Turkish woman’s discovery of grandmother’s Armenian roots leads to
taboo-breaking book
AP Worldstream
Apr 29, 2005

SUZAN FRASER

Before her death, Fethiye Cetin’s devout Muslim grandmother let her in
on a dark family secret: the old woman was born an Armenian Christian
who was stolen from her parents by a Turkish cavalry soldier who went
on to raise her.

The revelation stunned Cetin, who like most Turks knew little about
the slaughter of Armenians during the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish
Empire, a chapter of history so troubling it is barely taught in
schools or even discussed.

Hoping to help shatter those taboos, Cetin wrote a book that tells of
her grandmother’s sufferings and Cetin’s efforts to reconcile her
Turkish identity with the tragic past.

The book `’My Grandmother” has encouraged other Muslim Turks to step
forward and is one of the few examples of Turks struggling in a
personal way to come to grips with the massacre of Armenians during
World War I.

It comes as Turkish intellectuals and newspapers _ partially prodded
by demands from the European Union that Turkey face up to its past if
it wants to join the bloc _ have increasingly been addressing the
Armenian massacres.

Armenians say some 1.5 million of their people were killed as the
Ottoman Empire forced them from eastern Turkey in what they say was a
deliberate campaign of genocide by the theocratic state’s rulers.

Turks say the death count is inflated, and insist that both Armenians
and Turks were killed or displaced as the Ottoman Empire tried to
quell an Armenian insurrection. Turkish accounts of the massacres have
almost exclusively focused on Turkish casualties and suffering.

Turks have faced prosecution in the past for backing the Armenian
claims and many Turks regard it as anti-Turkish to speak of the
slaughter of Armenians.

And there are still deep prejudices between the two sides.

A recent poll conducted jointly by research foundations in Turkey and
Armenia showed that 68 percent of Turks would object to their daughter
marrying an Armenian. Ninety-four percent of Armenian respondents said
they would be against their daughter marrying a Turk.

Cetin, a lawyer, says in the book she felt ashamed when she first
learned that her grandmother was born an Armenian, writing: “I could
not tell anyone, I could not share my shock with anyone.”

“It was an eye-opener, I began to see things I hadn’t before,” Cetin
said in an interview in her small office on the Asian side of
Istanbul.

Some 50 people with similar Armenian backgrounds quickly contacted her
after the November 2004 publication of the book, which has sold 12,000
copies, a considerable amount in a country where book readership is
low.

Some called to say the book encouraged them to be open about their
ancestry.

“In time, I was able to somewhat digest what I had learned and to some
extent quell the internal turmoil,” Cetin wrote in the book.

The numbers of Armenian children taken by Turks and raised as their
own is deeply disputed and could range from the thousands to far
higher.

Most Turks with an Armenian heritage still take pains to hide their
background.

“If talking about the issue stopped being a matter of courage in
Turkey, I believe that the numbers (of people who would come forward)
would be incredible,” said Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist
based in Istanbul.

Cetin grew up knowing her grandmother as Seher, a devout Muslim who
prayed five times a day, fasted for the holy month of Ramadan and wore
a traditional headscarf.

Then one day when Cetin was in her mid-20s, the grandmother called her
into her room and imparted a chilling story.

Seher said the name given to her at birth was Heranoush. When she was
nine, paramilitary police came to her village in eastern Turkey and
rounded up all of the Armenians, forcing the women and children into a
churchyard.

The group stayed huddled in the yard, with no idea what was happening
to the men until one girl climbed on the shoulders of another, looked
over a wall and told them what she saw: soldiers slitting the throats
of the men and tossing their bodies into a river.

The women and children, including Heranoush and her two brothers were
forced to march more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the Syrian
border with little food or water.

At one point, Turkish soldiers came. One took Heranoush while another
took her brother Horen and ran off with them. Heranoush was renamed
Seher and raised as her abductor’s daughter.

The story led Cetin to search for the Armenian side of her family.

That search only bore fruit after Seher died in 2000. Cetin wrote an
obituary for her grandmother for an Istanbul-based Armenian newspaper
which caught the eye of a France-based Armenian bishop, who helped
unite the families.

Last year, Cetin traveled to New York to meet with Margaret Bedrosian,
Seher’s sister who was born in the United States, and Margaret’s son,
Richard.

“Richard and I hugged each other and sobbed loudly,” Cetin said of the
meeting at the airport. “It was indescribable.”