THE ISLAMIZED ARMENIANS AND US
By Raffi Bedrosyan // November 15, 2013 in Featured, Headline, Opinion
Reflections on a Groundbreaking Conference in Istanbul
In early November, the Hrant Dink Foundation held a conference on
“Islamicized Armenians” at the Istanbul Bosphorus University, breaking
one more taboo in Turkey. Islamicized Armenians were hitherto a hidden
reality, a secret known by many, but which couldn’t be revealed
to anyone, whispered behind closed doors but filed in government
intelligence offices, and it finally broke free into the public.
The late Hrant Dink would have been elated to see this conference
become a reality, eight years after the first conference on “Armenians
during the late Ottoman Empire era and the 1915 events” was held at
Istanbul Bilgi University, when protesters hurled insults at the
conference participants and government ministers labelled them as
“traitors stabbing Turks in the back.” That conference had also
broken a taboo, but Hrant was already a marked man for revealing
the identity of the most famous Islamicized Armenian-Sabiha Gokcen,
Ataturk’s adopted daughter and the first female Turkish combat pilot,
who was an Armenian orphan named Hatun Sebilciyan.
It is a known fact that in 1915, tens of thousands of Armenian orphans
were forcibly Islamicized and Turkified; that tens of thousands of
Armenian girls and young women were captured by Kurds and Turks as
slaves, maids, or wives; that tens of thousands Armenians converted
to Islam to escape the deportations and massacres; and that tens of
thousands of Armenians found shelter in friendly Kurdish and Alevi
villages, but lost their identity. What happened to these survivors,
these living victims of the 1915 genocide? Hrant was obsessed with
them: “We keep talking about the ones ‘gone’ in 1915. Let us start
talking about the ones who ‘remained.'”
These remaining people survived, but mostly in living hells.
Remarkably, their children and grandchildren are now “coming out,” are
no longer hiding their Armenian roots. One of the first was the famous
Turkish lawyer Fethiye Cetin, who revealed that her grandmother was
Armenian, in her book My Grandmother. This was followed by another book
edited by Aysegul Altinay and Fethiye Cetin, titled TheGrandchildren,
about dozens of Turkish/Kurdish people describing their Armenian roots,
without revealing their real identities. Then came the reconstruction
of the Surp Giragos Armenian Church in Diyarbakir/Dikranagerd, which
became a destination for many hidden Armenians in Eastern Anatolia. On
average, over a hundred people visit the church daily, most of them
hidden Armenians. Some come to pray, get baptized, or married, but most
just visit to feel Armenian, without converting back to Christianity.
This has created a new identity of Muslim Armenians, in addition to
the historical and traditional identity of Christian Armenians. In
a country where only Muslim Turks can work for the government, where
being non-Muslim is sufficient excuse for persecution, harassment and
attacks, where the word Armenian is used as the biggest insult, it
takes real courage for someone to reveal that he is now an Armenian
and no longer a Turk/Kurd/Muslim. People can easily lose their
jobs, livelihood, or even lives for changing their identity. As an
example of the level of racism and discrimination in the country, an
ultra-nationalist opposition member of parliament years ago accused
Turkish President Abdullah Gul of having Armenian roots in his family
from Kayseri. Gul sued her for defamation, and the courts sided with
him, ordering her to pay compensation for such an insult.
It is difficult to estimate the number of Islamicized Armenians in
Turkey, and even more difficult to predict what proportion of them
are aware of their Armenian roots, or how many are willing to regain
their Armenian identity. Based on independent studies of the 1915
events, one can conclude that more than 100,000 orphans were forcibly
Islamicized/Turkified, and that another 200,000 Armenians survived
by converting to Islam or by finding shelter in friendly Kurdish and
Alevi regions. It is therefore conceivable that 300,000 souls survived
as Muslims. The population of Turkey has increased seven fold since
then; using the same multiple, one can extrapolate that there may be
two million people with Armenian roots in Turkey today, originating
from the 1915 survivors. There were even more widespread conversions
to Islam during the 1894-96 massacres, when entire villages were
forcibly Islamicized. A couple centuries before, Hamshen Armenians were
Islamicized in northeast Anatolia. The Muslim Hamshentsis, numbering
about 500,000, speak a dialect based on Armenian, but had never
identified themselves as Armenian, until recently. Adding all these
forced conversions prior to and during 1915, one can conclude that the
number of people with Armenian roots in present-day Turkey reaches
several million. (The numbers are difficult to accurately estimate,
but in any case, they easily exceed the present population of Armenia.)
The reality is that the secrets of “Armenianness” whispered for three
or four generations after 1915 are now becoming loud revelations of
new identities. As evidenced in the recent conference, even Hamshen
Armenians have started exploring and reclaiming their long lost roots.
During the reconstruction of the Surp Giragos Church and in my travels
in eastern and southeastern Anatolia, one out of every three Kurds
that I met had an Armenian grandmother in the family. This fact,
hidden until recently, is now revealed openly, often leading young
generations to reclaim their Armenian identities, but without giving up
Islam. One interesting observation is that the hidden Armenians were
aware of other hidden ones and all attempted to intermarry, resulting
in many couples who ended up having Armenian roots from both parents.
The conference attracted numerous academicians, historians, and
journalists from both within and outside Turkey, as well as dozens of
presenters of oral history. One of the most dramatic presentations
was about Sara, a 15-year-old Armenian girl from Urfa Viranshehir,
who was captured by the Turkish strongman of the region, Eyup Aga. Eyup
wanted to take Sara as his third wife. When Sara refused, Eyup killed
her mother. When Sara refused again, Eyup killed her father. When Eyup
threatened to kill Sara’s little brother, Sara couldn’t resist any
more, and married the killer of her parents, on the condition that her
brother be spared and she be allowed to keep her name. But her brother
was also eventually killed. As she resisted Eyup’s advances, she was
repeatedly raped and was pregnant 15 times, giving birth to 15 babies,
who all died prematurely. Eyup constantly tortured her, even marking
a cross in her body with a knife. His family also mistreated her,
viewing her as an outcast, and she had a hellish life to the end. At
the end of the story, the presenter, a Turkish academician, revealed
that Eyup and the family who committed these crimes against Sara was
her own family. Her final statement was even more dramatic than the
story: “We always hear stories told by the victims. It is now time
for the perpetrators to start talking about and owning their crimes.”
There are new revelations about how the Turkish government kept tabs on
Islamicized Armenians. Apparently, the government kept records of every
Armenian village or large Armenian clan that was forcibly Islamicized
in 1915. It was recently discovered that the identification cards of
hidden or known Armenians had a special numbering system to secretly
identify them. There are anecdotes that a few Turkish candidates for
air force pilot positions were turned away even though they qualified
after rigorous tests, when government records revealed that they come
from Islamicized Armenian families.
It is of greater concern to us how the Islamicized Armenians are being
dealt with by Armenians. It seems that the Istanbul Armenian community
and, more critically, the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate are unable
or unwilling to accept the hidden Armenians coming out as Armenians,
unless these people accept Christianity, get baptized, and learn to
speak Armenian. But it is unrealistic to expect the new Armenians to
comply with these requirements. Since Armenians in Turkey are all
defined as belonging to the Armenian Church, if the newcomers are
rejected by the Patriarchate, they become double outcasts, not only
from their previous Muslim Turkish/Kurdish community, but also from the
Armenian community, as they cannot get married, baptized, or buried by
the church and cannot send their children to Armenian schools. If they
have made a conscious decision to identify themselves as Armenian-a
risky and dangerous initiative under the present circumstances-they
should be readily accepted as Armenians, regardless of whether they
stay Muslim or atheist or anything else. Relationships get even more
complicated as there are now many families with one branch carrying
on life as Muslim Turks/Kurds, another branch as Muslim Armenian,
and a third branch as Christian Armenian. The Etchmiadzin Church in
Armenia is more tolerant, and has issued the following statement:
“Common ethnicity, land, language, history, cultural heritage, and
religion are general measures in defining a nation. Even if one or
more of these measures can be missing due to historic reasons, such
as the inability to speak the language, or practice the religion,
or the lack of knowledge of cultural and historic heritage, this
should not be used to exclude one’s Armenian identity.” Yet, Charles
Aznavour’s approach is the most welcoming: “Armenia should embrace
the Islamicized Armenians and open its doors to them.”
After Armenia, Karabagh, and the Armenian Diaspora, there is now an
emerging fourth Armenian world-the Islamicized Armenians of Turkey.
Accepting this new reality will help both Turks and Armenians
understand the realities and consequences of 1915.
From: Baghdasarian
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/11/15/the-islamized-armenians-and-us/