NOT DEAD YET; ARMENIANS IN TURKEY

The Economist
U.S. Edition
November 18, 2006

A diaspora survives

Turkey’s Armenian population is growing

IN THE grimy alleys of Istanbul’s Kumkapi district the air is thick
with a rarely heard language: Armenian. Marina Martossian, who has
been working illegally for five months as a cleaner, is typical of
40,000 compatriots there. She is delighted with her $300 monthly pay
and calls her Turkish bosses "the kindest people in the world".

That’s a big change. Bitter debate over the fate of the Ottoman
Armenians-did the mass killings of 1915 constitute genocide?-has
fuelled decades of enmity. A survey by TESEV, a think-tank in
Istanbul, showed some 70% of Armenians had a negative view of the
Turks: a tenth called them "enemies"; a similar chunk "barbarians".

Among Turks, 34% thought poorly of Armenians (17%, bizarrely, believed
the Armenians were Jews).

Turkey’s Armenian minority dwindled to 80,000. In 1993 Turkey
sealed the border with Armenia, after it seized the province of
Nagorno-Karabakh from the Turks’ Azeri cousins. The issue poisons other
ties too: this week Turkey broke off military relations with France,
after parliament there voted to criminalise denial of the genocide.

Now Turkish officials go easy on the Armenians-in contrast to other
illegal workers. They also welcome changing attitudes among diaspora
Armenians, especially among those who actually visit Turkey. In an
e-mail widely circulated among emigres this month, Kardash Onnig, an
Armenian-American artist, who recently returned from an arts festival
in the eastern province of Kars, says he "never imagined that an
Armenian artist singing Armenian songs could elicit a response of
such brotherly humanity. I was in a sea of Turks dancing to Armenian
tunes. What joy! My eyes were full of tears."