By Any Means: Non-Exclusively Christian Armenianness
Asbarez
Dec 29th, 2009
BY GAREN YEGPARIAN
We were all raised to believe that `Armenians are Christians’, which
of course begs the question, `Are ALL Christians Armenians?’
Logically, it would have to be so, but that’s a fun little game of
logic that can be played separately.
This truism has informed, guided, perverted, shaped, and in countless
ways impacted our national existence for centuries.
It’s likely your response to the question in the first paragraph was
`Of course not! Don’t be silly!’ But, what about the Catholic and
Protestant Communities among us? I know of at least one circle in
which the referents were `Hayeruh, gatogheegeneruh, yev
Poghokaganneruh’ (the Armenians, Catholics, and Protestants). That is,
to be Armenian, you had to be Armenian Apostolic. So maybe it’s not
enough to be `Christian’ to be Armenian, you have to be a certain KIND
of Christian. But is even this enough? Do you have to go to church
every week? Only at Easter & weddings? Does it count if a priest
doesn’t come and bless the bread, salt, and water (you wouldn’t
believe what it took to confirm my memory of this triplet) of your
home? Where’s the cut off?
Of course these exclusionary lines tend to diminish us in number,
though they may have had some utility in centuries past. Today, how
many people, given the level of enlightenment humanity has achieved,
take items of faith at face value? If someone has trouble stomaching
the concept of the nature of Christ as defined by the Armenian
Apostolic Church, does that exclude them from being Christian, ergo
Armenian? What about agnostics and atheists?
We’ve built an Armenian identity to which Christianity has been made
central. The flavor of what it was to be Armenian has been so heavily
overlain and intertwined with being Christian, that we have extreme
difficulty even conceiving of segregating the two.
Obviously, our Christianity has cost us dearly as a consequence of
Turkish governments, Ottoman and Republican, using religious antipathy
to arouse hatred against us, leading to massacres and the Genocide.
Yet that’s hardly an argument for giving up something we have
cherished for so long. But we’re faced with a far more pressing
national problem and an associated opportunity for some recuperation.
I would hope no one disagrees that for the purposes on national
survival, numbers matter. We have lost the
current-numerical-equivalent of millions of Armenians because of not
only the Genocide or its precedent massacres, but also due to
emigration (and ultimate assimilation into host country cultures, the
best example being Poland), and forced-conversion to Islam and its
attendant de-Armenianization (and subsequent Turkification,
Kurdification, and limbo-ification of the converts’ descendants).
With the ever so painfully slow process of Turkey’s cultural,
political, and ethical maturation, we have an opportunity to reclaim
some of our lost, or at least semi-lost, compatriots. These come in
five categories, to my mind, though some admittedly overlap: 1-
cryptoArmenians-Christian, 2-cryptoArmenians-Moslem, 3- Hamshentzees,
4- Kurdified Armenians, 5- Turkified Armenians.
The first group, Christian crypto-Armenians, is easiest to address. We
don’t have the religion obstacle I’ve presented above. Many of these
people have pretended to be Moslem, while maintaining Christian
traditions in the secrecy (not just privacy) of their homes. Or, they
have kept a very low profile. They have lived in our homeland. Over
the decades, significant jumbers leave Armenia and head to Turkey’s
`Armenian capital’, Constantinople. Or they head directly to Europe.
It’s my understanding that there’s a significant Sasoontzee
(non-immediate post-Genocide arrival obviously) community in Holland.
With just a little bit of an opening, they would rejoin our national
existence.
The Moslem crypto-Armenians are a different circumstance. Here, we
have at least two obstacles. One is what I implicitly described above –
our collective hesitancy to conceive of an Armenian as anything but a
Christian. The other is this group’s likely inability to easily fit in
with out predominantly Christian culture. Yet they are also shunned by
the `real’ Moslems, and marry largely only among themselves and
maintain their awareness of being Armenian, or at least not being
Turkish or Kurdish.
The Hamshentzees are a large population of Islamicized Armenians who
inhabit the Black Sea coast area, both in Turkish-occupied Armenia and
the Caucasus. In a very quick internet search, I found no population
numbers. But in the past, I’ve seen estimates in the multiple hundreds
of thousands. These compatriots have maintained their language (one of
the many Western Armenian sub-dialects that used to exist) and
awareness of being Armenian, or at least Hamshentzee as different from
their Turkish and other neighbors, for two centuries, this despite
their conversion away from Christianity. This group is similar in its
challenges to the second. However, there has been some movement over
the last few years in reestablishing our sundered connection.
Kurdified Armenians are a very interesting group. Given the still
somewhat tribal nature of Kurdish society, clan memory has persisted
and some openly remember that their ancestors were Armenians. Others
simply continue ancestral traditions which mark them as Armenian –
going to Armenian (Christian) shrines, etching a cross in dough before
baking it as bread, or carrying tribal names such as Hyedoonli
(Armenian home) or Mamgon (Mamigonian). These too are our long-lost
cousins. Should we not reintegrate? Here, besides the religious
factors, exists a nationality, identity obstacle. But if we can make
returning to their roots appealing, we all win.
Turkified Armenians, I would break down into two groups, those who by
geography or lineage can be identified as originally being Armenian,
and still living in our homeland and those who are just discovering
and/or revealing one or more Armenian ancestors, usually Genocide
survivors, who got adopted by Turkish families or married and became
`Turks’ but passed or are now passing on the knowledge of their true
nationality to their progeny. This pair of groups, like the Kurds,
would be the most difficult to reconnect with. They have their own
awareness as Turks now. And, to a large extent, unfortunately, being
Turkish and being Armenian are still antithetical propositions. There
is an ingrained disdain and hatred towards us coming from the Turkish
side that beggars imagination particularly since we’re not the ones
who have wronged them and there have has been precious little contact
between us for three generations now. Nevertheless, particularly the
group who’s `coming out’ with revelations of Armenian grandparents
deserves an extended hand, particularly in the interest of making
progress towards achievement of our national goals.
The Turkish and Kurdish examples above also prompt the issue/question
of what I like to call `historical justice’. The de-Armenianization of
their ancestors was/is a great loss to the Armenian nation. It was
coerced, not voluntary. How is this to be corrected? Obviously, you
can’t force someone to `become’ a different nationality. Yet the
injustice is perpetuated down the generations impacting the present
via the consequent distorted demography of our homeland.
Returning to the theme of reintegration and reconnection with these
forcibly alienated branches of our family, no doubt you’re wondering,
`How can people who have gone down such a different
socio-religio-historic path be integrated into our nation?’ Habits,
culture, language, self-identification, experience of Genocide, etc.
are all different. No doubt but that this will be an extremely
difficult and lengthy, multigenerational process closely intertwined
with Turkey’s evolution into a truly modern, democratic,
non-hate-based state.
But let me close with an example of the commonalities that can help us
bridge the chasms created among Armenians as a result of Turkish
racism. Since a huge area of difference, and the theme of this
article, is religious, take this example. I remember vividly, from a
lecture about Middle Eastern rugs I attended while in college, the
notion of the `sky hole’. This is something the ancient Mesopotamians
noticed when charting the course of the stars. They ended up with
concentric circles filling in their maps of the night sky… except,
there was a gap, a hole, in the middle. This prompted the notion of
the sky hole, the access way to the heavens and figures into the
design of rugs that depict a center. It also looks to me a lot like
the domes on churches and mosques. So here we have something that not
only is common to both Christianity and Islam, but predates both and
is native to our Middle Eastern forebears.
I have no doubt that many more such, and even more life-relevant,
commonalities exist, can become known and shared, and can pave the way
to restoring a huge chunk of our nation currently lost to us. But, we
have to get over ourselves and our `Armenian=Christian, period’
hang-up. Let’s do it.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
