Today’s Zaman, Turkey
May 26 2013
Bitter memories of exile still alive among Armenians
26 May 2013 /SEVGI AKARÇEÅ?ME, Ä°STANBUL
Sarkis Seropyan, an Armenian citizen of Turkey who was born in
Ä°stanbul in 1935, told Sunday’s Zaman about what he called the `exile’
stories of 1915.
Although he has family members on both his mother and father’s sides
who have `tehcir’ (the forced migration of Armenians in 1915 within
the Ottoman Empire during World War I) stories, his maternal
grandmother’s story stands out as the most painful one.
`My grandmother used to call it exile when she told us about 1915,’
states Seropyan, who says that he does not like the term `genocide.’
His maternal grandmother, Zaruhi, was one of many daughters of a
well-off family from Ä°stanbul.
Her father enjoyed his `rakı table’ and listened to the gramophone
every night on the balcony of his house overlooking the Golden Horn
while his daughters served him as in any traditional family in Turkey.
When a military doctor from Ä°zmit, Paronak Avedisyan, wanted to marry
Zaruhi at the age of 15, the family agreed since a son-in-law who is a
doctor has always been desirable for families, although the groom was
31 years old. Zaruhi was born in 1884, got married in 1899 and gave
birth to her first child, a son, just a year later.
Sarkis’s mother was born in 1908. The family was first posted to
Akçaabat on the Black Sea and then to GümüÅ?hane, where they first
encountered the events of 1915. The military doctor, who had a soldier
assigned to assist him because of his rank in the military, worked for
the Ottoman army and had friendly relations with the bureaucrats in
town.
One day, in 1915, he was called to duty to treat a patient and, two
days later, Zaruhi was told that her husband had been slaughtered and
thrown into a creek at the exit of the city. Zaruhi told her
grandchildren later that she knew who gave the order for the murder of
her husband: the mutasarrıf (local governor), who was later executed
for involvement in a plan to assassinate Atatürk.
A couple of months after Paronak’s murder, the Armenians in town were
forced into exile on foot when the Ottomans declared martial law. `My
grandmother was only 31 and alone with 4 kids, the youngest of whom
was only an infant who was carried by the older siblings on the road,’
says Seropyan. `They did not know where they were heading, but walked
along the Euphrates.’ The convoy stopped in Erzincan’s EÄ?in district
to rest. Zaruhi’s son made friends with the local officers at the
police station. One officer told them that Greeks were exempt from
exile.
`Both my grandfather and mother went to Greek schools because they had
the best education and had learned Greek,’ says Seropyan. When they
had company at home, they spoke in Greek so as not to be understood.
When people in GümüÅ?hane asked Paronak whether his wife was Greek, he
did not say no, and such information had registered in the minds of
the bureaucrats there.
To save her family from exile, Zaruhi told the police that she was
Greek, but the officers said that they needed confirmation from
GümüÅ?hane. `My grandma paid for the telegram and the response in
advance and they stayed in EÄ?in to wait for the answer while the rest
continued on,’ says Seropyan. In the meantime, different convoys came
and went to EÄ?in because they all followed the same route along the
Euphrates to Deir ez-Zor in present-day Syria, which was an Ottoman
province back then.
A response from GümüÅ?hane confirming that Doctor Paronak Avedisyan’s
family is Greek probably saved their lives because they were allowed
to stay in EÄ?in unlike the others. Zaruhi’s outgoing son got a job
assisting with small tasks at the local police station and was even
given a uniform. He found a lighter that became a treasured belonging,
allowing the family to light a fire when they began to live under
trees in EÄ?in.
Women unable to walk begged soldiers to shoot them
Seropyan shared the story of two elderly women who accompanied Zaruhi
and her kids during the march into exile but died on the road: her
mother-in-law and sister-in-law from Ä°zmit who were visiting them in
GümüÅ?hane when the exile was ordered. They left their homes without
any belongings but money.
Zaruhi’s mother-in-law grew tired of walking and became sick; she
begged the soldiers supervising the convoy to shoot her. She fell
before they arrived in EÄ?in and was eventually shot. Zaruhi heard the
gun shot and asked the woman next to her, `Who did they shoot this
time?’ The woman replied: `It was your mother-in-law. She was sick
anyway. Do not look back and keep walking.’ So they kept walking.
Seropyan says that the dead were not even buried. `I have driven along
the same route several times and got tired of driving,’ says Seropyan,
adding, almost in frustration, that `people would have rebelled if
they were shown how long the road was.’
`The elder aunt wanted to bribe the soldiers to shoot her,’ says
Seropyan, based on the story that he was told over and over by his
grandma instead of fairytales during his childhood. However, the
soldiers said that they cannot kill anyone who is able to walk and
that bullets are expensive. When she wanted to pay the price of the
bullet, a woman next to her suggested to the soldiers that she stand
directly behind the aunt so that they could both be killed with one
bullet. In the end, the elder aunt jumped off a bridge on the
Euphrates. Her nieces saw her floating down the river with her skirt
ballooning above the water. The younger one thought that she was
swimming, but Seropyan’s mother, who was 8 years old and thereby old
enough to understand the situation, realized that her aunt was dying.
They waved at each other before she drowned. The adults in the convoy
believed that she had been saved from further suffering.
When asked why they did not try to go to Ä°stanbul after they were
allowed to stay in EÄ?in, Seropyan says that not only was it
prohibited, but also there were no roads and Anatolia was not safe to
travel back then.
Zaruhi and her four children got tired of eating the walnuts and
mulberries that grow aplenty in EÄ?in as the winter approached. Her son
broke the lock on one of the houses that belonged to Armenians who had
been sent into exile. He first brought food and kitchen utensils to
his mother and then they moved into the abandoned Armenian house.
Years later, Sarkis Seropyan went to EÄ?in with a friend of his,
sociologist Müge Göçek, who is also from EÄ?in, and stayed there
overnight in memory of his grandmother. `I found the fountain and the
church my grandma used to tell us about,’ says Seropyan.
The family next traveled to the nearest American orphanage, which was
in Malatya. However, before they left, Zaruhi gave her youngest
daughter, who might not survive the walk, to a family in EÄ?in, the
BaÅ?gedikli family. `We searched for that little girl years later
through radio ads when radio first began to broadcast from Ä°stanbul,
but we could not find her,’ says Seropyan. He also said that the
current radio houses and Hilton Hotel in Harbiye, Ä°stanbul, were
constructed on top of the Pangaltı Armenian Cemetery. `The stones
paving Taksim are indeed the gravestones of Armenians, but the stones
are flipped over so you can’t see the names,’ says Seropyan.
Zaruhi took care of the children at the Malatya American orphanage
along with her two daughters. Her son, who was 15 at the time, ran
away because he was too old to stay there. He walked to Trabzon with a
friend to take the ferry to Ä°stanbul. When they realized that
documentation was necessary for the ferry, they came up with a scheme.
They cut the rope of the ladder used to climb up into the ferry and
when everyone who had fallen into the sea when the ladder was cut was
rescued, they also got on board.
Zaruhi’s son looked for his rich grandpa on the Golden Horn, but he
had already died of natural causes. After living under bridges for a
while, a captain helped him and he began to work on a ship with the
British, who had occupied Ä°stanbul. He went to Greece with them when
the occupation ended because it might have been dangerous for him to
stay in Ä°stanbul because he had cooperated with the British.
In the meantime, Zaruhi adopted a girl from the Gürün district of
Sivas who was at the orphanage. The girl said that if Zaruhi did not
adopt her, the Americans would take her back to the US with them. When
Zaruhi and her children left the orphanage for Ä°stanbul, they stopped
in Sivas. There, the adopted girl married an Armenian craftsman named
Vahan. According to Seropyan, Armenians working in certain professions
were allowed to remain in their hometowns despite the forced exile
because they would be needed. These Armenians showed great solidarity
with those who had been sent into exile, such as Zaruhi’s family. The
few Armenians remaining in Anatolia moved to Ä°stanbul in the following
years. Seropyan says that his family is still in touch with his
adopted aunt’s children, who now live in France.
Zaruhi and her daughters arrived in Ä°stanbul in 1918, found jobs and
lived in GedikpaÅ?a. Zaruhi worked as a maid for a Jewish family in
Ä°stanbul until her grandson, Sarkis, grew up and started to support
his family. `I took good care of my grandmother, who lived under the
impact of exile her whole life,’ says Seropyan.
According to him, the fact that his uncle — whom he met in Armenia in
1965 — told the exact same stories as his mother is proof that they
spoke the truth. `Two people cannot have the same dreams,’ comments
Seropyan.
Adopted Armenian girl turns into devout Muslim bride
Seropyan considers his family a lucky one to have survived the forced
exile. Unlike his maternal relatives, those on his father’s side were
able to pursue a more normal life since his father’s father moved to
Ä°stanbul in 1896 from the Zara district of Sivas. He was from a
well-known family in the region that was called the `Hotozots’ because
of the big caps they wore. However, when his relatives in Zara died
during the forced exile, almost nobody was left from his family except
those who migrated to the US in the 1800s. Seropyan says that they
went to the US in large numbers due to the influence of foreign
missionaries.
Among his few remaining relatives, Seropyan tells about the niece of
his grandfather, who converted to Islam after she was adopted by an
imam in Sivas. Her Muslim name is Hesna. Sarkis’s aunts learned about
her story years later. When Hesna’s family was forced into exile, the
imam of the local mosque adopted her. This imam was nicknamed `gavur’
(infidel) by the local people because of his friendly attitude towards
Armenians. However, when the imam’s wife died and Hesna grew up, the
imam married her.
Hesna’s maternal uncle, Sarkis’s grandfather, was a devout Orthodox
Christian. He volunteered at the church in the Balat neighborhood of
Ä°stanbul. He therefore did not even mention he had a niece who had
converted to Islam. Seropyan’s grandfather’s sisters later learned
that Hesna has a daughter named Edibe who married a soldier named
KaÅ?if. `When I went to Sivas for my military service, I found KaÅ?if
and his family,’ says Seropyan. He also met Hesna there.
`Hesna was dressed like a devout Muslim woman and when the Muslim
prayer call was made, she took out her prayer rug and prayed in front
of me,’ says Seropyan. Although Hesna shed tears when she saw Sarkis,
she never talked about her own story or about being Armenian. `I
stopped going there so as not to cause Hesna sorrow,’ says Seropyan.
Hesna’s grandson, Edib Eren, became a governor years later, Seropyan
explains. However, he preferred not to keep in touch with Seropyan
because an Armenian relative in the family would hurt his career in
the government. According to Seropyan, the state allowed Eren to
become a bureaucrat because they had not realized he had `an Armenian
mother-in-law’ in his family history.
Seropyan says that he learned the details of Hesna’s story from an
Armenian writer, Kirkor Ceyhan. Murdered Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink helped Ceyhan publish his books about the history of Zara, Sivas.
Ceyhan’s family was among who remained in Zara during the forced
exile. `After the exile, Kirkor used to try to go to school, barefoot,
to get warm, but the school was off-limits for Armenians,’ says
Seropyan.
`Armenians in big cities like Ä°stanbul were not forced into exile,
except for intellectuals, because the foreigners would react,’ states
Seropyan. `It would have caused a lot of noise.’ According to him,
people in Ä°zmir were also saved from exile because they bribed the
governor with large sums of money. However, he shared his appreciation
for the governor of Kütahya in 1915, Ali Faik Ozansoy, who resisted
the order for forced exile from the central government and protected
the Armenians in the city. The governor of Konya in 1915 also
protected the Armenians, notes Seropyan.
Sarkis Seropyan, who currently edits the Armenian pages of the Agos
newspaper, says that he is planning to write his family’s memoirs.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-316521-bitter-memories-of-exile-still-alive-among-armenians.html