The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute
Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex
RA, Armenia Yerevan 0028
Contact: Arevik Avetisyan
Tel.: (+374 10) 39 09 81
Fax: (+374 10) 39 10 41
E-mail: [email protected]
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"And Those Who Continued Living in Turkey after 1915"
18.04.08
The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute presents the book titled "And
Those Who Continued Living in Turkey after 1915" by Rubina Peroomian,
which issued under the auspices of the AGMI publishing-house.
The book is about people, who continued living in Turkey after the
Armenian Genocide.
In the atmosphere of the precariousness of minority rights in Turkey and
government’s persistence in denying the existence of the Armenian issue
as well as its continuing policy of pressure and selective approach to
history, a prescribed national identity covering all ethnic groups in
Republican Turkey was enforced and the Armenian collective suffering of
the past was buried in silence.
With the recent political developments in the world, the wall of silence
is breached. The events of 1915 and the plight of the Armenian survivors
in Turkey, be they Christian, Islamized, or hidden, are espoused and
fictionalized in literature produced in Turkey. Artistic expressions
echo the continuing trauma in the life of these "rejects of the sword,"
a Turkish moniker for Armenians, having "undeservedly" escaped from
death. The stories that Turkish writers unearth and the daring memoirs
of Turkish citizens with an Armenian in their ancestry, as well as
obscured references to these same stories and events in Turkish-Armenian
literature, have unveiled the full picture of survival, with an
everlasting memory of the lost ones, but also of forced conversions, of
nurturing the "enemy" in the bosom, and of the dehumanization and sexual
torture of men and women. A multifaceted image, an identity, of what is
broadly generalized as Turkish-Armenian, thus emerges, a phenomenon that
contradicts the long-researched and explored concept of the
Diasporan-Armenian post-Genocide ethnic identity. Nevertheless, the
sociopolitical and religious impositions and the hegemony of Muslim
identity have not been fully challenged yet. Outside pressures may
influence the metamorphosis of Turkish state of mind, but the change
should come from within the Turkish society. The change may be underway.
This annotation was taken from the book "And Those Who Continued Living
in Turkey after 1915" by Rubina Peroomian.