressed
them, which made them preserve their language and their Armenian
descent as a form of resistance. They had two ways out: resist and
remain the “the cursed ones”, adopting the ideology of oppressed
masses, i.e. communism, or become more catholic than the “the Roman
Pope, i.e. Turkish nationalists”.
“Leftists (Marxists) are very courageous, when they learnt I was
Armenian, they would come up, talk to me without fear. Others, who are
now facing their Armenian identity issue, were very friendly, but
asked not to record their names as soon as I was about to take notes.
They asked not to cite them, they were scared. I saw that in Turkey
people are afraid because of their Armenian descent, maybe in Istanbul
it is not so, but in Hamshen it was,” says Iskhanyan.
He also speaks about the Hamshesnak (the Hamshen dialect is referred
to as such in most scientific researches) and says if one listens to
it carefully Armenian words can be detected and after some
getting-used-to it becomes clear that it is Armenian.
And it is probably not accidental that Yılmaz Topaloglu, former mayor
of Hopa, told him: “I feel uncomfortable conversing through a
translator. We can speak that language fairly well, but sadly we’ve
been subjected to assimilation and various pressures. That’s why we
have difficulty understanding each other.”
“The language he refers to is Armenian. Yılmaz wouldn’t say such a
thing to anyone else in the world except for an Armenian who speaks it
– ‘I feel uncomfortable conversing through a translator’,” writes
Ishkhanyan.
In the end, Ishkhanyan answers the question: “Who are they?”
“They’ve demolished the Hamshen Kachikar Church so that no traces are
left. You won’t find it. The unknown location of the church symbolizes
the destruction of the Black Sea Armenians. Successive Turkish regimes
have dug down deep to eradicate all Armenian roots so that none ever
grows again. But one stubborn branch, long overlooked, has sprouted
again, trembling with fear. The Armenian words that flutter from the
lips of this 30,000 Muslim community is the last vestige of a past
when Armenians once lived on the Turkish shores of the Black Sea.”
From: A. Papazian
http://www.armenianow.com/news/47407/hamshen_armenians_vahan_ishkhanyan
www.hamshesnak.com