GENOCIDE ARMENIEN
The Armenians, Zazas and Qizilbash : Communities Hybridized by the
Genocide of 1915
La rédaction d’Armenews vous propose un article prononcé lors d’un
colloque sur les zazas préparé par l’Université d’Etat de Yerevan.
L’article est traduit en anglais et s’intitule : `The Armenians, Zazas
and Qizilbash : Communities Hybridized by the Genocide of 1915` écrit
par Erdem Ã-zgül et traduit du turc par Hakan KaradaÄ?lı.
The subject of this conference, namely the Zazas and the Alawites,
make up the constituent parts of my family. Furthermore, Armenians and
Armenia compose the distaff side and motherland of both me and my
father. This at the same time is a family created compulsorily. A
family which was forcibly created and forced into a single identity by
genocide. And as it is well known, there are hundreds of thousands of
such families.
I wish to present my paper in two parts. Part one consists of the
relations of the Zazas and the Alawites to the Armenians and Assyrian.
Part two is based on my personal eye witness accounts concerning
Armenians. I will cite three short paragraphs from stories that I have
written before concerning the liveliness of post-genocide Western
Armenian culture.
Part 1.
I would like to start with the Zazas. The name Zaza is a designation
not known in Dersim. In Dersim live people who speak the three most
prevalent tongues. The Kurmanji call themselves Kurd-Qizilbash, The
Kirmanji call themselves Qizilbash, while others call them Zaza. It is
mostly the Moslems that use the name Zaza, as in Nurettin Zaza and
Ahmet Zaza. We often come across surnames that boast with being Zaza
in the vicinity of Dikranagert and Bingöl. Among the two groups, there
are also Ethnic Armenians. These people were forcibly Alawitized.
Having lost their languages, they speak Zazaki or Kurdish. Are the
Zazas a nation ? Or are they a part of the Kurdish or Armenian nation
? I must say that we will not be able to provide a satisfactory answer
to this question for quite a long time. A significant portion of the
Zazas support the Kurdish struggle and tend to prefer the blooming and
developing Kurdish to Zazaki. Left in the shadow of Kurdish, today
Zazaki is a secondary language in gradual regression. On the other
hand the Qizilbash of Dersim and the Zazas from surrounding provinces
declare that they are not Kurdish due to Kurd-phobia. They don’t make
much of an effort, nor do they display any inclination towards
scientific study concerning Zaza language and history. None the less
the world of Zaza is extremely rich indeed. On one side there are the
Qizilbash and the Shafi Moslems on the other ; and the Christian Zazas
associated with the Assyrian Church on still another. The example of
the Assyrian Church is an important case with similar ones to be found
in the east. For example there is an Arab Armenian tribe that has
converted to Islam. Again in Syria there are Armenian families that
speak Kurdish. The Zaza Assyrians have legitimized themselves in
Adıyaman. That is to say that there are remnants of archaic people on
territories swallowed by Turkey. These form small clusters. There are
the Greek (Melkite) Orthodox in Hatay. There is the Armenian village
of Vakıflı. There are Assyrians in Mardin. In Rize and Artvin there
are the Hemshinites, a community of roughly 200,000 people. Although
they have mostly forgotten their language, they still have been able
to create their own Armenian dialect. In cities and villages from
Sinop to Trabzon there are people who don’t speak Greek but in one way
or another still live the Pontian Culture. In more than 300 villages
at Trabzon alone there live a substantial amount of people who speak
very little Turkish and who’s native tongue is Romeika (Pontos Greek).
Similarly there are Assyrians in Adıyaman. These are populous
families. Because there is no Armenian church in the city, there are
also Armenian families amongst them. Their language of worship is
Assyrian. Their everyday language is Zazaki, the younger generation
speak Turkish and the assimilation imposed on them is extremely
influential.
Without restraint we can say that many of the Zaza Assyrians I
mentioned have two religions. They are both Christian and Qizilbash at
the same time. When I say Qizilbash I am not talking about a typical
Moslem. They don’t stand for salaat or go on hajj. They sing folk
songs, play instruments, perform semah. This folkloric structure,
contrary to the imposition in Islam, seems quite pleasant to most Zaza
Assyrians. Religion-wise it is a rapprochement at the same time. And
things like lighting a candle for the deceased is assimilation. Infact
the following claim can be brought into descussion before and after
the genocide of 1915 : Qizilbash is a distinct religion which is
polylingual and polyreligious in nature. This religion is an amalgam
of the Armenian Church, the Assyrian Church and strong sentiments from
religious system of the Ezidis who today are no longer a neighbour.
But how did this happen ? I believe it is important to raise this
question.
It seems to me that the best description of the genocide of 1915 is
that of the Assyrians. Seyfo is a concrete term and has especially
depleted Seyf Tur Abdin and Western Armenia. Asking the question of
who held the Seyf is again very important.
A large Christian mass desolved in Islam. In Cilicia, Dersim and Sivas
large numbers of people were converted to Qizilbash. These people were
forced to change, their property changed hands as did their lives. But
it has been said that man is the subject of history, so they bring
things as they come. They pass some of their rituals and traditions on
to the communities which they join. The Assyrian Church in Adıyaman is
an example of this. The fact that there are not too many Qizilbash in
Adıyaman and that the Assyrian Church manages to survive in the city
despite all repression, helps the Assyrians sustain themselves not as
a nation, but as `Mesihi’ in Kurdish terms. In comparison to the
Qizilbash of MaraÃ…? and Malatya, their neighbours the Qizilbash of
Adıyaman possess a more distinctive, Christianity-like belief due to
the impact of this church.
Here we have to open a parenthesis to emphasize the difference. MaraÃ…?
is a Cilician city with a very dense immigrant population fron the
Balkans and Caucasus and the Armenians displayed intense resistance in
MaraÃ…? when leaving the city. It is still possible to hear of the
Armenian resistances from the Caucasian immigrants (which the
Qizilbash call the Okkesh, the Osmans meaning state, the ones with
state). To this day, they still do not forgiven this deadly resistance
and they take revenge from the Qizilbash.
One may ask if this commentary is too essentialist, but I don’t think
so. We’re not talking about individual lives or only people’s emotions
and thoughts here. We’re talking about paranoid societies and their
revenge. Like an upstart coming in to oust the old-timers, the
Qizilbash of MaraÃ…? did everything in their power to settle. The fact
that only the elderly live in almost all their settlements today and
that their youth choose exile in European to living in Turkish
metropolitan areas is another point of irony.
Compared to MaraÃ…?, the Alawites in Malatya are a lot less in number
and are Islamized to a much greater extent. First the genocide of
1915, and most recently the desertion of Malatya’s Armenian
neighbourhoods following the junta of September 12 1980, has pushed
the Alawites to see themselves more within Islam. For here too the
Moslem groups are extreme right wing and they advocate the killing of
the Alawites to be canonically lawful. Faced with the threat of
massacre, the Alawites are forced to respond by saying that they too
are members of the same religion, namely Islam.
Prior to 1915, it was the Armenians who opened the closed doors of the
Qizilbash to the outside world. A similar role was played by the
Assyrians for the Ezidis in the Tur Abdin region. Today such a door, a
helping hand no longer exists, therefore the Qizilbash have to fend
for themselves. In the instance of Adıyaman, the Qizilbash display
solidarity with the Assyrians. In MaraÃ…? they emigrate and in Malatya
they draw closer to Islam. As these cities lose the Armenian and
Assyrian populations, so do the Qizilbash loose their differences.
Sunnism may be heavier than death, but they are fast becoming
something like Shia. In any case, they give in to a certain
understanding and say that they are not without holy script, that they
follow the Quran, read it at their funerals and perform religious
marriage at weddings. They reason I said something like Shia is
because Shia does not except the Alawite and the Alawite don’t stand
for prayer and don’t go on Hajj. There is no disdain behind this
expression. As it is well known, it was the Union and Progress Party’s
officials that tagged the Qizilbash as Alawite. There were many
reasons behind this act : Prior to 1915, they were travelling to
regions such as Dersim, Cilicia and Sebestia and talking with the
opinion leaders there. Here, it is my opinion that they were testing
the waters for two things : 1) What would happen if the state were to
stage an attack on those it calls the `infidel’, namely the Armenians,
Greeks and the Hay-Horom of the region ? 2) Would the Alawite be
against such an operation or would they support it ? They were
evaluating community psychology.
Called Qizilbash by Shah Ismail and the Persians and Alawite by the
Young Turks, they were much more dependent on the Christians when
compared to the Kurds. In comparison to theirs, the Kurdish habitats
were more outward-oriented. Even though they didn’t farm the land they
had livestock breeding which was productive on its own. Most important
of all, they had no problem with expanding out, for the Kurds were at
the same time the Empire’s brute force.
By massacring the Christians, the Kurds could possess more land. As a
matter of fact although the demography has changed, the Assyrians
still can’t reclaim the land which they hold the title deeds,
specially from their Kurdish neighbours. When it comes to using force
and violence in such an occasion the Kurds’ gains far exceed the
losses. This they could forsee even back then. Who had hold of Seyf we
had asked. Let us answer the question now. Besides the Asuri-Assyrian,
the Armenian, the Ezidi and the Jewish communities everyone had a hold
on Seyf. The Qizilbash also had a hold. We may also describe the
Qizilbash road leading to extermination during the genocide this way :
when you draw a circle around a Ezidi, that circle will be his/her
destiny if s/he is a devout person. The Ezidi cannot escape the trap
until you erase what you have drawn. This is not the drama facing the
Alawites, but theirs is just as serious. Here we come to a subject
that I enjoy working on very much. Western Armenians, the civilization
they built and the seizure of this civilization’s surplus value. The
Western Armenians are a truely unique people. They are extremely
prolific. Ofcourse by telling you this I don’t mean to preach to the
converted. They have expanded to all corners of the empire ; spread
out to Russia, Iran, India, the whole world. Consequently, the values
of the times could be conveyed to Sivas and even to the smallest
villages of Dersim. These people were well aware of the dawn of a new
world and they wanted to catch up with the times. The urbanites, the
bourgeois, even the country folk wanted this as much as their
knowledge and skill would allow. It was the Kurds and the Alawites
that were the ones to benefit the most from this progress, this
advance in society. They were attentive about taking tribute from the
Armenian’s income, and saw no harm in seizing the land of the poor
Armenians that were pouring to the big cities. Although the Kurds were
recognized by the state, they were still not productive enough as a
community. Alienated from the states, the Alawites were a dispersed
community, awaiting a massacre at any given time. The identities of
the Assyrians, Armenians, Arabs, Turkmens and Kurds were disregarded
for centuries. Despite the fact that the Alawites exist in all these
groups, they possess no common ground. This in my opinion is the
circle the Alawites were trapped in.
I believe it is here that we have to unearth the role of the Alawites
in the genocide of 1915. The greater part of the Alawites possessed
weapons and power and called for the massacre of the Christians and
the seizure of their wealth. Another group thought that annihilation
would be disadvantageous. There argument was `These people are at our
disposal and there’s no way for them to hide their wealth from us. We
always take our share and tribute. Why cut off our revenues, why shoot
our own foot ?’ Among these two groups, we also have the Alawite lower
classes. What we gather from the stories of the Armenian, the Pertek
and the Assyrians of ElazıÄ? and Adıyaman is that the peasant Qizilbash
women, children and elderly, would not pick through the belongings of
the people sent to their deaths ; nor would they torture them. They
would only plunder their leftovers.
At this point I’d like to state that the example of the Qizilbash is
quite naive, specially when compared to the Kurds-Turks and
Circassian, and this gives rise to misleading conclusions. When it
comes to the looting and annihilation of the rich remnants of the
Armenian civilization I have mentioned, the Alawite regions are more
destructive but this fact is generally overlooked. Although Dersim,
Sivas, Malatya, MaraÃ…? and other provinces were rich in Armenian
structures such as churches and schools, none were fortunate enough to
survive like those in Diyarbakır, Bitlis, Van and Kars. This we must
keep in mind. The first reading concerning the Alawites goes as
follows : These people protected the Armenians at the risk of their
own lives. True. For example, it was an old Qizilbash woman who
brought the esteemed Armenian historian Soghomon Tehlirian back to
life. This alone is an occasion to be proud. Tehlirian is not merely
an anti-character who destroyed the destroyer. At the same time he is
the possessor of a historical rightfulness that says, I killed a man
yet I am not a murderer. This first reading is true only for the case
of the woman, women and families that saved Tehlirian. Because it did
not inhibit the right of the Tehlirians to determine their own future.
On the other hand we have the deliverance stories of the tribes. It is
here that this judgement becomes complicated. It was the economic
imperatives of the Qizilbash that propelled them to save the
Armenians. The ones that were saved, were so in two ways. First of
all, those who took refuge in Dersim were transfered to Erzurum or
Kars, in return for a certain payment, by armed Qizilbash and from
there they were handed over to Russian soldiers or Armenian
volunteers. Contrary to exaggeration, this was human trafficing pure
and simple. Especially the events that took place in Sivas and Amasya,
constitute the second case of deliverance. Huge Armenian convoys are
set off. The local Qizilbash authorities have problems with the state
; nevertheless they turn a blind eye to the murders. Fearing for there
own lives, the general population would not even dream of saying a
word against the state. All that remained were dispersed families.
Women and young girls. Children roughly the same age as Soghomon
Tehlirian and Misak Manushian at the time. These people were rescued.
We’re talking about children, women and families with no identity.
They do not know how to go or where to go. In other words they were
not as fortunate as Manushian. Yes they were rescued. Because they
were talented, jacks of all trades. Coming from hell on earth, they
were deprived of the chance to object or reject slavery. Here at the
essence of it all, very heavy exploitation prevails. And in these
stories of deliverence, we hear nothing concerning the return of
property or goods. Extensive seizures of farms, inns, public baths,
vineyards and orchards took place and all those involved took a cut. I
believe it is important that this should be publicly known and not
fall on deaf ears. Despite all the suffering, the Armenians `rescued’
by the Qizilbash lived in a way that affirms Dostoyevsky’s hero in
Siberian exile who asserts `Brother… Life everywhere is life’. This
explicitly demonstrates their will to live even when faced with aÄ?ed
(catastrophe). Herein it would be an incorrect interpretation to say
socially the Qizilbash had cleansed their hands and purified their
hearts. They found an opportunity for looting and took part in it.
This is a fact.
A counter interpretation would be that the Mirakian Tribe in Dersim
were not forced to Alawism, their churches were not shut down, they
did not forget their Armenian. Ä°n such a scenario we could speak of a
rescue. But this was not the case. On the contrary an act of
assimilation took place. For example the third and fourth generation
youth of the Mirakian Armenian Tribe have only recently been baptized
and regained their Christian chatacter. Many of these young people
found the courage to do so in the neutrality of European countries.
Very few, like Miran Pırgiç Gültekin, could not take the assaults and
defamation any more and resorted to defend their identities in Western
Armenia. As it can be clearly seen, this really is the story of the
Armenians saving themselves from Alawism.
Part 2.
Armenian Monument, Christian Influences
There’s a monument by Sargis Baghdasaryan which is one of the symbols
of the Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh) Republic. It is named `Menq Enq Mer
Sarere’ (We are Our Mountains). The old man and woman carved out of
pumice stone represent the mountain people of Upper Karabagh. Before
seeing Sargis Baghdasaryan’s sculpture I had seen Tatik yev Papik. I
don’t know how much of an inspiration this monument was for
Baghdasaryan. What I know is Tatik and Papik becomes Alik and Fatik in
the Alawite language. Some Alawites prefer to call this monument the
Bride and Groom Rock. The Dersim version of the monument is at the
chimney on the road to Khavachur Creek. The bodies being portrayed are
younger and the woman rests her head on the man’s chest. The posture
of the lovers, translates into the Alawite tongue as `the lovers have
turned to stone after being reunited’. I’ve listened to many stories
concerning the monumet, each one more beautiful than the other. But
after careful examination I could see it was crafted by an Armenian
artisan. A few sentences in Hayeren (Armenian) were written at the
base of the monument. It was the first time I had seen the sculpture,
but more importantly it was the first time I witnessed a monument
being sanctified. What I learn today is of no importance in this
sense. That day there was a crowd, of which I was a part of, trying to
understand what was happening at the monument which if you like we may
call `We are Our Mountains’. Then a woman dipped her hand in the
sanctified oil and the ritual began. She drew nine crucifixes on the
girl’s body and nine on the boy’s. The woman drew a crucifix on the
girl’s forehead and one on the boy’s. She drew crucifixes on their
eyes, then on their ears and noses, hearts and hands, their backs and
feet. She drew nine crucifixes on each and then called to us saying :
`This is the boy’s heart”, her hand on his heart. `This is the girl’s
heart’ this time her hand on the girl’s heart. Then she put her hand
on her own heart and said `This is my heart’. `This is our heart’ we
said all together and repeated what she said : `May this holy seal
render your heart clean and may the spirit of righteousness always be
with you’. Then she applied the oil on the feet of the girl and boy
and we prayed all together : `May this holy seal serve as your guide
and prevent your feet from stumbling, on your holy walk to eternal
life.’
Following the ceremony we lit candles, ate halva and prayed to Anahit.
Alawites, Armenians, Circassians and Pomaks from neighbouring
villages, all kirve (a sort of godfather to a boy at his circumcision)
and kin, families that have become relatives, families that have given
and taken from their own culture, all together we prayed, performed
the ceremony and went our way.
Armenian Women Leftovers of the Sword and a Childhood Memory About
Levon Ekmekjian
The villages and towns were left to the women. Because most of these
women, these mothers were Armenian, these settlements looked more like
they were in Armenia than in Turkey. The land we call Armenia is known
for its struggles with endless massacres. These women had a son. Their
hearts in their boots, they awaited news of him. The grapevine
telegraph brough us no news. You needed guts even to talk of rumours
about him. But the radio and television were giving reports about him
every day. It was during those days that I realized I was friends with
Levon. I took him, pulled him out from among his tears, made him my
friend. He was still alive so I could not mourn as if he was dead,
even though deep down I sensed the coming death. They were showing
coverage of Levon’s trial on television. Levron was saying he deserved
to die and was expressing remorse. At home, with lumps in their
throats, mothers and duaghters were crying their hearts out. From time
to time, even I would submit to the dominant mood there in that room.
But I would be lying if I said I was in constant grief as they were.
When I was tete-a-tete with my friend, rather than feeling sorrow, I
would play games with him, aspire to him, put on his dark sun glasses
and walk beside him. It wasn’t long after we became friends that they
killed Levon. They put a noose around his neck, strangled him and
buried him in a pitch-dark potter’s field. For weeks and months I
waited for his mortal remains. Since the immigrant Kurdish and Turkmen
men have withdrawn from these lands and the villages and towns are
left to the Armenian women, then this is his motherland. Levron was
not a waif. Here there are women who grieve for him. Here there are
the churches his people prayed, the fields they cultivated and the
graveyards where they lie. He could have been brought here, this was
his home. The women were Levron’s mothers, the young girls and I were
his siblings. If they had brought him here, maybe the mother’s grief
would ease a little. At least they would have a grave where they could
go and cry over. But it didn’t happen. The mothers now feel grief not
only for their own sons’ desolation, but also for Levron’s.
The Armenian Cemetery at the Village I was Born and a Testimony to the
Way of Life Imposed on Armenians. Then someone dug out a dagger from
the grave of an Armenian fedayee. This was during the stricter times
of the state of emergency. The soldiers pretended they didn’t know and
the man took the dagger all the way to ElazıÄ?. The shopkeepers there
told him that they didn’t have that much money to buy the dagger so he
decided to take care of it later and return to his hometown, since he
was already rich. You unfortunate soul ; you may be blind but the
world sees straight. The crafty soldiers caught the villager and
seized the dagger, accusing him on the spot of taking the dagger as a
gift to those hiding in the mountains. After cauterizing him for some
time with the dagger, these torturer soldiers took the dagger and
defected from the army. Oh Shakespeare, gold worth so much forces both
the Kurd and the Turk to lose his humanity.
Before there was so much robbery and looting, naturally when I was
very little, I used to think that the Armenians only lived at night.
They would come at night and the graves were infact houses. They would
enter the graves through door that we did not know of and never come
out in the daytime because they could not stand our filth. I would
also have many dreams of this kind, where I enter a house and after
passing naked bodies arrive at a tranquil place. Then I would hit the
sack and when it was nighttime I would seed all the field again.
I thought a lot these dreams later on. My father had an uncle from
Erzincan’s Armidan village. He came and settled in our village,
marrying one of my father’s aunts. They say he was an extremely
talented yet very angry man. They say that the aunt used to beg
grandpa to save her from this man, saying that he was killing her. Far
from loving his wife Baron Dikran would beat the living daylights out
of her, but my family would not dispraise him. They would take
advantage of his talent. Behind the houses there were stables and
barns. They had a house like that. In the dark, in a pit. No man with
a heart would make a rat live there even, let alone a human being. But
there they lived, having no other choice.
dimanche 2 novembre 2014,
Stéphane ©armenews.com
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