FOR TURKEY’S ARMENIANS, PAINFUL PAST IS MUTED
By Anne Barnard

Boston Globe, MA
Nov 30 2006

ISTANBUL — When Mesrob II, the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul and
All Turkey, meets today with Pope Benedict XVI, the one topic he says
he definitely won’t bring up is the one that most intensely interests
his people around the world: the Armenian genocide.

Getting Turkey and the rest of the world to acknowledge the slaughter
of more than 1 million Armenians in the early 20th century, many by
troops of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, is a cherished goal of the
Armenian diaspora. The visit from the spiritual leader of 1 billion
Roman Catholics might seem the perfect opportunity not only to draw
attention to the problems of the tiny Christian minority here, but
also to ask the pontiff to press Turkey for an apology.

But for about 68,000 Turkish citizens of Armenian descent, who —
along with 20,000 to 30,000 people from neighboring Armenia who
have migrated here in search of jobs — make up by far the largest
Christian community in Turkey, the situation is much more complicated,
even dangerous.

Armenians here must balance a deep need to preserve the memory of the
killings, known in Armenian as metz yeghern, or "the big calamity,"
with safeguarding the small community that remains, which to them means
avoiding conflict with the Muslim Turk majority or the nationalist
government. Turkish citizens who mention the killings — including
Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author who won the Nobel Prize this year —
have been charged with the crime of "insulting Turkishness," and risk
fines, jail sentences, and even death threats.

The Armenian community is treading cautiously around the pope’s
visit. Leaders are seeking his support on general issues of religious
expression; during his first two days Benedict has already stressed
the importance of religious freedom. But they are being careful not to
embrace too closely a pontiff widely seen by Muslims as having insulted
Islam — and they are avoiding any public reference to the genocide.

Many Armenians here say they have chosen to leave the past buried —
or partly buried — in order to press for more immediate benefits.

They want to persuade the government to ease onerous restrictions,
such as laws that ban Christians from bequeathing land to the church or
running independent seminaries to train priests. And they want to live
in peace with the rest of this country of nearly 80 million people,
about 99 percent of whom are Muslim and overwhelmingly ethnically
Turkish.

Mesrob, the leader of the Armenian Orthodox Church here, is a case in
point. Speaking the confident English he perfected at Memphis State
University, he chose his words carefully in an hourlong conversation
with three foreign reporters.

Asked whether he would discuss the genocide with the pope, he said
he never brings up "local issues" with visiting dignitaries. Asked
whether he could state for the record that a genocide took place,
he fixed a reporter with a friendly gaze and was silent for a long
moment. Then he said, "I acknowledge that people were killed."

But Mesrob, 50, spoke more readily when asked what had happened to
his own family at the time. His grandfather’s six brothers were all
deported from the town of Izmit, during a time when many Armenians
were shipped off to the Syrian desert. His grandfather, who escaped to
Istanbul and became a baker, never heard from them again. He assumed
most of them died.

Mesrob’s parents and grandparents never told him the details. "They
never talked about it. They didn’t want us to be at odds with our
Muslim neighbors," he said.

"There is no family that didn’t share this situation," said Navart
Beren, 51, an administrator at St. Mary’s Church, across the street
from the patriarch’s residence on a winding street near the Sea of
Marmara, where she was attending Mass last Sunday. Her parents were
close-mouthed, too, she said: "They didn’t want us to carry revenge
in our hearts."

"All that is in the past," said her friend Margarit Nalbantkazar, 52.

"But this did happen: My husband’s father was 8 or 9 years old. He
saw them take his father by hitting him on the back of the head with
a gun. . . . They never saw him again."

Murat Belge, a Turkish academic who runs the publishing house that
prints Pamuk’s books, explained why Armenians inside Turkey walk such
a fine line between forgetting and accusing.

Told of the patriarch’s comments, Belge said: "If he had said there was
an Armenian genocide, it’s very likely that he would be assassinated
by some fascists, the patriarchate would be burned, and Armenians
leading their daily lives would be shot by unknown people."

Turkey has always insisted that the deaths, most of them in 1915,
were part of a war in which a beleaguered Ottoman Empire was facing
Armenian rebels allied with its enemies, which included the United
States, Britain, and Russia.

But most historians agree that Armenians were systematically killed
and driven out. The subject is extremely sensitive in Turkey because
many of the military leaders of the dying Ottoman Empire went on to
found the secular Turkish republic in 1923.

Also in the 1920s, hundreds of thousands of Greek Orthodox Christians
were forced to leave Turkey as smaller numbers of Muslims were forced
out of Greece, under the agreement that established the Greek and
Turkish borders. Today, Christians make up less than 1 percent of
the population.

US policy on the Armenian deaths is to respect the position of Turkey,
an important NATO ally, though the 1.2 million Armenians in America
fiercely lobby Congress to recognize the genocide.

Pope John Paul II called the events a genocide in a 2000 document,
and in 2001 visited a memorial to the victims in Yerevan, Armenia’s
capital. In a speech there, he avoided the term genocide but adopted
the Armenian phrase "big calamity."

The Vatican has given no indication of whether Benedict will mention
the issue.

Mesrob said he hoped the pope’s visit would improve interfaith
relations, but whether it does "depends on what kind of language he’s
going to use," he added with a chuckle. He said the pope’s September
remarks, quoting a Byzantine ruler’s criticism of Islam as violent,
"jeopardized" Christian minorities.

A metal detector and security checkpoint stand outside Mesrob’s ornate
residence, and security will be extra tight during the pope’s visit,
he said.

Mesrob said Turks do not bear all responsibility for the killings
of Armenians but have "the most important responsibility" because
"they were ruling the country." He said many people believe "ethnic
cleansing" was carried out to "remove Christians from public life."

When asked if Armenians in Turkey have a ceremony or memorial site to
commemorate the killings, he said that they do not, but that people
remember the date April 24, 1915, when Armenian intellectuals in
Istanbul were rounded up and deported, as a kind of "beheading of
the community."

Mesrob dismissed recent allegations that he forbids church officials
to speak of the killings. "It’s not a question of silence," he said.

"How can you make friends with someone if you confront them?"

Instead, he recommends cultural exchanges between Armenia and Turkey
to pave the way for an honest discussion of the events, he said. In
the meantime, he said, when foreign governments raise the issue,
ethnic Armenians in Turkey get nervous.

Aida Barsegian, 56, a house cleaner who moved here from Armenia,
said it didn’t help when France passed a law last month declaring it
a crime to deny the genocide. "If they care so much, they should open
the borders of France and let us find work there," she said after
lighting candles at the church. "Here they give me work."