Armenian love
Published on: Friday 27 Nov 2009, 18:48 by Fréderike Geerdink
Published in: monthly ‘Onze Wereld’, december 2009
The Armenian community in Turkey consists of about fifty thousand
souls. It’s not easy to keep such a small community alive. Especially
not for Armenians who live outside the strong Armenian community in
Istanbul. A special report.
Cemil and Gülestan have been married now for twenty one years. But
when you see them sitting together with their sons in their house in
the village of Sason in eastern Turkey, it looks more as if
grandfather is visiting: Cemil is 71, Gülestan 35. The problem was
that there were not too many prospective husbands for Gülestan, and
when widower Cemil asked Gülestan’s father for her hand, the deal was
quickly done. Gülestan: `My father thought Cemil would be a good
husband, but it was also important that he has the same roots as my
family. There are not many like that in our region.’
The same roots, by that she means: Cemil’s family was once, like
Gülestan’s, Christian and Armenian. Right after the mass killings of
Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, their ancestors
converted to Islam out of necessity and chose a Turkish name. They
integrated into Turkish and Islamic life, but never forgot their
former identity, and also never lost touch with families who were hit
by the same fate. They married among each other, and they still do.
Gülestan: `In Sason there are only three families like ours, and of
course that’s not enough to keep this community alive. We know
families like ours in all the surrounding villages, and there is a
whole network spread over a big area, so there is always a marriage
candidate available somewhere.’ Marrying a `pure Muslim’, as
Gülestan describes the Turks who were always Turk and Muslim, is out
of the question.
Gülestan has a medical condition in her hips, which made her father,
a widower, fear that the marriage market for his daughter was even
smaller. That’s why he took the first chance to marry his daughter
off. Gülestan: `I was okay with it, what with my childish mind.’ She
quickly adds: `I had my first child when I was eighteen. The first
few years of the marriage, I shared a bed with my mother-in-law and
Cemil didn’t touch me.’
Schools and churches, dance groups and choirs
The Armenian community in Turkey numbers about fifty thousand
souls. They mainly live in Istanbul, and small groups live in Ankara,
on the Black Sea coast and in the east and south east of the
country. Families like Cemil and Gülestan’s are not included in the
statistics about Armenians: they are officially Turks and Muslims
now. Many Armenians converted to Islam to protect themselves after the
mass killings. After the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923,
the main thing was to be not only Muslim, but also a Turk, and many
Armenians decided to henceforth live under a Turkish name.
The attitude towards Armenians didn’t change a lot in the following
decades. There were discriminating tax laws, and there were violent
riots against Greeks and Armenians in the nineteen fifties. Three
years ago, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who pleaded for
reconciliation between Turks and Armenians, and who made the Armenian
community more visible and self-confident than ever, was killed by a
young nationalist man.
The Armenian community in Turkey has turned inward upon itself because
of events over the past century. Most of them haven’t really dared to
show themselves as Armenians: being Armenian was more something to be
ashamed of than to be proud of. They hardly mingled with Islamic
Turks, and could, at least in Istanbul, easily do that because of laws
that allowed them to found their own schools and churches. Besides
schools and churches, in Istanbul there are Armenian hospitals, dance
groups, choirs, boarding schools, theatre groups, and so on. Big
groups of Armenian children in Istanbul hardly have any contact with
non-Armenians till they reach adolescence, and meet their first
Muslims only when they go to university or start working.
Especially for the young people there are a lot of organised
activities, and all these choirs, sports clubs, dance and theatre
groups function as a marriage market. Aris Nalci, deputy
editor-in-chief at the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos (of
which Hrant Dink was the founder and first editor-in- chief): `For
generations now Armenians have married Armenians, and especially for
older Armenians that is still very important. They are afraid that
marriages with non-Armenians will eventually lead to the disappearance
of the Armenian community in Turkey.’
But, he says, the youth is changing: `Sowly there are more and more
young people who have no problem with a mixed marriage. Within the
community, that is difficult, especially when it concerns an Armenian
girl. In a marriage situation the religion of the man is more often
followed, so an Armenian girl who marries a Muslim, is probably not
able to raise her children as Armenian and Christian. Such a girl is
considered in a way `lost’ to the Armenian community.’
Victims of feudal traditions
Ten years ago, Anni (34) moved with her family to Istanbul from the
province of Batman (the same province where Cemil and Gülestan live
in the village of Sason). Her ancestors never converted to Islam, but
could not really practice their religion and their Armenian traditions
because in Batman there are no Armenian churches, schools or
clubs. You might say the family found refuge in Istanbul: they were
victims of feudal traditions in the south east of Turkey, and twice
were unable to prevent their daughters being married off to Muslims,
against the will of both the daughters and their families. Because of
the marriages, the girls could not stay in touch with their Armenian
family any more. When a third daughter was also about to be forcefully
taken in marriage, the family packed their bags.
The family history is important to understand why Anni’s family, after
arriving in Istanbul and living there for a few years, couldn’t cope
with the secret marriage of one of their daughters, Cemine, to a
Muslim. They knew about the relationship between Cemine and this young
man, tried to convince her with arguments that marriage was not a good
idea, but suddenly she came to visit with a ring on her finger. Anni:
`It was like a slap in the face for my family, after everything that
had happened in Batman. In Istanbul we finally got the chance to be
openly Armenian. We could go to church, we were all learning Armenian,
trying to get integrated into the community here, to get to know other
Armenians. Including Cemine. She would never marry a Muslim, she was
very strict on that point.’
After the marriage, relations with Cemine, who was 26 when she
married, were broken off without mercy. Anni is devastated, but there
is no other way, she says. Maybe they would have permitted a marriage
if Cemine had brought her love home to be introduced, if the family
knew more about him, had a chance to get to know him. Anni wonders why
her sister chose to just ignore the deep, painful scars that not only
the family history, but also the history of Armenians in Turkey still
showed signs of. Love? Maybe, but doesn’t history mean anything then?
Anni continues her story, and it turns out that all the misery that
befell her family is directly connected to the mass killings on
Armenians in 1915. Batman is, like the whole of the southeast of
Turkey, in fact ruled by so called aÄ=9Fa’s, large landowners. They
control social life and politics, and their wish is law. Just as it
was in 1915. Anni’s ancestors survived the mass killings thanks to the
protection of their aÄ=9Fa.
The protection they received in those days means that they still owe
the descendants of the aÄ=9Fa, who still represent an important
family. Anni: `The aÄ=9Fa can stand up for `his’ Armenian
family if he wants to, but if he doesn’t want to, then as a family you
have no power at all. My father tried to protect his daughters from
marriages they didn’t want, but the families who married my sisters
were powerful and had good connections with the aÄ=9Fa. We had no
prestige, so our aÄ=9Fa didn’t stand up for us. My father would be
beaten up mercilessly if he resisted; he could do nothing, absolutely
nothing. Can you understand how painful the secret marriage of my
sister is? After all the pain and fear of generations, now that we can
finally be ourselves in Istanbul?’
Pure Muslim boys
In Sason, Gülestan and her adolescent sons openly talk about choosing
a partner – Cemil hardly interferes in the conversation, he is sitting
on a cushion on the floor chewing tobacco, smiles amiably and later
disappears to the tea house. `Our generation’, says one of the sons,
`is not ashamed any more of having Armenian blood, like generations
before us were. I am a Muslim, but not a real pure Muslim,, and I want
to marry a girl with the same background as me.’
By the way, it’s not the case that the children don’t have any
choice: `pure Muslims’ do want the young men and women with Armenian
roots as marriage partners. `Especially the women’, smiles
Gülestan. `Our families are known as dependable, honest, clean and
stable, and quite a few pure Muslim boys ask for the hand of our girls
in marriage. But such a request is usually turned down, unless the
girl really wants to marry the boy. Because, you know, even though we
have been Muslims for generations now and are at peace with that,
everybody knows that we have Armenian blood and were once
Christians,. When there is trouble in a marriage, your background is
used against you, that’s how it goes. `You are, when all is said and
done, an Armenian’. That way of looking down on our background, we
don’t want that anymore. That’s why it is best to keep the marriages
just between ourselves.’
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