Special for the Armenian Weekly

A poem written by Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the opposition Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was recently banned by the prosecutor’s office in the city of Mardin because it contained “terrorist propaganda.”

The Turkish government’s hostility to poems that challenge its official ideology is a long-held tradition in Turkey.

Police in Mardin’s northern Dargeçit district raided the local HDP headquarters and tore down a photograph of Demirtaş as well as a banner containing his poem “Bulaşıcı Cesaret” (Contagious Courage), he penned in Turkish. According to a report by the local Kurdish news agency Dihaber, the police who briefly arrested and interrogated HDP’s Dargeçit co-head Yasin Turan told him the poem was now banned.

The Turkish government’s hostility to poems that challenge its official ideology is a long-held tradition in Turkey.

Selahattin Demirtaş

The Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 and governed by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) until the first free national elections were held in 1950, as a result of which the Democrat Party (DP) came into power. Although both parties were rivals, they had a lot in common, such as their intolerance of dissent and free exchange of ideas.

When the issue of jailed or exiled poets in Turkey is discussed, one of the first that comes to one’s mind is Nazım Hikmet (born 1902, Salonika, Ottoman Empire [now Thessaloníki, Greece]—died 1963, Moscow), who was one of the most influential figures in 20^th century Turkish literature.

However, the history of Turkey is filled with many examples of banning poems, removing poetry books from the marketplace, and jailing poets. Here is a list of some of the poets from Turkey who were prosecuted and persecuted for their literary work.

Nazım Hikmet

In 1946, Nedim Veysel İlkin, the then director of the press, submitted a petition to the council of ministers which had an interesting demand: the banning of the poetry book titled Rüzgarlarım Konuşuyor (My Winds Speak) by the poet, actor, and novelist, Cahit Irgat (1915-1971).

The poem, after which the book is named, was about the destruction caused by WWII. It read, in part:

I was a prisoner of war
I loved the clouds, I loved freedom.
I loved human beings, I loved life.
One night, they emptied the clouds from my eyes.
I have eyes, I can see
The land is filled with dead bodies
Naked, half naked
The dead embrace one another
The dead – civilians, troops, the elderly
The dead smell abundantly
of hatred.
And I have a tongue, I express it:
Maybe they will take my jowl
And my eyes
Because I wanted to live and I wanted freedom.
Or maybe one morning
Right before the dawn
My statue will be erected
At the gallows.

“The collection Rüzgarlarım Konuşuyor occasioned Irgat’s arrest and imprisonment for three months in 1947,” writes Louis Mitler in his book Contemporary Turkish Writers: A Critical Bio-bibliography of Leading Writers in the Turkish Republican Period Up to 1980.  “Five years later, Ortalık [Environment] was taken off the market by judicial order and an investigation was opened concerning the ideological content of the work.”

Criticism of the military or wars has been unacceptable, even when made by members or students of the Turkish military. AbdulKadir Meriçboyu (1917-1985), who graduated from Kuleli Military High School in 1936, was a prolific poet and translator. Contrary to the state ideology in Turkey, he opposed provocation of wars. And for that, he led a difficult life filled with detentions, trials, and exile.

AbdulKadir Meriçboyu

According to the website of the Turkish Ministry of Culture, when Meriçboyu was a senior student at the Turkish Military Academy, he was charged with engaging in political activities, sentenced to 10 years in prison and was dismissed from the school in 1938. “Later, he worked for the newspaper Tan as a proofreader and entered the Faculty of Law; however, when his first poetry book Tebliğ (Notification, 1943) was confiscated, he could not finish his studies as he was exiled from İstanbul. He was sent to exile in Muğla, Balıkesir, Konya, Kırşehir, and Adana,” writes Mitler.

In his first poetry book, Tebliğ (Notification), he described the consequences of war in a realistic way. The main themes of his second book, Hoş Geldin Halil İbrahim (Welcome Halil İbrahim, 1959), were exile and the yearning for home during exile.

The life of the poet and novelist, Hasan İzzettin Dinamo, (1909-1989) was also filled with detention, torture, and exile.  The pressure on him started when he was sentenced to prison in 1935 for his poem “Tren” (The Train). According to researcher and journalist Sami Akbıyık, Dinamo described his prosecution as follows:

“When I was a student at the Sivas teaching school, they [the police], during my last detention, seized a long poem I wrote about the train’s first arriving in that city. As the poem was found to be against the train policy of Ismet Pasa, the Prime Minister of the time, I was sentenced to four years in jail by the heavy penal court of Ankara upon ‘an order from above.’ The only copy of the poem that was found by the police was given to Ismet Pasa. After that, my poem has disappeared.”

Hasan İzzettin Dinamo

The magazine Yeni Edebiyat (New Literature) was closed down because of his poem “Vatan Şarkısı” (The Song of the Homeland) and he was sentenced to a year in prison by a military court in 1942 because of the poem. He was subject to prosecution and persecution for long years to come.

“Because of his [Dinamo’s] several writings, he was sentenced to seven years in prison and was tortured. He then fled Turkey when he realized he could get killed,” according to Akbıyık.

Researcher Ayşe Ertuş writes that Dinamo “suffered greatly from loneliness and depression during his exile. The underlying reasons of his depression were political pressures, monetary problems, unfaithful friends and the society’s prejudiced view of him… His poems were about freedom, anti-fascism, poverty, longing, loneliness, peace, and his opposition to wars… Dinamo was able to publish the poems he wrote in 1940s only after 1960.”

However, many of his literary works got “lost” or were purged. “His thousands of poems and dozens of novels went missing either during police raids or his years of exile,” writes journalist Ömer Turan.

Playwright, novelist, and poet Rıfat Ilgaz (1911-1993) was also subject to prosecution and persecution in Turkey as he gained much success and popularity for his work.

Rıfat Ilgaz

“Ilgaz’s teaching career was interrupted in 1944 when his collection of poetry Sınıf [Class] was removed from circulation and he was sentenced to six months imprisonment by a military tribunal,” writes Louis Mitler. “Another collection of poetry, Yaşadıkça, [As One Lives] was removed from the marketplace in 1948, as was the anthology entitled Devam [Continuation] in 1953. Ilgaz was incarcerated for a total of five years, five months and twenty-five days for his publications.”

For a poet to get prosecuted in Turkey, he or she does not have to write about wars, killings, or poverty. Any poet—or author, for that matter—who writes about topics that state authorities could find “dangerous” or “threatening” could be targeted by the government or courts.

For example, Turkish poet and essayist, Salah Birsel, (1919-1999) was prosecuted at age 23 for his poem “Bulut Geçti” (The Cloud Has Passed), published in the magazine İnkılapçı Gençlik (Revolutionary Youth) in 1942. The poem read:

“Now you sit in your husband’s house
And your hair is not what it used to be like
After meal at night, you sew the dropped stitches of socks
Or maybe your hands smell of onions.

Your husband is a man with an ugly face
He sleeps with his mouth open
And your body deteriorates as you give birth to more children.”

Salah Birsel

The prosecutor thought that “the poem could shatter the existence of families and the foundation of establishing families as well as the women’s mental inclination to become mothers. It also openly suggests to women not to give birth to children so it is against the 41th article of the Press Law.”

The initial ruling of acquittal was turned down by the court of cassation because it was made without asking experts. After 13 trials, only one of the three experts thought the poem was innocent. He was eventually acquitted and avoided a possible prison sentence.

Arif Damar (1925-2010) was another leading poet who struggled hard to produce his literary work amid constant pressures. The scholar Hulusi Geçgel writes:

“His first poem ‘Edirne’de Akşam’ [Evening in Edirne] was published in the magazine Yeni İnsanlık [New Humanity] in 1940. He was arrested for ‘being a member of a secret organization’ after his poem ‘Dayanılmaz’ [Unendurable] was published in the magazine Yeryüzü [the Earth] on Nov. 15, 1951. He was jailed for two years and then released for lack of evidence. His poetry book Günden Güne [From Day to Day] was removed from circulation on Jan 22, 1957, and he was acquitted at the end of the trial… In 1969, he founded and ran the Yeryüzü Bookstore in Suadiye. He was detained on July 6, 1982 for ‘possessing banned publications’ and was sentenced to three months in prison.”

Arif Damar

“When the poetry book Günden Güne [From Day to Day] by Damar was confiscated in 1957, bans on other poetry books followed,” according to the journalist Semiha Şentürk. Three weeks later, the poetry book Yan Yana [Side by Side] by Melih Cevdet Anday was banned. Only 48 hours later, the poetry book Giderayak [At the Last Moment] by Şükran Kurdakul was banned. And 42 days later, Metin Eloğlu’s Sultan Palamut [Sultan Acorn] was included in the black list.”

Sometimes it took decades for the regime to notice the “danger” in certain literary work. Ercüment Behzat Lav, (1903 – 1984), a leading poet of new Turkish poetry, stage actor, and film actor, for example, was also exposed to state censorship. His 1931 poetry book S.O.S was banned and removed from circulation in 1965.

The Sept. 12, 1980 coup d’état was a period when human rights and free expression were completely crushed by the Turkish military.

According to a report by the Parliamentary Investigation Commission for the Coups and the Memorandums published in 2012, during that period, “Journalists were sentenced to 3,315 years and 6 months in prison; newspapers could not be published for 300 days and 39 tons of newspapers and magazines were destroyed.”

Among the many books that were banned was the poetry books by the poet Yaşar Miraç, whose work is mainly about political and social topics such as democracy, peace, exile, and homesickness. Miraç was acquitted at the end of the trials but his books remained banned for seven years.

Yaşar Miraç

Today, the government’s treatment of dissident literary figures and journalists is still the same. Arrests of authors, as well as censorship or bans on literary work critical of the status quo, is state policy for all seasons in Turkey.

Two villages, Hin Tagher (Taghler) and Mets Tagher (Taghler), in Artsakh’s Hadrut district, are listed in Discovering Paradise, Karabagh Guide as interesting sites featuring examples of Artsakh’s history and civil architecture. I have previously written about Mets Tagher.

Entering Hin Tagher village (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

The road to Mets Tagher, though shown on our map as a secondary road, was easily passable. So, my friend and I assumed the road to Hin Tagher would be easily passable as well, neglecting the fact that the village appeared to be near the peak of Mount Dizpayt.

It was mid-afternoon when we turned off the main road onto a dirt road ascending towards the village. The sign pointing towards Hin Tagher indicated 30 km, just under 20 miles, though it seemed much longer. To our right was the slope of Dizpayt, reaching up to 1.4-1.5 miles above sea level. The slope on the other side of the road often steeply descended into valleys, some of which seemed bottomless. On two or three occasions small roads, really paths, branched to the left with small signs pointing to other villages, which we did not have time to explore. As we neared a peak in the road, we noticed the dust cloud of a red SUV trailing behind us.

Women and children in front of Surb Amenaprkitch church, Hin Tagher (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

We stopped to refill our water bottles at a spring along the roadside when the SUV with Russian plates caught up to us. An Armenian couple from Russia was visiting the husband’s grandmother who lived in the village. During the previous year’s visit, the husband had hiked from the village to the Katarovank monastery on the summit of Mount Dizpayt. He met a man there whose beard hung down to his waist. The bearded man had previously climbed to the monastery, vowing not to return until someone else visited the site. I have no idea how long he was there or how he survived.

A monastery was initially established atop Mount Dizpayt in the 4^th century and subsequently destroyed. The current structure is dated 17^th century.

In the village we stopped at the Surb Amenaprkitch church (ca 1400) that had recently been renovated; I’m guessing by a villager who left Armenia, became financially successful, and renovated the church for his village. Opposite the church, two women were seated with their grandchildren. Since it appeared that many of the houses had not been occupied for some time, I asked the women what the population of Hin Tagher was. “Not many” was the answer, which is frequently the response to this question in many small, remote villages.

Surb Amenaprkitch church, Hin Tagher (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

When I asked if the village was purely Armenian before the war or if it was a mixed Armenian-Azerbaijani village, they replied that this was Armenian.  But, they added, during the war “we were waiting for the Turks from Jibrael to come and kill us all!” Jibrael was a major Azerbaijani stronghold in the valley below.

Road on Dizpayt Mountain to/from Hin Tagher (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

I surmise that given the economic conditions, most of the young men probably were away, having either left the village for work or were in the army, but I don’t know this for sure. Fortunately, the women’s fear was never realized. Later when mentioning this to a friend from Artsakh with connections to the military, he indicated that this would never have happened. Armenian forces had helicopters and troops stationed at strategic locations, prepared to interdict any enemy forces endangering these villages.

We spent less that an hour in the village. It was late in the afternoon and we wanted to get off the mountain before it got dark, which occurs quickly in the mountains. The two women offered us refreshments and even invited us to stay until the following morning, but we had to decline their hospitality. We were obliged to check out of our hotel in Shushi the next morning and return our rental car in Yerevan. Hopefully we’ll be able to revisit Hin Tagher.

GLENDALE, Calif.—Cambridge Professor of Linguistics Bert Vaux, in collaboration with the Salmast Heritage Association (SHA), conducted a week-long research project on the dialect of Salmast, also believed to be the language of Historic Armenia.

Dr. Bert Vaux

The SHA identified nine Salmasttsi speakers of the dialect, arranged for appropriate space and technological support for interviews, and recorded individual and group sessions. The research subjects were from Häftvan, Mähläm, Sarna, Payajuke, and Akhtkhan.

Dr. Vaux studied phonetic as well as written vocabulary words and sentences, and recorded the variations between regional definitions and pronunciations. The totality of the information they shared was qualified as “priceless,” as native speakers of the dialect are aging and not easily accessible. Most importantly, the week-long field work on the Salmast dialect showed that many of the words and definitions brought to light by the nine Salmasttsi interviewees, are not found in Muradyan’s dictionary, the foremost authority on Armenian dialects.

Vaux received his PhD from Harvard where he taught for nine years.  He is an internationally recognized expert in his field, is fluent in several languages including Armenian, has published several textbooks and numerous papers on such topics as Historical Linguistics, Phonology, Dialectology and related subjects.  He enjoys working with native speakers to document endangered languages, especially dialects of Armenian, Abkhaz, and English.

Vaux’ partial list of publications includes: The Phonology of Armenian; The Armenian Dialect of New Julfa, Isfahan; Eastern Armenian, A Textbook; A Textbook of Western Armenian; Hamshetsma: The Language of the Armenians of Hamshen; The Armenian Dialect of Khodorjur; Vowel Harmony in the Armenian Dialect of Marash; Syllabification in Armenian, Universal Grammar and the Lexicon; Armenian Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics and more.

The SHA said that it is grateful to Vaux for his interest in the ethno-linguistic history of the Armenian language, for planning to further his research with a larger pool of Salmasttsi subjects in the near future, and for his commitment to write a book on the dialect of a province of Historic Armenia: Salmast.

Vaux’ unedited personal report to the SHA can be read below.

***

Report on Fieldwork Trip to Glendale

Bert Vaux
April 17,  2017

Following an initial visit to meet with representatives from the Salmast Heritage Committee at UCLA, in November of 2015, I arranged with committee chairman Sarkis Barkhoudarian, to return for a week of fieldwork with speakers of the Salmast dialect in Glendale, in March 2017. My primary goals for this second trip were to (i) establish who is still able to speak the dialect, and (ii) which of the features from the traditional descriptions are still alive, (iii) determine which elicitation methods work best with each individual speaker, (iv) collect basic stories and conversations, and (v) elicit items in Hovhannes Muradyan’s manual for collection of Armenian dialect materials (Հայերենի բարբառագիտական ատլասի նյութերի հավաքման ծրագիր, Երեվան 1977) from as many speakers as possible.

Significant progress was made on each of these fronts, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Salmast Heritage Committee, and a number of Salmasttsis living in the Los Angeles area. Vartkes Zakarian, who lived in Häftvan until the age of 20, kindly provided Salmast forms for the first 559 of Muradyan’s 778 questions, as well as a translation of Tumanyan’s story Սուտասանը (‘The Liar’), and four hours of recorded conversation. Armineh Keshishian, whose mother came from Äkhtkhan) provided and translated three stories written by her uncle Harutiun Zaghikian. Artush Allahverdian and Mosik Shahoian, both from Häftvan, each answered some fifty questions from Muradyan’s manual. Finally, we were able to make video recordings of dialogues in Salmast dialect, between Sarkis Barkhoudarian (Häftvan), Ruben Nazarian (Mähläm), and Vartkes Zakarian. Other interviewees were also able to provide Salmast dialect words which were not in Muradyan’s dictionary.

Preliminary findings from this visit suggest that enough speakers of the dialect remain to produce a proper book-length study parallel to those written for Maragha (Acharyan 1935) and Khoy/Urmia (Asatryan 1962). Though all of the speakers whom I worked with had left the Salmast area at a relatively early age, I was encouraged to see that many still possess features of the traditional dialect studied by Acharyan 100 years ago, such as տալվ talv ‘husband’s sister’; ընչու ənch’u ‘until’; ծըղզալ tsəghzal ‘to laugh’; and խառնիս kharnis ‘wedding’. Care will have to be taken, though, to factor out elements of Teheran Armenian, which were common in most individuals’ speech, such as producing էթում եմ [etʰum em] for էթաս եմ [etʰas em] ‘I go’.

Because the villages of the Salmast region had largely lost their Armenian populations by 1962, few speakers remain who actually lived in them. It is therefore a matter of some urgency that we collect as much as possible on the dialect while some speakers of this older generation remain. I hope to be able to carry out several more extended visits over the coming years to do this work, in collaboration with the Salmast Heritage Committee.

South of Yerevan, along the main road to Goris is the large village of Areni in the marz (province) of Vayots Dzor. On the roadside just before Areni are vendors selling homemade wine in plastic soda bottles, others selling fruit, and on the left is the Areni Wine Factory.

Surb Astvatsatsin church, Areni (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Areni lies in the valley to the right. Above the village, against a backdrop of pastel colored cliffs is the small Surb Astvatsatsin church (1321).  A short dirt road leads to the church with a number of tombstones next to it. Next to the church was also a castle belonging to the Orbelians, although little remains of the castle. The Orbelian family included ruling princes of Syunik, military officials, and high-ranking clerics including Bishop Stepanos Orbelian (1250-1305). Stepanos Orbelian was consecrated the Metropolitan (chief bishop) of Syunik , or Sisakan, while in Cilician Armenia on Easter 1286. Upon returning to Syunik the monasteries of Noravank and Datev came under his jurisdiction. Stepanos Orbelian was also a noted historian, known mostly for his The History of the Province of Syunik.

Noravank, near Areni (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

While visiting Surb Astvatsatsin, my friend and I struck up a conversation with a villager who was repairing his motorcycle, which had just broken down. He suggested we visit Noravank, about a 15-minute drive from there. He had a relative who worked there. We politely declined, explaining that though Noravank was indeed spectacular site, we had other places to get to which we had not yet seen, and our time was short.  During our brief conversation he asked if we had seen the Surb Pokas church. Orbelian’s history mentions an ancient church in the region with miraculous curative waters. I wondered if Surb Pokas was it. I had previously looked for this church but had not found it; I was not even sure it really existed.

Entrance to Surb Pokas church (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

The villager offered to come with us and show us the church. We drove down the narrow valley, passing Noravank, which was situated high up to the left above the valley floor. After a short distance the road ended. We then scrambled up hill over rocks and along a brook to a small, crudely built chapel or church, most of which was dug into the side of the hill. Under its altar was a two-three foot square well filled with water.

Our guide indicated that the water produced miraculous cures. A few days ago he could not raise his right arm over his shoulder; but he then rubbed some of the water on his arm, and his arm was cured. He invited me to take a sip of the water with a cup placed nearby. Not wanting to offend him, I took a small sip. The water had an oily texture to it. On the wall of the church were a couple of photocopies of articles indicating that this indeed was the church described by Stepanos Orbelian.

Inside Surb Pokas church with our guide, the rectangular well is below the altar (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Oreblian’s history describes the church of Surb Karapet, and then another nearby church, Surb Pokas (Phocas). The quotation below is from the translation of Orbelian’s history by Robert Bedrosian, which is freely available online:

There was also on a rocky hill another church in the same valley, built in the name of the blessed patriarch Phocas. Inside the church a small stream of water flowed under the bema and, mixed with the water, was a curative oil. We have heard from ancient traditions that some of the relics of the blessed patriarch Phocas had been brought and deposited there, and thus the place was called Phocas. Astonishing marvels occurred there, for all sorts of incurable and untreatable human ailments—syphilis, leprosy, and wounds which had putrified over a long time, were cured if the sufferers went there in faith and washed in the water and anointed themselves with the oil. If it was a fatal [illness], then the sufferer would die at once. For this reason, the place was greatly renowned throughout the land.

Though I had searched for this church before, I had only a vague idea of where to look for it. A chance meeting with a stranger showed the way!

Saint Pokas was the Bishop of Sinop on the Black Sea coast. He was charitable to the poor, and miraculously cured the blind. Becoming a bishop, he was persecuted for his Christianity and was ordered to be killed by the local king, King Trayanos. Saint Pokas invited some of the king’s soldiers to his house for dinner, even though these soldiers had orders to kill him on sight. Then Pokas revealed that he was the person the soldiers were ordered to kill. The soldiers pleaded with Pokas to renounce Christianity, but Pokas could not. He was martyred in 117 AD. Somehow his relics ended up in Armenia.

From the Armenian Weekly 2017 Magazine Dedicated to the 102nd Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

My grandfather was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1924. I know very little about his parents, save that both were young refugees from Erzerum; his father, Der Yeghishe Doghramadjian, was a priest in the Armenian Apostolic Church, and his mother, born Baydzar Ohanessian, was haunted by memories of her older sister’s death at the hands of a Turkish officer.

Graffiti in Beirut, commemorating the Armenian Genocide (Photo: Hagop Toghramadjian)

Yeghishe and Baydzar spoke Turkish at home, but here on the shores of the Mediterranean, hundreds of miles from their mountainous birthplace, their son grew up with a fully Armenian education, mastering the poems, songs, speech, and prayers of his scattered people. He married Nazelie Ohanian, a girl he had met while on a trip to Aleppo, and together they raised Hovhannes, Kayane, Haroutioun, Arshag, Arisdages, and Avedis. They lived in a small apartment in the picturesque seaside town of Byblos, where the children attended school at Trchnots Pouyn (The Bird’s Nest), an institution founded to educate refugees of the Armenian Genocide. It was no small task to feed and educate all six children, but my grandfather managed it with grace, simultaneously keeping a store, working as a mechanic, and serving as the caretaker of the Armenian cathedral in Antelias. All seemed well; in the Doghramadjian household, Armenia had survived, born again and regenerated in the fertile soil of Lebanon.

I grew up in very different circumstances, spending my childhood in the comfortable suburbs of St. Paul, Minn. I knew that I was named after my grandfather, a kind, dignified old man whom I had met on the several occasions we visited him in Lebanon. I knew that he called me on our shared name day, allowing me to recite the only Armenian words I knew: “Yes kezi shad ge sirem” (“I love you very much”). I meant those words. But I was more concerned with baseball games on the radio and violin practice than with pondering the reasons why my grandfather lived in the Middle East, I lived in Minnesota, and neither of us lived in Armenia.

It was only with age that the reality of the situation began to sink in. Driven by the kidnappings and bombings of the 1975-90 Civil War, 4 of my grandfather’s 6 children had left Lebanon, and only 2 of his 11 grandchildren could speak Armenian. The Turks had failed to erase our family’s Armenian spirit—but how long would it survive with us scattered all over the world, thousands of miles from both Erzerum and Byblos, a world away from both our first and second homelands?

By the time I began high school, I had set out to learn the Armenian language, intent on preserving the same songs, poems, and prayers that were so dear to my grandfather. Armed with a battered dictionary, the Internet, and plenty of encouragement from my family, I made steady progress, and after my freshman year of college I solidified my skills by spending a month in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem. The following summer I was finally ready to make my own pilgrimage to Lebanon, to explore the neighborhoods that had sustained my family and thousands like us. Twenty-five years after the end of the war, I wanted to know: What was the state of the Armenian community in Lebanon? How was this “second homeland” faring?

Lebanon is a nation of minorities, made up of 18 officially recognized religious communities and a population roughly evenly balanced between Sunnis, Shias, and Christians. With no group strong enough to simply impose its will on the others, the nation is in what Lebanese American University (LAU) professor Dr. Imad Salamey calls “permanent formation mode.” While such a lack of resolution has its drawbacks, it also means Lebanese nationalism is “inviting, attractive to keep on engaging.” Without answers imposed from the top down, questions of Lebanese identity must be worked out as a collectivity; Salamey compares this process to students formulating their own curriculum. He views the country’s model as one of “deliberative nationalism,” which differs sharply from the authoritarian brand of national identity found throughout much of the Middle East.

The Sardarabad agoump, one of the many community centers run by the Lebanese ARF (Photo: Hagop Toghramadjian)

The impossibility of single-group domination also means the nation’s citizens are not oppressed politically. The government has traditionally allowed for communal freedoms and local decision-making, a fact many Lebanese proudly regard as a sign of their state’s distinctiveness. Especially after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1975, the majority of schools, hospitals, and charities have been administered under sectarian self-government. While some services—such as trash collection or maintenance of the airport—require centralized decision-making, local authorities are vested with a high degree of autonomy. In recent years, the state’s importance has been further reduced; most government-level decisions have moved out of the hands of parliament and the president, to be made by an extra-institutional committee of sectarian elites. What remains of the state is run by a council of ministers, especially after the presidency sat vacant from May 2014 to October 2016. Indeed, as Salamey points out only half-jokingly, the “state pretty much doesn’t need to exist.”[1] Such a condition certainly includes steep disadvantages, but its allowance for local autonomy leads Salamey to suspect that other countries in the region, especially Iraq and Syria, may adopt the Lebanese model.

Competition and autonomy is not the whole story, however. A key component of the Lebanese model is that sectarian groups’ independence coexists with a strong sense of Lebanese identity. Salamey points to the Armenians as an example of an extremely distinctive community for whom this is true—their “uniqueness does not [preclude them from] sharing Lebanese concerns.”

Armenian voices echo this sentiment: In the words of LAU’s Annie Lachinian-Magarian, “Armenians are part and parcel of the Lebanese political fabric.” Although their early 20^th century arrival makes them relative newcomers, and although they are the only Lebanese group to speak a language other than Arabic, Armenians generally feel accepted in Lebanon.

Both reasons for and evidence of this sense of acceptance are evident on a walk through Bourj Hammoud. The headquarters of mukhtars (official municipal leaders) are emblazoned with Armenian script, often announcing that the mukhtar himself is Armenian. Balconies fly Armenian and Lebanese flags side by side, and banners praising the Lebanese Army flutter on main Armenian shopping streets. As local priest Fr. Dajad Ashekian emphasizes, “We are Lebanese Armenians.”

Armenian and Lebanese flags alternating on a side street near Holy Savior Armenian Catholic Church (Photo: Hagop Toghramadjian)

Evidence of integration is present in wider Lebanese culture as well, from popular music to commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. In 2007, the famous singer Ghassan Rahbani composed and sang “We Live Here,” a song in Arabic and Armenian that proclaims in both languages: “We will live here, we will die here; together we will build you up. We love the homeland with our heart and soul—we are the Armenians and we are Lebanon.” In April 2015, the 100^th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide essentially “shut down the country,” in the words of LAU professor Dr. Elise Salem. Thousands of non-Armenians joined in the protest marches, closed their businesses, and put up posters in solidarity. These are just two examples of the Armenian community’s acceptance in Lebanese culture and society. It follows, according to Haigazian professor Dr. Arda Arsenian Ekmekji, that “we are proud to walk on the streets and say we are Armenian.”

This sense of belonging is compounded by the Armenian community’s political position. Ekmekji states, “Politically speaking you cannot be ignored as an Armenian. We do have key positions and people respect us.” Lebanese citizenship was only created in 1926, when the country already contained hundreds of thousands of Armenians; as Ekmekji puts it, “We became Lebanese at the same time as everyone else.”

This means Armenians enjoy official political privileges. According to Lebanon’s unique system of sectarian quotas, 5 to 6 of parliament’s 126 seats are reserved for Armenians, and 2 of the country’s 30 ministers are also usually Armenian. Moreover, the community is well established enough that it does not vote as a single block: there are three Armenian political parties with representation in parliament, one in the ruling March 8 Alliance and two in the opposition March 14 alliance. Armenians are also active outside of their own parties. Emile Lahoud, who served as president from 1998 to 2007, is half-Armenian and married to an Armenian, and Karim Pakradouni, the former leader of the prominent Kataeb Party, is also half-Armenian. In other words, rather than concentrating their strength in one place, Lebanese Armenians play a diversified and sophisticated role in the nation’s politics.

While government representation offers Armenians an important sense that they belong in Lebanon, the core of the community’s strength is its own religious, educational, and social institutions. Armenians operate 3 daily newspapers, two 24-hour radio stations, approximately 27 primary and secondary schools, 1 university, 29 churches (16 Orthodox, 7 Catholic, and 6 Protestant), and 2 patriarchates with global jurisdictions (Orthodox and Catholic). These institutions are relatively healthy: The churches have numerous young seminarians and, according to Fr. Ashekian, there are more Orthodox clergy now than at any point in Lebanese-Armenian history. Spring 2015 saw the graduation of over 300 students in a joint ceremony incorporating each of the Armenian high schools. All this means the community is undoubtedly the most vibrant in the global Diaspora.

A shopkeeper’s door on Marash Street, Bourj Hammoud (Photo: Hagop Toghramadjian)

As Ekmekji emphasizes, Lebanon—unlike other major hubs such as Russia, France, or even the United States—remains a net exporter of priests, journalists, and educators to Armenian churches, publications, and schools around the world.

Beyond institutions, measuring the community’s health is a less straightforward proposition. The population is difficult to estimate, both because many Armenians split their time between Lebanon and abroad and because no census has been conducted since 1932. Moreover, it is unclear how to count the small but significant number of Armenians who have fully or partially assimilated into Arabic-speaking society. “Numbers are scary in Lebanon,” Ekmekji  says, in large part because no community wishes to lose seats from its parliamentary quota. She places the Armenian population at 125,000 at least; LAU’s Annie Lachinian Magarian estimates it at 80,000 to 90,000; and Haigazian’s Dr. Antranig Dakessian guesses 60,000 to 90,000. None of these numbers include Syrian-Armenian refugees, tens of thousands of whom now live in Beirut but who are emigrating to the West at a fast rate. Regardless of statistics, the community has what Dakessian calls “very powerful exposure.” Unlike Armenians in Europe or North America, Lebanon’s Armenians are highly visible. Two Armenian cathedrals occupy extremely prominent spots in central Beirut, Armenian businesses abound across the city, Armenian newspapers are sold at most newsstands, and Armenian is regularly heard on the street in any of the capital’s Christian neighborhoods.

Based on the dozens of instances I heard Armenian spoken outside the core area of Bourj Hammoud, the sheer number of Armenian businesses scattered across the city, and the relative health of community institutions, I believe higher estimates of the population have credence. This premise is reinforced by the fact that at least 70,000 people marched in commemoration of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2015—the overwhelming majority were Armenian, and tens of thousands of Armenians did not march.

The Armenian story in Lebanon is not completely rosy, however. While many in the community’s prosperous intelligentsia express optimism, working-class inhabitants (concentrated in Bourj Hammoud) are generally less confident. The neighborhood has become less homogenously Armenian since the end of the Civil War, with many who are able opting to move to comfortable suburbs like Mezher or Dbayeh or even abroad. Meanwhile, the neighborhood has seen an influx of Kurds and South and East Asian migrant workers.

Armenians left in Bourj Hammoud are often filled with nostalgia for the past and uncertainty—verging on pessimism—towards the future. This was especially clear when I asked Bourj Hammoud residents to estimate the overall Armenian population in Lebanon. One resident, “George,”[2] claimed that the pre-war population had been 500,000, but that it is now closer to 30,000. (In reality, there were probably 250,000 to 300,000 Armenians in Lebanon before the onset of the Civil War in 1975—10 to 12% of the overall national population). His friend “Raffi” agreed, and they both mentioned that with closing factories and dwindling job opportunities there is little hope for improvement. In George’s words, “everything is over”; the government and commerce are controlled by the “mafia,” and there is nothing he can do to improve his situation.

Haigazian University is supported by the Armenian Evangelical community (Photo: Hagop Toghramadjian)

Bourj Hammoud’s youth are scarcely more optimistic. Young adults at the Azilian agoump offer their own low population estimates, and while none of them can remember life before the war, they insist it was much better than the current situation.

Residents’ pessimistic views of community health influence how they perceive Lebanese identity. Young adults at the agoump indicate that they feel Armenian but not Lebanese; when asked why the Lebanese flag is displayed in their meeting room they say it is only there because “it has to be.” A local shopkeeper, “Harout,” goes even further—he says that ever since the Civil War he has not liked living among Arabs, and as a result he actively encourages his children to emigrate. “You can live as an Armenian in Lebanon,” he says, “but not as a man. Maybe in France or America you can live as both.” While these views are not representative of most Lebanese Armenians or even the bulk of Bourj Hammoud residents, they point to internal diversity in Armenian perceptions of Lebanese identity.

This internal diversity is a vital topic when analyzing the Armenian experience in Lebanon. According to Ekmekji, the community can be divided into three categories: The first lives and works in almost exclusively Armenian circles, without much engagement with the broader Lebanese society. This group is a minority, and while “Harout” and the youth at the agoump exemplify its experience, most of its members are elderly. The second and largest group is very well integrated, and moves comfortably through Lebanese society while still firmly maintaining its Armenian heritage. Its members can be found throughout Lebanon, in Bourj Hammoud, and especially in the surrounding suburbs. It is from this class that Armenians active in Lebanese government, arts, and media are generally drawn. A third group, again in the minority, is mostly or completely assimilated into Lebanese culture, with limited ties to its Armenian heritage save perhaps sporadic church attendance.

Multiple reasons lead to loss of Armenian identity. Ekmekji emphasizes that “being Armenian is a lot of work,” and that some families are increasingly reluctant to make time for learning and expressing their heritage. Additionally, rates of intermarriage are increasing—it is no longer uncommon for Armenians to marry individuals from other Lebanese Christian groups.

Beyond fear of assimilation and the aforementioned economic challenges, Lebanese Armenians experience anxiety about their changing global role and the spillover effect of the catastrophic war in Syria. Before the exodus of Armenians from the Middle East in the 1960s to 1980s and the independence of Armenia in 1991, Lebanon viewed itself as the center of the Armenian world. Philanthropic money flowed in from the global diaspora, “financing the survival process,” in the words of Dakessian. This money has since been redirected to Armenia, and the regional leadership Lebanese Armenians once exercised over thriving communities in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine has become less meaningful as a result of heavy emigration.

The Syrian crisis has further exacerbated Lebanese Armenians’ sense of isolation. As Ekmekji puts it, “The events have [created] a big question mark.” More than ever, Armenians must wonder, “Is Lebanon a permanent place or a stop on the way to something else?” In the back of everyone’s mind is the “fear of being forced out—we always think, will we one day have 24 hours to pack and go?” This scenario has befallen thousands of Armenians in Syria, many of whom have fled to Lebanon; their presence is a stark reminder of the tenuousness of security in the region. In order to prepare for possible future unrest, Ekmekji estimates that 80 percent of Lebanese Armenians have applied for passports from the Republic of Armenia, a step that facilitates travel and opens the door to repatriation.

LAU’s Vatche Papazian relates that there has been a small but noticeable increase in the emigration of native-born Lebanese Armenians since the start of the Syrian conflict; if the status quo continues, this flow is unlikely to pick up, but additional deteriorations in real and perceived security could lead to large-scale migration and a decline in community numbers.

The question of whether Armenians have a special proclivity for migration is an interesting one. On the one hand, it is “definitely much easier for an Armenian to pack and leave than a Maronite on the land his great-grandfather farmed,” Ekmekji says. Because Armenians are aware that Lebanon is not their original homeland, emigration is not an unprecedented or radical proposition. However, Salem rebuts the idea that Christians are more likely to emigrate than Muslims. While this was once true, today “the Lebanese all know how to leave.” Especially as economic inequality between the sects has become less and less noticeable, the financial ability to move to the West has become more evenly spread between all Lebanese citizens.

If the Armenians are to remain in Lebanon, the continued viability of the national political system is indispensable. As discussed above, this system offers a number of advantages, allowing for group autonomy while encouraging a sense of shared national identity. However, many Lebanese are severely disillusioned with their political leaders. There is near-universal consensus that party heads (many of whom are holdovers from the Civil War or inherited their positions through family connections) are corrupt and self-interested. Ekmekji and Salem both explain that the perceived problem is not Lebanese laws or political organization; instead, discontent is generally directed toward specific individuals.

Armenian patriotic signs on a street in Bourj Hammoud (Photo: Hagop Toghramadjian)

A common view of leaders is that they operate based on the tacit agreement, “I’ll let you have your corrupt man if you let me have mine.” There is palpable public anger against this situation. During my time in Beirut I observed multiple anti-corruption protests and heard dozens of complaints in everyday conversations. One man memorably aired his grievances while sitting next to me on a taxi ride from Bourj Hammoud to Mar Mikhayel. He was traveling to resolve a problem at the electricity ministry, and immediately launched into a colorful and enraged tirade against the government. “Damn the government,” he said in Arabic to the driver. “We love our country but the government is made up of animals. I’m Lebanese! Armenian but Lebanese! Damn the whole government from top to bottom. I’m more Lebanese than any of them.”

A second problem facing the Lebanese political system is that of gridlock and paralysis. The nation has not had parliamentary elections since 2009, and none are scheduled until later this year. Moreover, the parties spent more than two years without agreeing on a president, before Michel Aoun finally stepped into the position in November 2016. According to Salamey, the frozen nature of national politics is caused by fear—no group wishes to antagonize any of the others, especially in light of the deepening Sunni-Shia divide provoked by the Syrian War.

Ekmekji characterizes the situation bluntly: “Lebanon is not a true democracy, because every time we make a decision we must do it by consensus. It’s like a children’s game where everyone wins.” Gridlock significantly contributes to the discontent felt by Lebanese citizens about their political system. According to Dakessian, “Whether we are engaged in Lebanon or not, we can’t make a difference.” While this is certainly a hyperbolic statement, popular participation in the democratic process is undoubtedly muted by a sense that change is unattainable.

Given Lebanon’s uncertain political future, there is no guarantee that the nation’s Armenian community will remain viable in the long term. But there are also plenty of reasons for hope. Lebanon’s Armenians have already proved remarkably resilient, surviving years of war and instability while steadfastly maintaining their community institutions. They are generally well integrated and proud of their Lebanese identity, which many feel allows them to be “fully Armenian” and “fully Lebanese” at the same time. While some in the community are less content, the reigning mood is one of attachment to Lebanon and desire to remain in the country.

Especially in light of the Syrian War and the devastation it has wrought on the community in Aleppo, Lebanon is more important than ever for the global Armenian Diaspora. It is truly a “second homeland” for the Armenian people, a place where we were reborn from the ashes of the genocide and rebuilt a corner of Western Armenia. This corner continues to survive—and even thrive—today, and Armenians from around the world should celebrate its strength and do what we can to help secure its future.

Notes

[1] Salamey calls Lebanon a “Lockean state,” comparing its governmental structure to the United States under the Articles of Confederation.

[2] Names have been changed for confidentiality.

From the Armenian Weekly 2017 Magazine Dedicated to the 102nd Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

To his students in the Aintab orphanage, Sarkis Balabanian (Balaban Hoja) (1882-1963) was not simply a mathematics teacher, but a role model who risked his life to save them from Turkish attacks.

I honor Balaban Hoja for having saved these orphans in Aintab. My father was among them.

Balaban Hoja’s heroism and leadership left a deep impression on my father, whose description of events always led me to visualize them vividly, as if watching a film.

Armenian refugees in relief tents Aintab, 1915 (Photo: American Committee for Relief in the Near East)

I can still hear his description of Balaban Hoja’s hidden gun, and his firm reassurance to the orphans not to be afraid.

In his memoirs, my father wrote:

“…the American organization called Near East Relief opened an orphanage in Aintab. Hundreds of orphans like us would assemble in front of the building; every day, a certain number of them were selected, taken inside, registered, given bath, and dressed. Finally, one day, they took in my younger brother Boghos. When they asked him, ‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’ he gave our names. Thus, Hnazant and I also became charges at the orphanage. They placed Boghos and me in the boys’ division, Hnazant in the girls’. They gave us special uniforms, which had numbers on the shirtsleeves. Boghos had 101 and I had 102. We were very proud of those numbers, which we wore like military insignia.

“Since I could read a little bit, they put me in a higher grade, while they put Boghos in kindergarten. We had regular classes every day, including music and gym.

This continued until the beginning of 1920 when the French, who had replaced the British in Aintab, started to pull out. The Turks were happy, of course, but the Armenians were fearful. The Armenian organizations began maintaining vigil at the orphanage in order to prevent the Turks from inciting massacres anew. Every night, we used to see armed Armenian young men circling the building and ensuring our safety.

“One morning in April 1920, we were in math class. Our teacher, Balaban hoja, blind in one eye, was very strict. Suddenly hearing gunfire, he ran out of the classroom, then came in and, to our surprise, he took a ten-millimeter gun out of his pocket.

“‘Boys, don’t be afraid,’ he ordered, and went down to the courtyard. He yelled from there, ‘Silah bashena,’ which in Turkish, means ‘call to arms.’

“The fighting started between the Armenians and the Turks.

“There had already been tension between the two groups. There were orphans who had been brought from Aleppo and settled in the Turkish quarters. The Armenian governing body brought them to our orphanage for their safety. The French army had camped behind the American College in the Armenian district, but did not get involved in the fighting. The Turkish attacks continued practically until Autumn of that year. Immediately opposite the orphanage in the Turkish quarter was a mosque from which the Turks constantly fired upon us. Fortunately, behind our orphanage building, there was a large cave where we used to go and take refuge in times of danger. The older boys had opened a passageway from the cave to the orphanage, so we could safely reach our bedrooms. Sandbags protected the bedroom windows.”¹

Sarkis Balabanian was born in Aintab on May 15, 1882, in a quarter of the city where half the residents were Armenian. He had five sisters and four brothers who died young. At age four, young Sarkis lost his right eye in an accident. His mother pledged to let his hair grow until he was 10, and to then cut his hair at Saint Kevork Church, trusting his fate to a saint. But neighborhood children made fun of him, and at age seven Sarkis entered a barber’s shop and had his hair cut; his mother was unhappy. At age nine, he lost his father and had to leave the Evangelical School where he was enrolled to start working, to help support his family. He sold cigarettes. Turkish lads did not leave Armenian boys alone, though, and he had to learn the street culture well—attacking the enemy before being attacked.

In his memoirs,² written in 1960 and published after his death, Sarkis Balabanian described several instances of helping others. In summer 1916, Evangelical and Catholic Armenians were  deported from Turkey; the Apostolics had already been sent into the depths of the deserts. He was asked to work at the American orphanage, where more than 150 Armenian orphans were being cared for. He purchased groceries for the orphanage, but was also a teacher and a father to the orphaned children.

On a cold day in February 1916, while shopping for the orphanage, he met a woman in the bakery who was crying for a little boy being forced to change his religion:

“For me, this widow’s request was not a surprise since many, like her, had asked for his help to solve difficult situations such as kidnapping, imprisonment, forced Islamization.”³

The widow, from Sivas, had been able to escape the deportations and secure a job at the house of a wealthy Chechen in Aintab, thus saving her life. Yet, she had come not for herself, but for an Armenian child. In tears, she said her boss had purchased this child from Aintab’s Tel Bashar village a week ago and intended to circumcise the boy and convert him to Islam. The child had resisted, and her boss had punished him the old way, keeping him hungry for two days. Nevertheless, the child continued his stubborn resistance. The widow begged Balabanian to save the boy.

“The widow came out of the bakery. I followed her to learn the location of the little hero. We walked long until we reached Kurd Tepe, on the northern slope of which was the house. Before we separated, we agreed on a way to kidnap the boy.

“Late on that snowy night, when everyone [was] indoors, I, on a donkey hurried toward the Chechen’s criminal home, where an Armenian boy looked out for me.

“I saw the boy from a distance. As per our agreement, he was outside the door. The poor child, warmed his frozen hands with his breath. I prodded the donkey to move fast. I reached the boy. Carefully, I checked around me; there was no one in sight. Only the wind whistled and sprinkled snow on my face.

“Without losing time, I approached the little boy and in Armenian I said, I had come after him to save him. The boy was happy. I put him in the pocket of the saddle and whipped my donkey. And when I felt safe that we were not [being] followed, the boy answered me that his name was Khntir [Problem], his mother’s, Haiganoush, father’s Ardashes, and that he is from Kharpert.

“We reached the college door, frozen from the cold. I took the child out of the pocket and entered the room of the doorman. He was barely five. He had black eyes, long eyelashes, red cheeks. The face of a pretty Armenian. Holding him, I went to the orphanage caretaker’s room, Mrs. Ovsanna Kupelian, where I told her the situation.”⁴

The orphanage caretaker refused to accept the child and advised Balabanian to care for his family instead, since he could be punished for this act. Instead of repeating his request to, Balabanian held the child up and went to Mr. Merryl, the director.

This fine man grabbed the child and invited Balabanian to take a seat. When Balabanian told the boy’s story, he saw tears in Mr. Merryl’s eyes. Soon after, Mrs. Meryl asked her husband if he did not wish to adopt an angel like the little boy; he agreed and Mrs. Merryl handed the child over to the servant to be washed and fed.

Sarkis Balabanian (Balaban Hoja) (1882-1963)

Balabanian and the Merryls then prayed to God, asking Him to put an end to the hardships of this people.

Balabanian in his memoirs diverts from the story here to tell how, eight months later, he met a young woman, after being deported. There, in a large factory, as a supervisor of refugees, he noticed a young woman in a corner of the yard who cried and prayed every day. One day, he approached her and asked why she was crying. She said:

“Brother, my pain has no limit. Before I left Kharpert, my husband was taken away, then I was deported with two children. My infant died on the road. The other, a boy, was grabbed from me near Aintab’s Tlbashar village and to date I hear his shouts, ‘Mama, mama, they are taking me…save me mama,’ she said and cried again.”⁵

Her words broke Balabanian’s heart. When the young woman calmed down and looked at him, Balabanian thought he had seen her eyes somewhere before. He asked what her boy’s name was. She replied, “Khntir, he was my older son. I had begged God to grant me a son and promised to raise him religiously, a good Christian.” Balabanian then asked if her son’s eyes resembled hers. She replied yes, and cried again. He asked her name; when he heard Haiganoush and that her late husband’s name was Ardashes, he was sure that Khntir was her son. He promised to help her, and reassured her that Khntir was alive and in good hands. Balabanian then wrote to Mrs. Merryl with the story. The fine woman, Mrs. Merryl, sent Khntir to Aleppo to be reunited with his mother.

In 1933, while a teacher at the Oosoomnasirats School in Aleppo, Balabanian was busy with graduation ceremonies when a young man approached him, took off his hat, and hugged him, saying, “Khoja, did you forget Khntir?” As Balabanian was accustomed to solving problems in math class, he asked with amazement what problem (“khntir”) the boy was referring to. Khntir then explained who he was. Balabanian remembered and hugged him.

Khntir had arrived from America, looking for an Armenian bride. They found him an Armenian girl from Kharpert, held the wedding, and set them off to America.

“Khntir revenged the Turks, by forming an Armenian family,” Balabanian wrote.

Balabanian’s memoirs are full of similar moving stories of saving lives.

He volunteered in the British Army and was sent to Aintab, wearing a Turkish soldier’s uniform, with a firearm and 150 rounds of ammunition, presenting himself as a Turk along the way. Balabanian described the events at the orphanage on April 1, which my father also referred to in his memoirs:

“It was April the first. After prayer, we entered class. Suddenly the sound of shellings disturbed our peace. I sent the students immediately to the basement and since I was that day’s guard, ran to hold my position. The groups of youth were in their positions. Here, they fire from the opposite building on the orphanage, leaving women and children panicky in the yard. And the people, under our guard, jam in the buildings of the Americans.”⁶

Balabanian and the youth held their positions waiting for the sign to counter-attack. The sign came and then silence. The Turkish side, defeated, counts its victims.

In the following days, the city looked like a little fort with the Armenians—7 to 70 years old, men and women—fulfilling their responsibilities.

“For fifteen days, my eyes have not seen sleep. I have not taken off my shoes, have not seen my family and children. The principal of the orphanage, feeling sorry for me, demanded that I take breaks to rest.

“Mr. Boyd, the American principal of the orphanage and director of the red cross, who for a while opposed my activities of making secret military enforcements in the orphanage, now, seeing my and my brave people’s heroic struggle, came and asked for forgiveness, for having hurt me unjustly.

“After that we became friends. You can imagine that he even gave me a ‘Browning.’

“On the fifth day of the fighting, the Turks suggested a cease-fire. We accepted. Taking advantage, we placed bags full of sand against the upper windows of the orphanage.”

An Armenian messenger, who had never held arms, on seeing three Turkish watchers had fired on them, breaking the ceasefire at a time when a delegation was trying to draw up the details.

As a result, an organized Turkish army unit then approached the orphanage. The British directors forbid the Armenians from using arms. The hospital, orphanage, and the Armenian quarters risked turning into a blood bath.

“Therefore, taking the whole responsibility in my hands, I ordered the boys to fire. The Turkish army approaching nonchalantly, became alarmed by our unexpected and violent attacks. The Turks had numerous victims. Those who survived, fled. I do not know the number of their victims, I only know that at the end of the fight, they did not dare approach our positions.

“And I, while encouraging my fighters, suddenly, heard a loud voice that called me. I turned around. It was Dr. Shephard, who had forbidden me to fire, who cried:

– Hoja, hoja, do you think you can stop?

– Doctor, why shall I stop; I shall fire and fire again…

“Now, it was Dr. Shephard who said,

– Bravo, Hoja, bravo, fire, those Turks are liars. The windows of my bedroom were broken from their firings. From here on, I am with you, against them; to death, I will fight by your side.”

Balabanian proceeds to describe other courageous deeds that marked his lifetime of dedication to the Armenian people.

May Balaban Hoja, mathematics teacher, be kindly remembered for having saved Armenian orphans during and after the Armenian Genocide.

Notes

¹ Jamgotchian, H. My Legacy, Yerevan: Dall (A. Jamgochian, Tr.), 2004.

² Balabanian, S. Gyankis Dak oo Bagh Orereh [The Hot and Cold Days of my Life] (in Armenian), Aleppo:Shark (T. Toranian, Ed.), 1983.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Ibid.

Note from the author: I thank my friends, Cesar Chekijian (for introducing me to the story of Balaban Hoja after reading my father’s memoirs, and for sharing references with me) and Haroutune Terjanian (for finding a student of Sarkis Balabanian’s, who shared his memoirs).

References

Burjlian. (1975). Memories of Balaban Khoja. In, Nor Aintab, Vol. XVI, No. 3, pp. 43-44.

Toranian, T. (1994). Sarkis Balabanian (1882-1963). Badmootyoon Antabi Hayots [History of Armenian Aintab], Volume III, E. Babayan (Ed.), pp 945-952.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

Manchester United and Henrikh Mkhitaryan were crowned Europa League Champions at the Friends Arena in Stockholm on May 24. With that title, United earn a berth in next season’s Champion’s League. Paul Pogba’s deflected first half effort set United on the road to victory and Henrikh Mkhitaryan made the outcome safe with an instinctive and opportunistic strike just after the break.

Manchester United and Henrikh Mkhitaryan were crowned Europa League Champions at the Friends Arena in Stockholm on May 24.

The match was a typical Mourinho final. In politics they say you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. There was nothing poetic about this final, a fact that was not lost on the United Manager in his post-match comments.

“There are lots of poets in football, but poets, they don’t win many titles. We knew where they were better than us. We knew where we were better than them. We tried to kill their good qualities, we tried to explore their weaknesses.”

That is typical of a manager who has made a career of stopping his opponents from doing what they are good at, as opposed to focusing on what his own team can produce. Although, not very poetic, and not very “United-like,” it is hard to argue with tonight’s result and with the manager’s overall record.

The Special One maintains his 100% winning record against Ajax, winning all seven matches against the Dutch side. Mourinho becomes the first manager to win both the UEFA Cup/Europa League and Champions League on two occasions. He has won all four of his European finals as a manager, winning the 2003 UEFA Cup and 2004 Champions League with Porto, as well as the 2010 Champions League with Inter Milan to add to this latest triumph with United. In his first season as United manager, he has won two major trophies (EFL Cup and Europa League) along with the Community Shield and now that Champion’s League berth that is so coveted in the modern game.

Mourinho described this season as his most difficult as a manager, but his team has come through with success, arguably ahead of schedule. The team’s achievements and results can now provide a platform for Manchester United and Mourinho to attract the world’s finest footballers in the transfer market, to continue building in an attempt to reclaim the success and dominance of the Alex Ferguson era.

United’s tactics were first and foremost to stifle any attacking threat posed by the young and exciting Ajax team, a team that became the youngest to start a major European final with an average age of just under 23 years. Manchester United’s Ander Herrera and Marouane Fellaini brought a physicality and intensity to midfield that Ajax were unable to match. Although the Dutch side enjoyed 69% possession in the match and managed 17 shots at goal, a mere three hit the target. A lack of width and a tendency to overplay the ball resulted in congested and inept passages of play in the attacking third for Ajax and that played right into United’s hands. Once the lead was secured through Pogba, Mourinho “parked the bus” on the way to a comfortable victory. At 1-0 to the good, United always looked safe, but Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s delightful finish from a second half corner put the result beyond doubt.

The magisterial Armenian talisman has enjoyed unbelievable success in recent European matches. Five of his last six United goals have come in this Europa League competition, with most of them scored away from Old Trafford. That scoring run sets Mkhitaryan apart in the annals of United history, being the only player to score in five away European fixtures in a single campaign. The rich vein of form Mkhitaryan enjoyed did not go unnoticed by his team mates, who suggested he would get on the scoresheet in the final in the lead up to the big match.

In a post-match interview, with the tricolor draped over his shoulders, Mkhitaryan expressed his delight, but as always remained humble by giving credit to the players around him. “Every day I was dreaming to score in the final, and I did thanks to my team mates, I am very happy today. I am very excited.”

This terrific European run, on which United’s Champion’s League fate hinged, proved to be a gamble that paid dividends for Mourinho. Paul Pogba began to repay his enormous transfer fee with the opening goal in the final, and with his strike, Mkhitaryan showcased what he is all about.

When the ball broke to him from Chris Smalling’s header, with his back to goal Mkhitaryan showed great inventiveness and imagination to flick the ball goal wards with the outside of his boot. As the ball hit the net, the normally understated Mkhitaryan spun away in delight, joy etched across his face and arms outstretched. As if people didn’t know already, that goal made an emphatic statement.

There was an Armo in the building, the great Henrikh Mkhitaryan!

Reassessing Strategic Priorities and Examining Homenetmen’s Role on the Brink of the Next Centenary

Often times we talk about the fact that we need a more conscious society, one that better values the importance of pan-Armenian priorities. If we ask ourselves how can we strengthen as a nation and a state, alongside a more demanding stance towards national priorities, we ought to mold and prepare more committed Armenian people. For a successful outcome of such a goal, we need several premises, most important of which include an adjustment in the implementation of national strategic plans, leadership succession planning and reinvigoration of the ranks and members of our institutions and organizations. And that requires a change in our collective thinking and action plans; it also requires a qualitative change in the educational standards of our youth, particularly those in the 6-18 age bracket.

Homenetmen Scouts at the Armenian Embassy in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Scout Tufankjian)

Those of us, who live in the diaspora and belong to the baby boomer generation and generation X, should feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to be instructed by the finest Armenian educators and to have reaped the benefits of their mind and spirit. If our parents and schools were responsible for instilling within us the values of the Armenian language and identity, then it is the national educators within the triad of the party/association/organization and the church, who drove us to rise above our individual selves and realize the advantage of collective power, to embody the feeling of being a proud Armenian, and to strengthen the image of a committed Armenian.

Today’s Armenian reality differs. Challenges present themselves as more ominous and pressing, and today’s youth, millennials and generation Y, do not have the same fortune and opportunity of getting their education by such quality mentors as in the past. Therefore, in order for Armenian nation priorities to have a productive outcome, modern challenges require a reformed pan-Armenian strategy, at the very least in the organizational and educational spheres, within which Homenetmen also operates.

Amenian national goals and activity spheres

Our national imperative is first and foremost the strengthening of the Republic of Armenia, and, second, the strengthening of the diaspora. Our pan-national goals include the strengthening of Armenia and Artsakh, the pursuit of justice for the Armenian Cause, and the preservation of our national identity worldwide. Activities in pursuit of these goals fall within different spheres, including the religious, political-diplomatic-public relations, economic, organizational, and educational. The political-diplomatic sphere has been entrusted to the Armenian government, political parties, and the Armenian National Committee (ANC). Economic activities are the responsibilities of many, be it organizations and/or individuals. The organizational field is comprised of religious-spiritual, academic-educational, youth-oriented, athletic, cultural, public assistance, and charitable realms that complement each other. Different organizations and associations, as well as individuals, all have their scope of work.

The different complementary structures of the organizational sphere

Today, our national imperative is to create an improved political and social reality. The state, church, political parties, different organizations and institutions as well as individuals, all have their scope of work in the pursuit of that goal. The reality is that within the present imperative the importance and scope of scholastic and educational sphere is not fully appreciated and the potential of extracurricular education offered outside of Armenian schools has not yet been appraised.

For the above reasons and because of such social and political imperatives, an organization such as Homenetmen with the “athletic” label is deemed of secondary national importance. However, the truth is that Homenetmen does not serve any autonomous goals, rather it is driven by the same imperatives as that of the Armenian nation, namely the strengthening of the Armenian nation. Its philosophy is based on the same pan Armenian principles, and its activity scope falls under the organizational-educational sphere. Homenetmen is aware of its educational responsibilities and is highly aware of the importance of the academic-educational sphere. It is to be stressed that within the realm of academia-education, the role and effect of Armenian schools is unparalleled, yet the importance of Armenian education outside of the Armenian school through non scholastic extracurricular activities has yet to receive special emphasis and herein lies the role of Homenetmen.

What is then the real benefit of Homenetmen within the context of pan-Armenian objectives and from the perspective of community interests?

Let us start by clarifying what Homenetmen does in the homeland, the Republic of Armenia. As a nation, we face a number of points of contention, one of which is the diaspora-Armenia debate, namely to prioritize strengthening the Republic of Armenia or the diaspora? In this aspect, Homenetmen remains above this contention. As an organization, Homenetmen focuses on a pan-Armenian strategy. The organization’s activities pertaining to Armenia are not limited to visits to the homeland or financial contributions. As a structure, Homenetmen has had a presence in Armenia for 25 years with a membership comprised exclusively of young citizens of Armenia. Its mission in the Republic of Armenia is to create model citizens who believe in social justice and contribute to the country’s development.

Over the years, several thousands of young members have been part of the ranks of Homenetmen-HASK (National Scout Movement of Armenia) and endorsed the scouting and Homenetmen slogan and motto. By doing so, Homenetmen has been contributing to the preparation of a new generation of Armenians inhabiting Armenia, who are pure in character, are confident and engaged citizens, and who believe in the principles of social justice and elevating others alongside them. Unlike others, Homenetmen’s activities in Armenia are not limited to mere expressions or occasional homeland visits, rather as citizens, through an everyday presence in the country and the process of continuance. In this context, Homenetmen also remains above the second point of contention related to the diaspora-Armenia debate, which is that living in the diaspora is only temporary, that it is not enough just to be a good Armenian, rather, repatriation and standing in solidarity with the homeland is the true objective. Well, Homenetmen has already repatriated, protects its homeland, and believes in the unity of our nation. This significant fact has not been valued enough or exercised in our national strategy.

The scope of Homenetmen’s activities

Alongside its work in Armenia, Homenetmen also has a long history of 99 years of action and activity in the diaspora. Today, while Homenetmen serves a respectable percentage of the Armenian population, yet it is only utilized minimally as a national structure. It is the largest or one of the largest Armenian organizations worldwide with over 26,000 members and 107 chapters that have a presence in over 25 countries. In the Western United States, it has 6,500 members and close to 5,000 of those members are under the age of 25.

Homenetmen receives respect; however, if the issue is examined through a national-strategic point of view, it is incomprehensible that its value is often described primarily as a means of instilling national pride. For example, it boasts national pride through athletic victories in Lebanon, and in community life thru the participation of scouts and marching bands show of force, during sports festivals and national-political, religious and cultural events.   While such participation during national events is expected and commended by all, the question is whether Homenetmen’s strength and its potential as a collective structure is being sufficiently maximized, when it is limited to only participatory roles?

There is a system and strategy in place for leading the diaspora and diasporan communities. The ultimate goal of this strategy is strengthening the diaspora and consists, first, of preserving the Armenian identity in the diaspora and, second, awakening political consciousness among all generations. To achieve the latter implies maximizing the number of Armenians especially the youth with a sense of commitment, while at the same time connecting them to Armenian national life and objectives. The question is how is it possible to develop political consciousness, especially among the young masses, not only quantitatively but also qualitatively.

Day by day, newly formed structures run parallel to the above-mentioned system, usually with more narrow goals. Homenetmen acknowledges the value of all these structures, yet as an organization believes in the collective purpose and as a structure remains part of and aligned with the above-mentioned national system.

Having said so, one can pose the question:  how many young Armenians above the age of 20 can the system mobilize, especially those who have been distant from an Armenian-filled atmosphere until then?

At the present time, for a considerable number of young Armenians, the national agenda is not the focus of everyday life. We must admit that, the “Armenianness” is hardly progressing, and if so only partially, throughout Europe, America, and even the Middle East. The network of home-school-church-community center that was the core of Armenian life in the past is becoming stagnant. According to well-known sources, excluding the Middle East, the entire number of students who attend Armenian schools does not surpass the 10,000 mark. In California, there are about 5,000 students, who attend Armenian schools, and over 50,000 who attend non-Armenian schools. Those statistics bring into light another national debate: Is it only through the instruction and teachings of the Armenian language that Armenian national identity is formed?

As a pan-Armenian organization, Homenetmen cannot remain passive in this debate, especially that as an organization its current programs and inherent potential are geared for collective national goals. More than any other organization, Homenetmen serves to provide Armenian education in the extracurricular field, namely outside of the school environment. Through the appeal of its structure, Homenetmen bears membership from Armenian youth attending both Armenian and non-Armenian schools. Currently, 60-65% of its members age 25 and under do not attend Armenian schools. As such, nearly 8,000 Armenian youth are exposed to the Armenian identity through Homenetmen. Which other organization can come close to matching these figures? While the vital role of Homenetmen in this aspect may not have been made clear, it is a reality nevertheless and a significant one.

In such a context, what is then the role of Homenetmen? In the Western diaspora, Homenetmen strives to maintain a balance between the Armenian upbringing and the host country environment and realities, all the while developing the model 21st century diasporan and citizen, who is proud of their native country and even more proud of its sense of belongingness to the Armenian nation. In the pursuit of this duality, the efforts to transform a neutral individual into becoming a committed Armenian, is a conscious strategy for Homenetmen. It is worth repeating that throughout everyday life in the diaspora, Homenetmen not only gives way to Armenian patriotism, spirit and culture, but strives to prepare exemplary Armenian youth from the ages of 6-18, whose connection and ties to the Armenian identity is done with conviction and through voluntary commitment. In this manner, Homenetmen prepares a future generation of active youth over the age 20, who have passed through the ranks of the organization, and are gifted with education in political awareness.

It is especially because of the above, that alongside the political, religious, and economic spheres, the organizational-educational realm in our national strategy must receive additional esteem and become more prioritized. The reality is that our institutions’ current strategic domain, where Armenian schools, Hamazkayin, the Armenian Relief Society (ARS), Homenetmen, youth groups, Hai Tahd, and others act separately, will no longer yield the same successful outcomes as in the past or achieve the ideal outcome. Quantitatively, membership numbers in numerous institutions have decreased and all have seen a considerable decline in quality and manpower. While the role of Armenian schools in the educational field is unrivaled, the decrease in student enrollment causes a further demand for quality Armenian education and upbringing through extracurricular activities, outside of the school structure. Herein lies the role of Homenetmen, its scope of work and hidden potential, that must be more substantial than it is at the present time.

There remains an unutilized strategic opportunity, which demands to be further examined and carried out to its fullest potential. Since Homenetmen bears strength in its numbers, perhaps by finding more innovative approaches, working alongside organizations with similar aims, and expanding its scope of work and activities, Homenetmen can be utilized to fulfill aims and objectives, which were not considered as part of the organization’s field of work in the past. We must move past our structural limitations and explore versatile options for collective efforts between church-Homenetmen, Homenetmen-ARS-Hamazkayin, and other institutions, a process through which athletics and scouting can serve an even larger base of 6-18-year-old youth through extracurricular education, where emphasis can be placed on quality education, and national identity can be shaped through a more disciplined approach. The strategic aim would be to produce the archetype of the 21st century diasporan and citizen, who is proud of his/her native country yet feels a complete and committed sense of Armenian belongingness. The organization’s mission of preparing committed and dedicated Armenians out of the 6-18-year-old age group of Armenian youth and adolescents who are entrusted to Homenetmen would persist and thereby create a future generation of active youth with political awareness.

A paradigm shift is necessary to turn the attention of youth and adolescents to national issues and prepare a generation, which is responsible and conscientious. Homenetmen embodies talent, merit, and strength through its ranks. Similar to other organizations, it is also on the brink of a generational change. The present pan-Armenian strategy does not need to be changed in order to mark new achievements, nor do the goals or bylaws of our organizations necessitate any change. The only change that is necessary is in process and it involves re-examining our strategic policies and current method of operations in favor of more versatile approaches and activities.

Soon, Homenetmen will enter its second centenary and if the significance of offering a quality Armenian education and upbringing through non-scholastic extracurricular activities is to be further valued, then Homenetmen must expand on its scope of work. For a successful outcome regarding the above described wider objectives, new tactics and a stronger determination should be procured by the governing national system, and additional manpower should be allocated to Homenetmen.

In the near future, we need to clarify the action plans and execution details required to successfully implement such a plan.
This article was first published in our sister publication Hairenik Weekly in Armenian.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

Mukaddes Alataş, a Kurdish human rights activist from Diyarbakir, was recently arrested for “being a member of a terror organization.” Her crime? She posted about the Armenian Genocide on social media and engaged in women’s rights activism.

Mukaddes Alataş

Alataş was detained in her home on May 11 after a police raid and was jailed after eight days in police custody.

“The reason for her detention is her activities regarding human rights, women’s rights, and her social media posts about the Armenian Genocide,” said Eren Keskin, a leading human rights lawyer and co-head of the Human Rights Association (IHD). “Mukaddes worked as an official at the Istanbul branch of the IHD between 1996 and 2002. Then she moved to Diyarbakir… She was helping women exposed to violence at the Kardelen Women’s Center of the Diyarbakir municipality. After a trustee was appointed by the government to the municipality, she was fired from her job,” Keskin added. “The judge told her: ‘I understand everything but what is it with those [social media] posts about the Armenian Genocide?’”

According to Keskin, there is nothing that could constitute evidence for Mukaddes’s arrest. “But they arrested her for being a member of a terror organization,” Keskin says.

Although the Armenians are an indigenous people and were once the rulers of the region, the Armenian population in Diyarbakir (Dikranagerd/Tigranakert in Armenian) has disappeared. There are only hidden and “no-longer hidden” Armenians who are subjected to much pressure and hostility.

Homeless Armenian orphans wandering in the streets of Diyarbakir and Austrian soldiers giving them bread. (Photo: The Armenian Genocide Museum Institute)

The 2006 book entitled Armenian Tigranakert/Diarbekir and Edessa/Urfa, edited by Professor Richard G. Hovannisian, details the Armenian roots of the city. According to the book, “Tigranakert holds special significance in Armenian history. It was in the vicinity of Tigranakert that Tigran the Great built an opulent new capital city in the heart of his expansive empire in the first century B.C.”

Tigranakert and the surrounding region were, for centuries, a scene to a contest for dominance between several empires. Even under foreign rule, Armenians remained a sizable community in the city until the 1915 genocide, when Ottoman soldiers as well as local Kurds and Turks—upon the order of the Ottoman Young Turk Government—exterminated the Armenian and other Christian communities in the city through methods such as murder, rape, forced deportation, and forced conversion to Islam. The perpetrators then seized Christian properties and lands.

Unlike the relentless denial of the Turkish government, the Kurdish political movement in Turkey recognizes the Armenian Genocide and commemorates it.

On April 23, 2013, for example, an event was organized by the Diyarbakir Bar Association, then led by Kurdish lawyer Tahir Elçi, and the Diyarbakir Municipality, to commemorate the 98th anniversary of the destruction of the Armenian community in the city.

“Today, we commemorate the genocide in Diyarbakir for the first time. This is a very important day for us. We bow respectfully before the memory of our Armenian brothers who were murdered in 1915, and condemn the genocide,” Elçi said in his speech.

A scene from Tahir Elci’s funeral

Two years later, on Nov. 28, 2015, Elçi was murdered in broad daylight while he was holding a press conference, in which he spoke about the destruction caused by the military attacks carried out during the curfew imposed by the Turkish government in the Sur district of Diyarbakir. In his last public speech, he called for an end to violence between the Turkish state and the Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).

Though almost two years have passed, his murderers have still not been brought to account.

Mahsuni Karaman, Elçi’s family’s lawyer and a member of the “Tahir Elçi Murder Investigation Commission said: “Our connection with Elçi’s file has been cut. We are not given the copies; we do not know at what stage it [the file] is… But there are things we know. There is not a single suspect in the file. The gun with which Elçi was shot has not been identified because the cartridge bullet has not been found. As there is no certain evidence, no progress has been made to shed light on this murder. We have made more than 100 requests from the Diyarbakir prosecutor’s office, but we do not know what has been done about these requests. For the prosecutor does not give information either to the public or to us.”

Similarly, lawyer Neşet Girasun, a board member of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, told the Armenian Weekly: “An effective investigation that would reveal the perpetrators as well as the forces behind them has not been launched.”

Many Kurds were victims of kidnappings, torture, and murders at the hands of Turkish state forces in the 1990s. Elçi worked vigorously to shed light on what has come to be known as “murders by unknown assailants” in Turkey. Ironically, he became a victim of one himself.

In the meanwhile, Sedat Peker, a gang leader, who has been convicted of several crimes and is a staunch supporter of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was given the “most benevolent businessman” award by the Turkish 2K Media Company on May 24.

Peker had threatened academics who signed a petition calling for peace between the Turkish government and the Kurds in early 2016. He said that he wanted to take a bath in “the blood of the academics.” Peker has not yet been brought to account for his statements openly calling for mass slaughter.

Turkey not only denies the Armenian Genocide but also violently crushes any voice that dares tell the truth about it. Meanwhile, those who incite mass murder against dissident academics and peace activists are protected, promoted, and awarded.

From the Armenian Weekly 2017 Magazine Dedicated to the 102nd Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

Thursday was a school day in Chunkush. The children who normally filled its streets with laughter were instead busy with their lessons.

In the village center, a shopkeeper sold yarn to a customer. A few young men lingered outside a dry goods store. And a pair of mostly even-tempered state security agents shadowed me. Otherwise, the streets were empty.

Ulash Altay plays on a tree in the garden in front of his home in Chunkush. Ulash is a descendant of the only known genocide survivor of Chunkush (Photo: Matthew Karanian)

It would have been easy to bypass Chunkush. I suspect that most travelers don’t give this village a second thought. But most travelers in this part of the world aren’t interested in Armenians, either. I was traveling with a small group of Armenian scholars for whom Chunkush is a gem among the treasures of Armenian history.

Chunkush sits in the remote hard scrabble landscape between Kharpert and Diyarbakir. This village was, until 1915, part of the fabric of Western Armenia. Today, it’s largely unknown to outsiders.

Armenian Chunkush had existed almost since forever and was destroyed in a moment in 1915. Ten thousand Armenians—the entire population of the village—were killed. The region around the village became a mass grave.

It has now been 102 years since the start of the genocide known to many as the Armenian Holocaust, and identified by most Armenians as the Medz Yeghern, or Great Crime. After all this time, Chunkush still exists. But today it is a Kurdish-populated village in Turkey. Chunkush has been mostly cleansed of its Armenian identity.

I had first visited Chunkush in 2014 to see what was left of our Armenian cultural heritage. I saw the ruins of a monastery, two churches, and a centuries-old neighborhood.

I returned in 2017 to see who was left. Chunkush is home not only to the ruins of ancient Armenian buildings. Chunkush is also home to a family that is descendant of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.

This is how I met Ulash Altai.

Ulash Altai is an 11-year-old boy who lives in Chunkush with his mother and grandmother. His father had been part of the household, too, until his death a few months ago.

When I met Ulash on that Thursday morning in March, he told me that he would celebrate his 12^th birthday the very next day. He was supposed to be in school, but on this day, the day before his birthday, he had left school early. He had learned that a group of Armenian Americans was visiting his grandmother. He wanted to be home to meet us.

Ulash isn’t a teenager yet, and he didn’t quite have the maturity to say this. But I would like to suppose that Ulash wanted to meet us for many of the same reasons we had wanted to see his family. I would like to believe that he wanted to learn about his past, that he wanted to start building a bridge to his future.

For the past two decades, I have traveled throughout Western Armenia to document the remnants of our homeland. I’ve recorded our churches, our forts, our ghost towns. But it was not until I met young Ulash that I really appreciated how bridge building has also been a significant, even if unintended, part of my research trips.

When we Armenians visit Western Armenia, we don’t go as tourists. We don’t go to have fun. Instead, we go to learn about our past and to see where our grandparents were from. But we accomplish much more than this. We also build bridges to the future with the people who today live in our homeland.

These people, sometimes Kurds, sometimes Turks, are some of the people who use our churches as barns and warehouses. These are the same people who might be tempted to see Armenian ruins as quarry material or as the locations of phantom buried treasure.

And sometimes the people we meet are the so-called “Hidden Armenians” of Turkey. These Hidden Armenians may be full-blooded Armenians who have converted to Islam. Or they may be Turks and Kurds who recall that they had a grandmother who was Armenian.

Our presence, even if brief, is a reminder that we care about our homeland and that we care about the welfare of the Armenians who still live there—whether they are Christian or not, and whether they call themselves Armenian, or not. Our presence in Western Armenia, even if for only a day or a week, is a reminder to the local residents of our shared past.

In Chunkush, this shared past includes Sirahayats, an Armenian monastery, and its surviving church, Sourp Astvatsatsin. The English language translation of Sirahayats is “the monastery that looks out lovingly.” This monastery is located on a hilltop just a few hundred feet from the home of Ulash. I imagine that the ruins of Sirahayats do indeed look out lovingly on Ulash’s modest home.

It was near this monastery a few years earlier that members of my group of Armenian American scholars had first met Ulas’s father. While in the nearby town square, a middle-aged man from Chunkush had approached them. “I see that you’re interested in old Armenian history,” he observed. He said this in Turkish, or at least he said words to that effect. “Well then, you should meet my mother in law.”

This man’s name was Recai. He was a stranger and he could have been many things, but he wasn’t a liar. He really did have a mother-in-law. Her name was Asiya. And, it also turns out, she really was old and she really was Armenian. Her role in the history of the Armenians of Chunkush was more than we could have imagined.

Asiya pauses with her grandson Ulash, during a visit from the author. Ulash is the sole surviving son
of Recai Altay, a Kurdish activist who was killed while incarcerated in Turkey last year.
(Photo: Matthew Karanian)

Asiya had been born in Chunkush in 1920.

At the time of Asiya’s birth, her mother was a 15-year-old genocide survivor—she was born in a town near Chunkush and was the only known survivor of the genocide who was still living in Chunkush. Five years earlier, during the summer of 1915, when the appointed time for killing the Armenians of the Chunkush region had been reached, Asiya’s mother had been 10 years old.

This little girl was standing alongside her neighbors, at the edge of a precipice, waiting her turn to be bludgeoned and pushed into the seemingly bottomless pit known as the Dudan Gorge. Locals today recall the Dudan Gorge, which is located a short march from Chunkush, as the place were 10,000 Armenians fell to their deaths.

This 10-year-old girl waited, but her turn to die never arrived. Instead, she was spared by a Turkish soldier who took pity on her, and who snatched her from death. He took her as his child bride.

Within just five years, roughly the time it took for that 10-year-old Armenian girl to mature, that Turkish soldier would become Asiya’s father.

Asiya’s long life has been marked by two traumas: first from the fear that she would be victimized because of her Armenian heritage; and second from her knowledge that her father had participated in killing every Armenian in Chunkush—every Armenian except for the girl who would become her mother.

Asiya is nearly 100 years old now, and for almost a century, her Armenian heritage has been perhaps the worst-kept secret of Chunkush.

Her son-in-law Recai—Ulash’s father—was killed last year. Sources describe him as a political prisoner who had been serving time for his support of Kurdish issues. A bomb—some say an ISIS bomb—struck his holding cell.

Asiya with her late son-in-law Recai (Photo: Matthew Karanian)

Now his son Ulash is his family’s bridge back in time to the world that existed in 1915, the time when Ulash’s great grandmother stepped back from the abyss, literally, to survive the genocide.

Sirahayats, the ancient Armenian monastery that looks out lovingly at Ulash’s home, is today at risk of destruction.

So also is Sourp Garabed, the grand cathedral that is close to the center of the village.

Asiya pauses with her grandson Ulash, during a visit from the author. Ulash is the sole surviving son of Recai Altay, a Kurdish activist who was killed while incarcerated in Turkey last year. (Photo: Matthew Karanian)

Is it reasonable to expect that Ulash’s appreciation of his ancestry, encouraged by his grandmother, and also by visits from Armenians, may inspire him to take a stand to protect these sites? I believe it is.

People such as Ulash may even take a stand to protect the Armenians in their midst. If this happens, then we Armenians will have helped to build the most important bridge of our time.

Janfida is a village on Armavir province’s south central border with Turkey. From the village, Mount Ararat is clearly visible through the summer haze.  Nearby, atop a hill, are the ruins of Urartu’s ancient Argishtikhinilli fortress (776 B.C.). Immediately south of the village is the security zone along the Armenian-Turkish border which is patrolled by CIS (primarily Russian) forces; the Arax river being the actual border.

The entrance to Janfida village (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Ancient civilizations here are attested by Urartian artifacts found in or near the village, and by early medieval Armenian artifacts discovered in 1990. Just outside the village, in what was a medieval Armenian and Kurdish cemetery, khachkars (cross stones) were found from the 7-8^th century. Just across the nearby Arax river, in what is now Turkey,  my map shows a number of churches, which are undoubtedly Armenian.

A medieval khachkar (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

During past centuries, much of the Armenian population here was forced to leave due to invasions by Turks and Persians who fought over this territory. Later Russia occupied this region. From 1828-1830 many displaced Armenians returned here to what became Russian Armenia, part of the Russian Empire, thanks to provisions of the Treaty of Turkmanchay. This treaty terminated the Russo-Persian war of 1826-1828 and guaranteed the right of Armenians to return to their homeland. This treaty, negotiated by Russian playwright and diplomat Alexander Griboyedov, played an important role in restoring the demographics of Caucasian Armenia. A statue of this hero stands on Tigran Metz street in Yerevan, with a village in Armenia’s Armavir province named in his honor as well. While still in Persia he was killed by a mob.

Mount Ararat from Janfida village (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

During the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath, many of the survivors found refuge in Caucasian Armenia. This included many of the ancestors of Janfida’s current families, whose origins are in Van, Mush, Sasun, and other Western Armenian regions. Initially these survivors sought refuge near Lake Sevan, but later moved to Janfida, closer to their ancestral villages, intending to return at the conclusion of WWI. But that was not to be.

Statue of Alexander Griboyedov, Tigran Metz street, Yerevan (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

In the early 1940s, at the onset of WWII, many Kurds who remained here decided to relocate to Turkey, across the Arax river. Though the border was closed, they somehow managed the move.

Janfida village (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Turkey, though “neutral” during most of WWII, was sympathetic to Germany. Shortly before the end of the war, Turkey hypocritically sided with the allies. It was believed, however, that Turkey might take advantage of the war to invade Soviet Armenia. Though this did not happen, preparations were made for such an eventuality.  On the opposite side of Janfida village from the Turkish border, there remains concrete bunkers with tank turrets on top—their barrels pointing towards Turkey.

WWII bunker and tank turret, Janfida village (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

From 1941-1945, 121 citizens of Janfida, out of a total population of about 1,400, fought in WWII. Of these, 87 died. Additionally, many were wounded. In memory of the large sacrifice this village made during the war, noted sculptor Ara Sargsyan sculpted a memorial statue, which stands in the village center, next to the St. Garabed (2014) Church.

Memorial to WWII martyrs, statue sculptured by Ara Sargsyan (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

The memorial’s sculptor was born near Constantinople displayed enormous artistic talent in his youth. In the aftermath of the genocide, while studying art in Europe, he was a clandestine Nemesis operative and friend of Arshavir Shiragian, helping impose justice on those responsible for the Armenian Genocide. Concealing his Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF)-Nemesis activities, he moved to Soviet Armenia where he played a key role in establishing Armenia’s artistic institutions. While recovering from a non-life-threatening injury in the hospital he unexplainably died, likely the work of the KGB, who likely discovered his previous activities and considered him dangerous, although he participated in no anti-Soviet activities.

At the onset of the Artsakh (Karabagh) liberation movement, a detachment of Janfida volunteers, the “Black Panthers”, served in Artsakh. Sixteen of these volunteers sacrificed their lives during the struggle. Others chose to remain in Artsakh establishing a village with the same name, Janfida, in Artsakh’s Kashatagh province.

Memorial to WWII martyrs and St. Garabed church (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Janfida’s current population is around 3,500, and unlike many other villages, is stable, with only a few choosing to leave the village. The economy is based on growing apricots and cherries, with some wheat grown as well. Three hundred students are enrolled in Janfida’s school system with 90 children in kindergarten. Roads to the village are good. We traveled via train from Yerevan’s Sasuntsi Davit station to Armavir, the center of the province, and from there by cab to nearby Janfida. The train fare was less than a dollar and took about an hour.

The name “Janfida” is a commonly used term for irregular Armenian freedom fighters; heroes. It appears the name was used prior to 1900 but exactly when or under what circumstances the name was adopted is unknown.

The area around Armavir city contains much of interest. There is the Sardarabad museum and war memorial, the ancient Metsamor archaeological site and museum, the ancient Urartian fortress of Argishtikhinili atop a nearby hill, and when in season the local apricots are amazingly sweet. And there is Janfida village—its history, and its people.

By Herant Bablanian

Special for the Armenian Weekly 

My parents Khanem (Poladian) and Hovhanes Bablanian were survivors of the Armenian Genocide. Sadly, my parents’ history is not unique. Ask almost any Armenian and they will share similar tragic stories told to them by their parents or grandparents. It would be a great dishonor to their memories if we remained silent.

1921, Aleppo. Hovhanes and Khanem Bablanian’s wedding photo (Photo courtesy of Herant Bablanian)

I am lucky enough to have tape recordings of my parents Khanem and Hovhanes telling—in their own voices—what they experienced during the genocide. Below are the summaries of their stories, which were tape recorded in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1964.

***

The Story of my Mother Khanem (Poladian) Bablanian, in Her Own Words

I was born in the town of Urfa, the historical city of Yetesia, and was one of seven children in my family.

I was orphaned at the age of eight. I lost everyone in my family except for my twelve-year old brother, Garabed. He was able to flee and was saved by an Arab family. He finally ended up in Aleppo. My father and eldest brother Nerses were taken away and killed by the Turks.

Most of the Armenian women and their children were gathered and ordered to leave their homes without taking a single one of their belongings with them. The Turks claimed this was “temporary relocation,” but a huge caravan of Armenian women and children were deported south to the harsh Syrian desert, accompanied by the armed Turkish Gendarme (officer).  We marched for days and my grandmother could not walk any further due to the pain in her legs. She was falling behind and the Turkish Gendarmes were impatient. Eventually, they shot her.

My mother also grew tired, she couldn’t carry the sick baby anymore. She knew that the child would die soon because she did not have enough milk to feed her. Mother kissed the small bundle, held it tight to her heart and later put her down on the side of the road. Soon afterwards, my mother became so weak due to exhaustion and illness.

One night, I was awakened by my mother crying out “Khanem, Khanem, cover me please, I am so cold.” I said, “But mother, I have nothing to cover to cover you with!” Then, I threw myself upon her. But there was not enough warmth left in either of us.

The next morning, as I pulled myself off of her, I realized she was dead. I was left alone with my little brother and sister Haygazoon and Paylazoon. I was crying, confused, and bewildered and somehow lost them in the crowd.  I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find them.

Until now, I can’t forgive myself for losing them. I hope they are still living somewhere. Finally, the caravan made it to Deir ez-Zor (Der Zor), where I was taken in by a well-known and respected Arab family—the Al-Matroud family. They looked after me and treated me well.  At last, the war was over, the Allies won, the Turks were defeated. An American orphanage was opened in Deir ez-Zor. The Armenian orphans were gathered and admitted to the orphanage. There I stayed until my brother Garabed found me and we went together to Aleppo.

The Story of my Father Hovhanes Bablanian, in His Own Words

I was born in Urfa and had five siblings. Only two of my brothers survived. During WWI, at age of 20, I was taken away by the Turks in the Labour Battalion. Fortunately, I was able to flee, escaping the death that was premeditated for the rest of the Armenian Labour Battalion.

In Aleppo, I was arrested by the Turks for being a deserter. However, I was able to convince them that I was sick and was left behind by my regiment. I was admitted into a Turkish military hospital, and was given the job as assistant in the kitchen. When the head chef disappeared, I became known as the new chef, Chef Aziz. I held this job until I suddenly found my eldest brother Sarkis, who was also a deserter.

We ran away to a safer area. By then, it was almost the end of the war and the Turks were defeated. Sadly, I learned that my sister Markrid threw herself in a well to avoid being captured by the Turks. Unfortunately, I do not know what happened to my youngest sister Yester. My brother Haroutyun managed to stay alive and ended up in Jerusalem, while my youngest brother Hagop stayed in Urfa, joining the Armenian Resistance of Urfa—the Herosamart—fighting against the Turks, was killed and martyred as a freedom fighter.

***

In Search of Long Lost Relatives

Once the war was over, my mother and father were introduced to each other by some friends and were married soon after. Afterwards, they moved back to Urfa, pushed out again to Syria, and later ended up in Iraq. They had four sons: Hagop, born in Urfa, Nerses and Boghos born in Damascus, and myself, Herant, born in Kirkuk, Iraq in 1931.

1932, Kirkuk. Hovhanes and Khanem Bablanian’s children Hagop, Nerses, Boghos, and Herant (Photo courtesy of Herant Bablanian)

Through the years, I have never stopped searching and looking for relatives—long lost as a result of the genocide. My search was more fruitful and rewarding than I could have ever imagined.

First, I followed my mother’s story. In 2008, we traveled to Aleppo and Der Zor, and finally found the children of the Al-Matroud family who looked after my mother.

Two of the brothers I met were medical doctors, and their family name is still well known in Deir ez-Zor. They were very excited to see us, and quite surprisingly, were aware of my mother’s story as well. They all treated us kindly—like family—and showed us the house where my mother used to live. Since this visit, we have stayed in touch with each other.

The author, Herant Bablanian with Dr. Mouayad Matroud in Der Zor where 8-year-old orphan Khanem (Meriam) was saved by the grandparents of the Matroud family. They lived in this home. (Photo courtesy of Herant Bablanian)

On the first-year memorial of my late son Ara at the Armenian Church of Toronto in 2005, an elderly lady I did not know approached me. She explained that she couldn’t help herself after hearing my family name.

She told me that I had relatives in Aleppo and Australia and provided me with details and telephone numbers. Thanks to this “angel,” we found cousins in Australia in 2005. There, we met almost 200 Bablanians! Our family tree was confirmed and we are now in touch and visit each other often.

2005 articles in the press (Armenian and English) about the united Bablanians (Photo courtesy of Herant Bablanian)

In 2008, we met more cousins in Aleppo, and while in Yerevan, thanks to the Armenian telephone operator there, I met more Bablanians in Yerevan and was told that there are more in Shatin village near Noravank.

Now, more than a century after the Armenian genocide began, family members all over the world are united—Bablanians in Toronto, Sydney, London, Aleppo, Beirut, Yerevan, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, Dallas, Baghdad, Kuwait, Amman, and maybe in some other places we have not discovered yet.

Special for the Armenian Weekly 

Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı, an ethnic Greek peace activist born in Samsun, was recently arrested by Turkish police in the Kurdish city of Şırnak, where he had been living since 2012.

Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı

Meral Geylani, his partner and fellow activist, told the Armenian Weekly that four lawsuits have been filed against Yaylalı. Three of them are for “discouraging the public from military service” and one is for “publicly disrespecting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk” through his articles and social media posts about the 1914-1923 massacre of Pontian (Pontic) Greeks by Turkey.

According to the indictment, he was also jailed for allegedly “insulting the President,” “inciting people to disobey the laws,” and “spreading propaganda for a terrorist organization.” He will be brought to court on September 26 for these accusations.

“On April 22, the day he posted his article about the commemoration of the Pontian Greek Genocide, he was arrested by police. He was first jailed in Şırnak and then was placed in a prison in the city of Elazığ. His first trial will be held on July 18,” Geylani said.

Yannis, who was born Ibrahim Yaylalı, is a former Turkish nationalist who was proud of his enmity to Kurds, not to mention to other indigenous peoples of Asia Minor.

In 1994, he voluntarily joined the Turkish military as a commando to fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Şırnak and fell captive to the PKK during a clash. If he had died, he would have been declared a “martyr” by the Turkish government. But after he was injured and taken a captive by the PKK, his family sought help from Turkish authorities. Instead, they were told that they were Greek and were threatened. His whole life changed with this new discovery.

In a 2016 interview with the news website Siyasi Haber last year, Yannis introduced himself as follows: “I am Yannis Vasilis. Of course, I have not always been Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı. I was İbrahim Yaylalı before enrolling in the Turkish military. I did not know anything about my Greek [heritage] back then and I engaged in Turkish racism. But of course, this stemmed from where I lived and the education I had received.”

Yannis then learned that his great-grandfather was murdered during the Pontian Greek Genocide and that Yannis’s grandfather was given to a Turkish family and raised as a Muslim Turk. In a 2014 interview with the news website Demokrat Haber, he said, “If they had told me 30 years ago that I was a Greek, I would have sworn at them. In the Bafra town of Samsun where I am from, Kurds are made to do the heaviest and the worst work and there is so much racism in us. We beat up Kurdish youths many times.”

Military Service and Captivity Under the PKK

But his political transformation began during his military service in 1994 when he witnessed how Turkish soldiers persecuted Kurdish villagers in Şırnak. “When we went there, the villages had already been forcibly emptied by the Turkish military. It was the period that the Kurdish villages were raided and burned down by Turkish soldiers the most. The state was applying pressure on the villages to make them accept its power. We saw these things when we went there,” he explained.

He also witnessed outright barbarism of the Turkish soldiers. “I saw them [Turkish soldiers] destroying a dead guerrilla to pieces. When I saw that, I vomited. Then the specialist sergeant said to me: ‘Are you a man? Are you Turkish? Why did you throw up?’ Guerrillas would never end up alive unless they confessed,” he said.

Yannis also described an incident of village burning in the mountain of Gabar, which he saw firsthand. “First military teams raided homes and started beating up people and destroying their properties. Then they set homes ablaze.”

In September 1994, during a clash with the PKK, he was injured and passed out due to heavy bleeding. A group of PKK members then found him and took him to their camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. “They told me I was a prisoner of war and they would treat me in accordance with international agreements. They dressed my wound and gave me an injection. I was expecting them to torture me to get information from me. I was not expecting anything good from them. Because we had not obeyed any law when we dealt with them so I expected them to do the same. I thought they would cut me into pieces,” he explained in the 2016 interview.

Yannis said that his experience as a commando for two-and-a-half months in the Turkish military and as a prisoner of war at the hands of the PKK for two years and three months completely transformed him and his worldview. “I thought about our mistreating people in a way that constituted a war crime and the burning down of villages. Then I became a captive of the guerillas… You say you are good but you burn down villages, torture them and destroy their dead. You call them bad but they take you and treat you well.”

‘We Know You—You Are Greek’

On the third month of his captivity, he contacted his father and asked him to request information from authorities about his situation.

“My father went to Ankara to talk with a military officer who my uncle knew. But instead, another man turned up and told my father: ‘We know you. You are Greek, after all. We can call you ‘Greek members of the PKK’ and if we say that, you will be in a bad situation. So, don’t tamper with this too much.’ My father could not say anything. They [my family members] know they are converts [to Islam] but they feel Turkish. As they see themselves as Turkish, they think the state also sees them as such but the state does not forget,” Yannis explained.

In the eighth or ninth month of his captivity, he received word that his family was told they were Greek. “The journalists learned it while conducting interviews with my family. My mind then changed completely. Whatever the [Turkish] military said turned out to be a lie. Whatever the other side said, life confirmed it true.”

Upon his return to Turkey, he was brought to court and arrested. And when he was jailed, the torture began. “The moment I was put in prison, they jumped on me and started beating me. Because I was beaten up in prison for three-and-a-half months, my chest cage was injured. And they accused me of being a member of a terror organization. Then I was released pending trial. The trial lasted until 2013 and I was acquitted. In the meanwhile, my worldview became even clearer. I learned how the [political] system was enforced through attacks of the state,” he explained.

In 2012, he settled in the Kurdish village of Roboski in Şırnak with his partner Geylani to show solidarity as peace activists with the victims of the massacre that took place on Dec. 28, 2011.

How Konstantin’s Son Became ‘Mehmet’

In late 2013, Ibrahim went to court to change his Turkish name and became Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı.  He told Siyasi Haber that changing his name is about “regaining his right and his identity.”

I went to court to change my name. And this is done with money. In countries such as ours, they create special difficulties for you when you want to embrace a non-Turkish name. They want two witnesses. My friends who know I am Greek became my witnesses. But when you want to investigate your state register of persons, they introduce new obstacles. You can only investigate up to two generations before: You, your father and your grandfather. I applied with my father. We learned that my grandfather’s father’s name was Konstantin. Their village is in Bafra. The state archives also say that the state attacked and killed the Greek people there. Konstantin was also murdered and my grandfather, who was three back then, was given to a Turkish family instead of a Greek orphanage. Similar things were also done during the Dersim and Armenian massacres. Orphans were given to Turkish families.

And the child who was going to be my grandfather was called “Mehmet” by his new family.

This discovery was completely life changing for Yannis, who said that his entire motivation of joining the Turkish military was “the Turkish flag, Turkish homeland and the Turkish nation,” and that grey wolves, or the supporters of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), were his heroes.

“We thought that that our great-grandfather went to fight in the Turkish Salvation War (Turkey’s name for the war it fought in Asia Minor, Thrace, historic Armenia and Kurdistan between 1919 and 1923 following the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I) and his dead body was never brought back,” said Yannis. “But we then learned that he was murdered alongside his Greek friends in a cave in an area in Bafra, which was heavily populated by Greeks.

“My mother used to joke about my father being a dönme (convert), but when I asked what it meant, she did not respond,” said Yannis. “When [my grandfather] was given to that family, he converted [to Islam] and it was over. No information was shared with us about it. We then learned that our great-aunt told my mother about my father’s situation. Then they covered it up. The underlying reason could be fear or an unwillingness to accept reality. For being a non-Muslim is used as a swearword in our region.”

1914-1923 Pontian Greek Genocide

According to a report by the Pontian Greek Society of Chicago, Pontus (Greek Pontos), an ancient Greek word for “sea,” refers to the Black Sea and the surrounding coastal areas. The presence of Greeks in the area dates back to ancient times some 2,000 years before the migration of Turkic people to this area in the 10th century A.D.

From 1914 to 1923, “out of an approximate 700,000 Pontian Greeks who lived in Turkey at the beginning of World War I, as many as 350,000 were killed, and almost all the rest had been uprooted during the subsequent forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey. This was the end of one of the ancient Greek civilizations in Asia Minor.

During the same period, Armenian and Assyrian Christians were also targeted. Yannis has for years been trying to raise awareness about the Greek Genocide as well as the Armenian Genocide and massacres committed against Kurds in Turkey. According to Yannis, there were two reasons of the genocide of Christian peoples:

Turkish racism against non-Muslims, and the desire to Turkify non-Muslim properties.

Before the genocide, “70 or 80 percent of the country’s capital belonged to non-Muslims,” said Yannis, who added that the genocide aimed to Turkify and Islamize the wealth and property of non-Muslims.

He also referred to a conversation between Rıza Nur, a Turkish Member of Parliament from Sinop, and Topal Osman, an ultra-Turkish nationalist and Islamist who murdered Greek Christians and Armenians in the Pontian region. “Osman tells Nur: ‘I am fighting for Turkishness and I am protecting the buildings (churches, schools) that the state could benefit from.’ Nur responds: ‘No, do not leave anything behind. Destroy everything.’”

According to Yannis, Nur did not want a single stone to be left behind that would remind one of history. “And they really did that. They destroyed everything and left nothing behind so that no one would be able to bring them to account and ask them what happened.”

From a “Turkish” Nationalist Commando to a Greek Activist

“I spent the first 20 years of my life as a Turk; and the next 20 years showing solidarity with the Kurdish people. And I will spend the next 20 years of my life struggling as a Pontian,” said Yannis, who writes and speaks out extensively about the Pontian Greek Genocide in his blog websites. He described the destruction of the Greek and Armenian heritage in his hometown of Bafra:

There were more than 80 churches and more than 100 [Christian] schools in Bafra. Not even one has been left behind. All were destroyed! There is only one [non-Turkish] signboard and it is in Armenian! If there were no testimonies, requiems, and screams about it, one would not even be able to say such a thing was experienced there. They took our money and properties, not to mention our lives. There are records of these things. One could see these things in the confidential minutes of the proceedings at the parliament. For example, three groups were deported from Bafra, they were taken to a town in Samsun and all were massacred. So, they did not prevent psychical attacks either. Plus, there were geographical circumstances of the time. Beside outright murders, they also left them to [die in] nature.

So during what is called “the war of salvation,” they got rid of us, the Greeks. And they seized our properties. Today, based on the same mentality, they are targeting peoples. They finished off non-Muslims first, now it is the turn of Kurds who are trying to survive. As the saying goes: Kurds are trying to prove they exit and we [Greeks and Armenians] are trying to prove that we have been exterminated.

As to why who chose the name “Yannis Vasilis,” he said, “I love how Yannis is pronounced. And Vasilis was an influential person among Greeks of the Black Sea region who carried out the first self-defense, partisan organization in the face of the attacks against Greeks.”

Yannis also explained that there are a lot of people like him who would like to return to their roots, but live in fear. “People can call me Ibrahim, or they can call me Yannis. But the thing is there are so many people like me. But they cannot come out because they are scared. I want to give them courage. I am not calling on people to be nationalistic but they should embrace their values and identities,” he explained.

According to Yannis, Turkey has never been a democracy because it has a very strict monist ideology. For example, “One state, one language, one religion, one flag,” which opposes pluralism and diversity, is a slogan in Turkey commonly used by state authorities. “The Turkish state structure has a monist mentality. And this mentality can survive only through fascistic, imperious and aggressive rule,” he explained. “If they govern this land through democracy, what they are doing and what the authorities before them have done will be exposed. For the mentality of the current authorities is not different from that of past administrations.”

A friend and I returned to Yerevan after three days of exploring selected sites around Sisian in the Syunik province. We stayed at the Basen hotel where Hasmik, the manager, was extremely helpful. One of our objectives was to visit some of the villages in the vicinity of the Tatev Monastery.

Tanzatap village from near Tatev (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Stepanos Orbelian, in his 13^th century History of the Provence of Syunik, cited these villages as dens of thieves. On occasion, Tatev, with Prince Smpad, was in a state of war against these villages. In the 10^th century, shortly after Tatev’s construction, the Tondrakian heretical sect had established itself here. Besides being a religious movement, the Tondrakians opposed feudal domination of their villages by the church and local princes. This was a social and political movement as well as a religious one.

This all was nearly a millennium ago, but even to this day, people in these villages have a less than positive attitude towards Tatev. I do not know if this is historical memory or something else.

Tanzatap village (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Tanzatap, a scenic village in the valley below which is visible from the road rising to the left above Tatev, is a lush village with friendly people. It is perhaps a 20-minute drive over a passable dirt road. Its church was established by a priest who moved to the area from Van in the 1800s. As we entered the village an elderly woman, in her eighties, recognized my friend Vova. He had been in that village 30-35 years ago working on the preservation of Armenia’s historical and cultural monuments. She recalled that he and his group came to Tanzatap to buy bread and food. “We always welcomed you, we were glad to see you”, she said, implying that such was not the case in Tatev. Tanzatap was one of the “dens of thieves” cited in Orbelian’s history. The village has remaining examples of civil architecture from 100-200 years ago.

Aghvani village (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Later we entered Aghvani village. The beauty of the village is spectacular. As we searched the village for a holy site, which Vova vaguely recalled from a decades-ago visit, we encountered an elderly gentleman sitting on a rock. He directed us towards the holy site, consisting of two walls of a ruined church. He indicated that the population of the village is three…yes, three! He lives there with his son; but only during the summer. In the fall, they move to Kapan. The village mayor does not even live here in the village; he too lives in Kapan! The elderly gentleman had nothing kind to say about the government. No one did. People felt a complete sense of abandonment. The man and his son were overjoyed to see someone actually visit their village.

Remnants of Aghvani village church, name and date unknown (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

As we descended into the valley, in the distance we viewed fields covered with a white substance. We discovered the “substance” was white and yellow flowers, daisies, completely covering fields and often the side of the road.

We arrived at Tanzaver. The village has a functioning church, Surb Hripsime, dated to 1705 by an inscription on its wall. A woman came by to open the church door for us. Nearby, adjacent to a home in the village, are the remnants of another church whose date and name are unknown. We were invited for coffee. Before we were able to respond to the invitation the table was set, and it was much more than coffee! A man, Stepan, joined us and asked if we would like to see the third church of the village. Of course, we said we would.

Two thirds of Aghvani village (population of three), with Vova standing to right (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

After thanking the woman and her sons who provided us with so much hospitality, Stepan joined us in our rented Niva. After a 30 minute drive over hills, through woods and mud, we arrived at a large, green, gently sloping field with a pen of sheep. Nearby was a fairly large church, again whose name and date are unknown. My friend Vova believes the church could be from 7-10^th centunies, but we will not know until the site is studied by archaeologists. The church or site is called “Mach” by locals, but no one seems to know the origin or meaning of that name. Nearby is a grave site which to me resembles the circular bronze age necropolises I have seen, but I am not an expert. Some of the stones had crude crosses scratched on them.

Back in Sisian, next to the Surb Hovhannes 6th century church, is the gravesite of approximately 55[1], mostly young soldiers who fought in Artsakh. This is an enormous loss for a town of this size. It was Sunday, a badarak was in progress. Inside the church and out were soldiers with pensive, thoughtful expressions. An older man was taking care of the nicely kept gravesites. His son sculptured one of the memorials there, and then became one of the casualties in Artsakh. The caretaker said he does not receive much from the government, but even if he received nothing, he would care for this site. “These soldiers deserve to be honored”, he said.

Tanzaver Soorp Hripsime church, 1705 (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

On our last day in the region we stayed at the Holiday Resort, not a very fancy place, but the owner Mher and his wife were fantastic. In a field about a half mile away Mher discovered the remains of a church whose name and date are unknown.

On the way back to Yerevan, near the town of Malishka, is the ancient settlement of Moz or Mozan, which I hoped to photograph. It was on the Silk Road but according to historical records, it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption and earthquake. There is certainly a lot of ejecta from a volcano nearby but I am not clear if the eruption occurred during the habitation of Moz or before. We drove down a rocky path, and found a farmhouse with a man and his adult son, plus 4-5 medium sized very well behaved dogs. We discussed Moz over a cup of coffee. The father was amazed that we were actually interested in this site.

Tanzaver at dusk (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Suddenly the dogs went wild, sensing danger and barking at a nearby spot in the bushes towards the small river. Immediately the son picked up a pitchfork and heavy stick and ran towards the area that was threatening his dogs. He stabbed a very large “Gyurza” snake and beat it to death with the stick before it could strike. This snake is world class poisonous. A few days earlier one of his dogs died from a snakebite from such a snake. He told me that he could take me to Moz but that we would have to be careful. Actually, I was game to go, but by now it was getting late. I had previously been to Moz and taken film photos, but wanted to get some digital shots. So we let that go for now— maybe early fall when the weather cools and the snakes are less active we will rethink.

‘Mach’ church, date and actual name unknown, near Tanzaver (Photo: Joseph Dagdigian)

Once the snake was dead, one of the dogs decided to marshal its courage and attacked the snake, biting it and throwing it towards the river, repeating this action a number of times. Later at a store in nearby Vayk, the storeowner indicated a young boy was bitten by a Gyurza. After 2-3 days of treatment locally, he needed to be transferred to Yerevan for additional treatment. I hope the boy is well by now.

I came back to Yerevan very much humbled by the hospitality of those we encountered, some of whom have very little. Years ago, Armenia was an abstraction; land, history. Now it’s much more; it is people we’ve met.

I’ll likely forget many of their names but I’ll not forget them. I’ll wake up in the night, or divert my attention from the task at hand, and wonder if they are well, if they were able to stay in Armenia and support their families here.  As a dear friend told me, “The land does not belong to us… We belong to the land.”

Note

[1] I, the author of this article, apologize for my use of the word “approximately” because really, there is no “approximate”. Each of our soldiers is real, an actual family member, a real Armenian, an actual hero. There is nothing “approximate” about this.

Travelers to Armenia visit our beautiful churches, fortresses, archaeological sites, and scenic vistas in Armenia’s mountains and valleys. But other venues can bring visitors closer to Armenian life and traditions. These are the numerous village celebrations, commemorations, and festivals of both religious and secular origin.

Unseen Armenia: Armenia’s Festivals (Photos: Hovsep Daghdigian)

Some of these include…

The Berd Berry and Honey Festival

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

The city of Berd is in mountainous Tavush province, northeast Armenia, the center of a region called Shamshadin—an Arabic name which retains popular usage. Many of the villages to the east of Berd are perilously close to the border with Azerbaijan.

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

A church service at Berd’s Surb Hovhannes Church (consecrated 2014) was officiated by Der Aram Mirzoyan from Berd, and Der Dajad Davidian, the former pastor of St. James Church in Watertown, Mass. The badarak was mostly attended by women and children with few young or middle-aged men present. The choir was magnificent, with solo parts of the Mass sung by an immensely talented 14-year old young lady. Part way though the badarak, there was the shuffle of feet outside the church. In came soldiers, dressed in their fatigues, apparently done with their shift of securing the nearby border. Immediately, many of the children present went to be with the soldiers who were perhaps their fathers or older brothers.

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

At a large field on the edge of town, booths were set up offering local handicrafts and foods. By the time I completed my visits to the booths, trying to decide which delicacies to select for my lunch, I was full from all the free samples I was offered! I did actually buy some food as well, and also bought a number of jars of local honey for ourselves and friends back in the U.S. The festival included Armenian music, with young people dancing. Der Aram and Der Dajad together blessed our soldiers who gathered in a group. There was a dance dedicated to our soldiers as well.

This was not part of the festival, but Der Aram accompanied us to a visit to a nearby military compound. At the compound’s entrance, two armed sentries looked inside our car. When they saw Der Aram, both sentries snapped to attention, saluted, and opened the gate. Such is the respect Der Aram has earned. During a brief talk with the local commander I asked, “What message do you have for the diaspora?” “Tell them that we are not fighting for this or that political party. This is our land. We will fight to defend it,” he said.

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

The Dolma Festival

Since 2011, the Dolma Festival has been held in various sites around Armenia. In 2013, my wife and I attended the festival at the Sardarabad Museum and Memorial, the site of the victorious battle which, together with the victories at Bash Aparan and Karakilise, saved Armenia from extinction in 1918.

Master chefs from around Armenia produced some of the most amazing Armenian dishes I’ve ever tasted. There were dolmas stuffed with fish, and dolmas wrapped with the grape leaves still attached to lengths of vine—as if the dolma itself was growing on the vine. Present were then U.S. Ambassador John Heffern, wandering from booth to booth with his wife, chatting with the chefs and enjoying the food. There were dance groups from local schools, and live Armenian music featuring a group of bagpipe players (parkapzuk). I believe this instrument was more popular in medieval times, but it seems to be making a slight comeback.

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

Vardavar–Christian Feast of Transfiguration

It’s hard to miss Vardavar since just about wherever you are, someone is likely to drench you with water, and it’s all perfectly acceptable on this day. This once pagan festival was transformed into a Christian feast, but it retains some of its pre-Christian tradition.

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

Getting doused is not bad, as Vardavar is usually in July; it’s usually hot, and you may welcome a drenching as long as your camera stays dry. But to get a flavor of the pagan aspects, it’s best to visit the Garni temple. There, pagan priests offer their blessings to bread, apricots, flowers, and especially water, all of which are important to life and are distributed to attendees. There is, of course, Armenian music and dancing, and a spectacular view of the Garni temple and the valley below.

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

Navasard

Navasard is the start of the ancient Armenian New Year, which is on Aug. 11. This commemorates the date that Hayk and his comrades, escaping the tyrant Bell’s tyranny, fled north to the Armenian highlands. As Bell approached, Hayk’s powerful arms let fly an arrow which passed through Bell, killing him instantly. Hayk established himself and his family in Armenia, in what Armenians call Hayots Tsor. Hayk’s descendants, Armenians, are called Haykazunk. This, according to Armenian tradition, was in 2492 B.C.

Again, for a pagan celebration of this pre-Christian holiday, visit Garni. Alternatively, there is usually a ceremony at the statue of Hayk on the highway in the Nor Nork district of Yerevan. A taxi driver can easily take you there.

The Raspberry (Aznavamori) Festival

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

The 2016 Raspberry Festival took place in Ashotavan, near Sisian in Syunik province. There were many craft and food booths from the various villages in the region, as well as booths set up by a number of NGOs operating in Armenia. Authentic Armenian music was provided by musicians playing traditional instruments such as the kamancha, kanoon, duduk, and zurna, with dance groups comprised of dancers of various ages from young children to young adults. Besides the music, there was the performance of a tightrope walker, a traditional Armenian art form, in which the performer on his tightrope seemed to levitate above the mountains of Syunik on the horizon.

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

The Sheep Shearing Festival

In June 2017, the village of Khot hosted a “Sheep Searing Festival.” Khot, in Syunik province, is not far from Sisian and is next to Shinuhayr, the departure point for the aerial tramway ride to the Tatev Monastery. Various village crafts were demonstrated; foods such as pickles, preserves, and pastries were for sale. For those who wanted to get out of the sun for a spell, there was a restaurant at one end of the field. Music, both Armenian and non-Armenian, was provided with many of the young people dancing.

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

The highlight of the festival, however, was the sheep shearing contest. Representatives of various villages competed to see who was best. Criteria for the best sheep shearer was not only time, but the wool had to be completely removed from the sheep, and the sheep must not be injured with cuts or nicks. Attendees from various villages loudly cheered for the shearer from their village. During the hot summer months, sheep will naturally shed their wool if not removed by their keepers.

(Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

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Armenia’s festivals provide a unique opportunity for visitors to interact informally with Armenian culture and traditions. I believe the Armenian Ministries of Culture and Tourism should do more to promote information about such events, including village celebrations, festivals, and cultural performances (Armenian cultural performances, please, not more amateur western noise pollution). This should be done early each year, in time for visitors to plan their trips. Listings should include all events throughout Armenia and Artsakh and not just in or around Yerevan.

How about the two ministries cited above, working with tour agencies, getting on board with this?

Special for the Armenian Weekly

Armenia is known for its ancient monasteries in the mountains, its historic brandy, and its warm-hearted hospitality—a small country in the southern Caucuses bridging Europe and Asia. It is a land of undiscovered natural beauty both above and below the ground.

Getting There

Most visitors to the country, fly into the capital city, Yerevan. Several reputable tour companies based in Yerevan offer rough-road and off-road touring and guiding.  Since I was traveling without equipment or transportation, DA Tours (Discover Armenia Tours) was an excellent choice to lead my personalized trip to one of the best caves in Armenia: Mozrov Cave.

Mozrov Cave along with Arjer (meaning “Bear”) Cave and several others in the area are located in the Vayots Dzor province, in the southern part of Armenia, located near the village of Areni, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Yerevan. A great way to enjoy the region is to stay at the Areni Wine Art Bed and Breakfast (options for lunch and dinner) with some of the tastiest home-cooked food in all of Armenia.  Its knowledgeable owner, David Simonyan is always eager to lead sightseeing and hiking trips in the area.

Mozrov Cave along with Arjer Cave and several others in the area are located in the Vayots Dzor province (Photo: Carolyn Rapkievian)

Mozrov Cave

Vladimir Grigoryan, owner of DA Tours, provided hard-hats, head-lamps, and flashlights and we turned off the Yerevanyan Highway near the village of Arpi, crossed the Arpa River and ascended a dirt road to around 1560 meters with spectacular views of the valley along the way.

Vladimir Grigoryan, owner of DA Tours, provided hard-hats, head-lamps, and flashlights (Photo: H. Tadevosyan/AMAP)

Mozrov Cave was discovered in 1965 during road construction. The entrance partially collapsed due to heavy snowfall in 2012 but the cave is still accessible. This karst cave is about 300 meters in length and is one of Armenia’s most decorated caves.

Mozrov Cave was discovered in 1965 during road construction. (Photo: Carolyn Rapkievian)

We carefully descended, slipping under the protective tin plates covering the entrance and sliding down the dry, loose rubble.  We soon encountered flowstone, stalactites, stalagmites and columns, pristine popcorn, cave coral, active soda straws, bacon-rind, and draperies.  I was heartened to discover that there was very little evidence of vandalism or damage.  The cave is ideal for intermediate-level recreational cavers on their own and novice cavers with a guide.

Mozrov Cave (Photo: H. Tadevosyan, AMAP)

Mozrov Cave (Photo: H. Tadevosyan, AMAP)

Mozrov Cave (Photo: H. Tadevosyan, AMAP)

Mozrov Cave (Photo: H. Tadevosyan, AMAP)

Mozrov Cave (Photo: H. Tadevosyan, AMAP)

Mozrov Cave (Photo: H. Tadevosyan, AMAP)

Underground and Beyond

Many other caves in Armenia are known for their historic and prehistoric habitation and religious uses. Nearby, in the Areni-1 cave complex, archeologists discovered the world’s oldest known shoe (5,500 years old) and the world’s earliest-known (6,100 years old) wine making. The human remains, fermentation vats, a wine press, and storage jars clearly point to a sacred religious use of the cave.  Tourists are not allowed in the cave but are welcome to explore the ancient cave settlement of Khndzoresk, located near the town of Goris and UNESCO World Heritage Site Geghard, a medieval monastery carved out of a mountain cave with a sacred spring that still flows inside the ancient sanctuary.

in the Areni-1 cave complex, archeologists discovered the world’s oldest known shoe (5,500 years old) and the world’s earliest-known (6,100 years old) wine making. (Photo: Carolyn Rapkievian)

Many of the local wineries still practice the ancient Armenian tradition of wine-making and are happy to take visitors to see their underground cellars–and of course celebrate a great day of caving with a toast!

Many of the local wineries still practice the ancient Armenian tradition of wine-making. (Photo: Carolyn Rapkievian)

Holy Cross of Varag Day

In third century A.D. on Varag Mountain, on the south shore of Lake Van in Western Armenia, Saint Hripsime and her maidens were fleeing the persecution of Christians by the Byzantine Empire. There they hid a piece of the Holy Cross from the pursuing soldiers.  Later, in 650 AD, the fragment of the cross was found by the Armenian hermit Todik. To commemorate this event Catholicos Nerses proclaimed the nearest Sunday to Sept. 20 to be the Feast of the Holy Cross of Varag.

Varagavank, with staff and students, Western Armenia, pre-1915

In 981 a church was built on this holy site by the Artsruni rulers of Vaspurakan (Van region) and ultimately a monastery, Varagavank, was established there in the ninth century. Varagavank housed the holy relic of the cross. Periodically the monastery was destroyed by invaders and subsequently rebuilt, often thanks to the devotion of wealthy Armenians. Unruly Kurdish tribes on occasion would steal the treasures of Varagavank, including the fragment of the holy cross, and ransom them back to the Armenians. The relic of the cross was periodically moved for safety. For a period, it was housed at the Surb Khatch (Holy Cross) church on Akhtamar Island on Lake Van.

Entrance to Varagavank ruins, 2016 (Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

In the 13^th century, in the northern part of the territory of what now constitutes the Republic of Armenia, King David Kyurikian of the Tashir-Dzoraget district established a monastic complex. When Varagavank was threatened by invading Mongols in 1237, Varagavank’s Father Ghukas rescued the relic of the cross and other treasures, bringing them to the monastic complex established by the Kyurikians. Thus the monastic complex was subsequently renamed Nor Varagavank (“New Varagavank”) and the nearby village was renamed Varagavan.

Inside one of the remaining Varagavank churches, believed to be Church of Holy Cross, 2016 (Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

Varagavank played an important role in Armenian history. In the late 1800s Khrimian Hairig (1820-1907), one of Armenia’s most honored clerics, became the rector of Varagavank. Here he published a newspaper, Artziv Vaspurakan (Eagle of Vaspurakan), established a school and seminary, and advocated education for women. Khrimian Hairig led the Armenian delegation to the Congress of Berlin peace conference in 1878 where he attempted to champion Armenian rights. He lamented that, unlike the powerful European nations, the Armenian delegation did not have at its side Armenian officers with bloody swords hanging from their belts. He deplored Armenia’s weakness. In 1892 he was elected Catholicos.

Procession to Nor Varagavank, Varaga Surb Khach Or, 2016 (Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

In 1915, during the Armenian Genocide, Varagavank was nearly completely destroyed with only shells of a few of the buildings remaining. The late Archbishop Mesrob Ashjian worked with the local Muslim cleric to ensure that what remains of Varagavank would not be destroyed.

Every year, on the day before Holy Cross of Varaga Day, the relic of the cross is brought from Echmiadzin, its current home, to Nor Varagavank*. That evening clerics post an all-night vigil. The following day a procession, lead by the relic of the cross, proceeds up the small hill to Nor Varagavank where Holy Cross of Varaga Day is celebrated.

Varaga Surb Khach Or, celebration of Holy Cross of Varag Day, Nor Varagavank, 2016 (Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

As we were leaving Varagavan, there appeared a distant view of the monastery from a vineyard at the edge of the village. I walked into the vineyard to take a photograph. The sweet aroma from fresh, ripening grapes was intense. The family which owned the vineyard, having finished their lunch break, were back picking grapes. I was invited to some of the remaining food, with a couple of glasses of very strong oghi. After thanking the family for their hospitality, I was handed a large bag of grapes. I sent grandfather of the family some photographs I took of him with his grandson, the women of the family having declined to be photographed.

Grandfather and grandson, vineyard, Varagavan village, Tavush province (Photo: Hovsep Daghdigian)

***

*Thanks to the financial support of Mr. Norayr Khachatryan, the owner of the Ideal System chain of stores in Armenia, the partial renovation of Nor Varagavank was accomplished during the past 5-6 years.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

“Turkey’s president wants to purge Western words from its language,” reported The Economist on June 15.

[Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s] latest purge has a more abstract target. Mr. Erdoğan wants to rid Turkish of unsightly Western loan-words. Turkey faces a mortal threat from foreign “affectations”, Mr Erdoğan declared on May 23rd. “Where do attacks against cultures and civilisations begin? With language.” Mr. Erdoğan started by ordering the word “arena”, which reminded him of ancient Roman depravity, removed from sports venues across the country.

Hagop Martayan, or Agop Dilaçar, was the first Secretary General and head specialist of the state-funded Turkish Language Institution (Türk Dil Kurumu, TDK) founded in 1932 in Ankara.

In 2014, Erdoğan had proposed introducing mandatory high school classes in Ottoman Turkish.

During the six centuries of the Ottoman Empire, the language in which laws, religious texts, and literature were written was called the Ottoman language. It was written in Arabic script and extensively used Arabic and Persian words.

The Turkish Republic, founded in 1923, took on a challenging task: creating a new language to be written in Latin script. Doing so would require a lot of work and imagination. Researchers developed new grammar rules, invented new Turkish words, and borrowed words from Western as well as other languages. And that language became the Turkish language the people in Turkey speak today.

“Who helped redesign the way an entire nation would write and express itself?” asks The 100 Years, 100 Facts Project. “None other than one Hagop Martayan.”

Hagop Martayan, or Agop Dilaçar, was the first Secretary General and head specialist of the state-funded Turkish Language Institution (Türk Dil Kurumu, TDK) founded in 1932 in Ankara. He worked as a professor of Turkish at Ankara University between 1936 and 1951. He also was the head adviser of the Turkish Encyclopedia between 1942 and 1960. He wrote books and articles on the Turkish language. Beside his mother tongue, Armenian, he knew English, Ottoman, Azeri, Uighur, Latin, Greek, German, Russian, and Bulgarian.

He devoted most of his life and his entire career to developing Turkish and uplifting Kemalist ideals—including the irrational and unscientific “Sun Language Theory,” which claimed that Turkish was the language from which all civilized languages derived. According to this theory, all human languages could essentially be traced back to Turkic roots.

In an article about Martayan’s life (“The Good Child of the Republic: Hagop Martayan or A. Dilaçar”), Levent Özata, a journalist with the newspaper Agos, writes that Martayan was sent to the Caucasian front to fight as an Ottoman soldier during WWI. After the war, Martayan held various positions, including principal of an Armenian school in Beirut, Lebanon, and then a lecturer of Turkish and Uighur in Sofia, Bulgaria. But when the newly formed Turkish state decided to invent a new language in the 1930s, Martayan’s life changed course.

With his articles on the Turkish language, Martayan had attracted the attention of the authorities. But he had been denationalized, stripped of citizenship; he was wandering around with a certificate documenting his statelessness. He was allowed to enter Turkey as “a special guest of Mustafa Kemal, the first president of Turkey, to develop the Turkish language.

With the founding of the new republic, the political leaders of Turkey accelerated the process of forced Turkification through several policies that targeted the non-Muslim and non-Turkish citizens of the country.” The historian Rıfat Bali writes:

Another indication of being Turkified was to Turkify names and surnames. The Law of Family Names accepted in 1934 made mandatory for everybody to take a family name. However, the law prevented the adoption of names of tribes, foreign races and nations as family names. The Greeks of Turkey would Turkify their names by dropping the “-dis” and “-poulos” suffixes. Most of the Jews would Turkify their names and surnames by finding a Turkish equivalent for each Jewish name.

And it was Mustafa Kemal who suggested Martayan’s surname, Dilaçar [literally, “one who opens up the tongue (or language)”; perhaps better translated as “language-giver”] because of his contributions to Turkish after the promulgation of the Law of Family Names.

Yalçın Yusufoğlu, a journalist, politician, and author, wrote that his mother, who worked as a primary school teacher between 1926 and 1970, said “Professor Agop was one of those who taught us Turkish. He was the professor of professors.”

Martayan held his position and continued his research in linguistics at the TDK until his death on September 12, 1979, in Istanbul. Yet, despite his contributions, Martayan’s death once again showed the insane levels of Armenophobia in Turkey. His hard work, his loyalty to the Turkish government, and even his turning a blind eye to the persecution of his own people did not pay off, for he was still an Armenian—the identity that Turkey tried to annihilate in 1915.

Upon his death, he was treated like a second-class citizen without a name. The TDK, for which he had toiled for decades, published a note of condolence on newspapers in which his full name was censored, written as “A. Dilaçar.”

Even when government authorities attempted to “award” him, they hid his Armenian name. “There is a street named after him in the Şişli town of Istanbul: ‘A. Dilaçar Street’ (‘A. Dilaçar Sokağı’),” Özata reported.

Turkish journalists also joined the chorus and concealed his name. Yusufoğlu wrote an article describing how all Turkish newspapers—other than Gerçek (The Truth), the daily that Yusufoğlu worked for at the time—censored the name Agop:

It was September of 1979. That evening, those watching the main news bulletin of the TRT [state-funded Turkish Radio and Television Corporation] learnt that ‘Adil Açar’ was dead. No one listening to the news report had heard that name. They learnt from the TRT that the said person had contributed to the Turkish language, was one of the former officials of the Turkish Language Institution and would be laid to rest on the scheduled day.

The next day we learnt from newspapers that the name of the scholar was not ‘Adil Açar’. The announcement that the TDK got published on newspapers referred to the deceased as ‘A. Dilaçar’. it did not mention at what mosque the funeral would be held and at what cemetery he would be buried. Moreover, all newspaper reports covered it saying ‘A. Dilaçar has died’. The [state-funded] Anadolu Ajansı (Anatolian Agency/AA) also covered it in the same fashion. And none of the newspapers later made a correction, either out of ignorance or to follow the official jargon. In brief, the deceased had no name or last name.

Agop’s full name is not written even on the cover of his biography, published by the Turkish Language Institution, to which he dedicated his entire career. Instead, it is written as “A. Dilaçar.”

Martayan was not the only Armenian linguist who researched and developed Ottoman and/or modern Turkish. The researcher Yaşar Şimşek listed some of them, as follows: Edvard Vladimiroviç Sevortyan, Pars Tuğlacı (Parseh Tuğlaciyan), Kevork Pamukciyan, Lazar Zaharoviç Budagov, Artin Hindoghlou (Hintliyan), Bedros Keresteciyan, Karekin Deveciyan, Anton Tıngır, Krikor Sinapyan, Armenak Bedevyan, Bedros Zeki Garabedyan, Cosimo Comidas de Carbognano (Kömürciyan).

Another Armenian linguist from Turkey, Sevan Nişanyan, who is one of the leading intellectuals and authors in the country, has been jailed since 2014 on trumped-up charges against him.

Turkish curricula at schools does not mention even the name of Martayan or any other Armenian intellectual. For teaching Turkish children about Armenians who made massive cultural and intellectual contributions to their homeland could lead to some “unwanted” consequences for the Turkish government.

Children have curious minds. A Turkish child who has not been brainwashed by official Turkish propaganda could well ask “dangerous” questions even if taught a little bit about the Armenians: Since when have Armenians been living in Asia Minor? Was there a time when they were the majority? Or have they always been a tiny minority as they are today? How many Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire? Besides Martayan, who were the other famous Armenians? And what has happened to all those hundreds of thousands of Armenians? Where have they disappeared?

Teaching Turkish children about real Armenians with real stories—not lies about Armenians as “treacherous enemies” who tried to destroy Ottoman Turkey and who thus deserved to get “neutralized”—could help Turkish children develop humane bonds with and fraternal feelings for the Armenian people.

Of course, such questions would greatly challenge the status quo for the Turkish government. And intellectual dissent—no matter where it comes from—is what the Turkish government detests and punishes most severely.

Moreover, recognizing and respecting Armenian people are not what the founding fathers of the Turkish Republic have taught their Turkish citizens. Ataturk, who gave Martayan his Turkish last name, is quoted as having said on March 16, 1923, in a speech to the Adana Turkish Merchant Society: “The Armenians have no right whatsoever in this beautiful country. Your country is yours, it belongs to Turks. This country was Turkish in history; therefore it is Turkish and it shall live on as Turkish to eternity…. Armenians and so forth have no rights whatsoever here. These bountiful lands are deeply and genuinely the homeland of the Turk.”

The etymology of Turkish words is not what matters in a country that still has much bigger, more serious moral and ethical issues to tackle. The words that Turks use might well be rooted in Arabic, Persian, French, English, or—God forbid—Armenian, Greek, or Kurdish. What matters is the need to face the pathological racism and bigotry in Turkey that have concealed the Armenian name of the linguist who helped create the modern Turkish language.

Special for the Armenian Weekly 

WRIGHTWOOD, Calif. (A.W.)—Students and young professionals, 26 in all, gathered at AYF Camp in Wrightwood, Calif., on June 29 for the third annual Hamazkayin ArtLinks, a four-day arts retreat organized by the Hamazkayin Western Region, Eastern Region, and Canada regional boards.

The program consisted of five workshops run by experienced thought leaders, all tied to exploring Armenian identity through various lenses: literature, self-reflection, culture, music, and dance.

ArtLinks participants and organizers with author Chris Bohjalian

The workshops, meals, and free-time activities were planned to foster friendship among youth participants and engender an appreciation of the Armenian arts, as part of a greater effort to establish an open environment for deeper dialogue on a modern definition of what it means to be Armenian.

“ArtLinks was a truly special, immersive experience that I look forward to participating in again.” said Elia Bilemjian, a first-time participant from Los Angeles. “In addition to the free-spirited, unadulterated fun, it created an environment conducive to important dialogue about forward-looking Armenian-related topics that are not typically covered in mainstream narratives.”

“As we dissected Armenian identity, the conversation covered how there is no one-size-fits-all checklist and what the seemingly ubiquitous Armenian spirit is even supposed to be or represent,” Bilemjian added.

Program Introduction

The agenda officially began on Friday. After breakfast, program director Khatchig Mouradian offered introductory remarks. He welcomed all the participants to ArtLinks and laid out the objective of the weekend: a spirited exploration of Armenian culture and identity. He thanked the Hamazkayin regional boards for their dedication to youth engagement, and he encouraged the participants to get to know one another and the thought leaders over the course of the weekend.

After breakfast, program director Khatchig Mouradian offered introductory remarks. (Photo: Lori Elagoz)

Mouradian remarked that ArtLinks is one vehicle for ensuring that critical discussions surrounding Armenian culture, a cornerstone of the global Armenian nation, occur. Through such discussions, one can actualize the importance of culture in calling one’s self an Armenian, and ultimately, help further the Armenian Cause.

Mouradian, a scholar and frequent visitor to Western Armenia, also commented on a recent trip he made to the historic homeland just a few days prior to the retreat. He shed light on the “hidden Armenians”—Islamized Armenians living in the Republic of Turkey who have recently discovered and are coming to terms with their Armenian roots. These individuals, he said, often have much more difficulty engaging with the Armenian culture in light of the current structures of Turkish society, and that we should be aware of and open to embracing them as fellow Armenians.

The program consisted of five workshops run by experienced thought leaders, all tied to exploring Armenian identity through various lenses: literature, self-reflection, culture, music, and dance. (Photo: Lori Elagoz)

Mouradian is the Nikit and Eleanora Ordjanian Visiting Professor at Columbia University. Since 2014, he has taught courses on imperialism, mass violence, human rights, concentration camps, urban space and conflict in the Middle East, and collective memory in the history and sociology departments at Rutgers University, California State University—Fresno, and Worcester State University.

Creative Writing

The workshops opened with a session on literature, led by renowned novelist Chris Bohjalian. He spoke about his journey of becoming a young writer in New York City, walked participants through his process of writing novels, reviewed storytelling mechanics, and led a writing exercise involving the May 16 attack on peaceful protesters outside the Turkish embassy in Washington, D.C.

The workshops opened with a session on literature, led by renowned novelist Chris Bohjalian. (Photo: Lori Elagoz)

Bohjalian spoke about his experience of working in advertising while submitting dozens of story concepts before finally selling his first novel and going on to write widely popular books, including Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls. He encouraged the retreat participants to genuinely not give up on their passions, despite seemingly insurmountable odds. An elegant and thoughtful speaker, Bohjalian recounted humorous anecdotes from the U.S. book tour of his most recent novel, The Sleepwalker, and walked participants through a day of novel-writing in his world, which includes but is not limited to, waking up early to start, watching movie trailers, and biking through the Vermont countryside for inspiration.

Bohjalian highlighted the influence of his interest in suspense and dread, and his Armenian heritage, in his writing—particularly in his novels The Guestroom and The Sandcastle Girls, respectively. For the latter, he credited Khatchig Mouradian for assisting him with ensuring historical accuracy and in physically exploring Western Armenia numerous times.

The workshop ended with a discussion on the importance of choice in writing, as related to devices such as character selection and perspective (first, second, third), and tense (past, present, future). These factors can be manipulated in various ways, often resulting in varying experiences for a reader, all depending on the motives of the author. To conduct this exercise, Bohjalian prompted the participants with the following phrase: “a group of black SUVs stops in front of the Turkish embassy.” The participants were tasked with opening a short story about the recent protest attacks with complete autonomy over character selection, perspective, and tense. The result was a wide variety of narratives: some from the perspective of protestors, others from a third-person omniscient perspective, some from the attackers’ point of view, and even one from that of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. All, however, provided commentary on the severity and relative lack of accountability for the attacks.

The participants realized the power of author’s choice in literature, and thanked Bohjalian for leading a captivating discussion.

Razmig Sarkissian, a participant from Los Angeles, commented: “Not often enough does a room full of young Armenians collectively discuss…or engages in candid conversations about the importance of authenticity in storytelling, but that’s exactly what we did during Chris Bohjalian’s ArtLinks writing workshop.

“Meeting Bohjalian and hearing him share his experiences as an author and how much hard work it took to become successful, reaffirmed for me that those of us who love writing aren’t alone, and that our creative aspirations to one day write novels, or screenplays, or poetry can be realized.

“It really feels like we are a part of an emerging moment in Armenian-American media, literature, and culture, and experiences like ArtLinks are an exciting and meaningful way to energize and awaken the potential of this moment we are in.”

Bohjalian is the author of 19 books, most of them New York Times bestsellers. His works have been translated into more than 30 languages, and three times they have been adapted to film. His books have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Hartford Courant, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Bookpage, and Salon. His novel Midwives was a number-one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah’s Book Club, and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick.

Who Is an Armenian?

After lunch, Nanore Barsoumian led the second workshop of the day on difficult conversations surrounding identity. Employing an interactive discussion medium, Barsoumian challenged the group to think introspectively and respond to one another when answering questions like “What is identity?” and “What does it mean to be Armenian?” This set the stage for an engaging conversation on identity.

A lively discussion during a workshop led by Nanore Barsoumian

Referencing the current reality of half, Islamized, and non-Armenian-speaking Armenians, the group deconstructed the notion of a single definition of a “true Armenian.” Rather, through constructive discussion, participants challenged that concept with thoughts on how Armenian identity is fluid and ever-changing, especially today.

One activity during the workshop exemplified this notion. Barsoumian requested that all participants write seven words or phrases that make up their “identity,” and then asked them to eliminate four from the total. The resulting three identity markers for each person ranged in priority on geographic location, citizenship, religion, age, gender, sex, ethnicity, career, etc. Despite their differences, the participants still knew that they were connected in their common connection to the same Armenian spirit and were comfortable with that reality. They concluded that one can self-define connection to the Armenian nation—whether through language, dance, music, arts, history, place of residence, occupation, or membership in certain organizations—without concern over judgement from others. An individual can genuinely “be Armenian” simply by consciously using one of the aforementioned paths, as opposed to having to necessarily ascribe to all. Such a framework opens up the notion of “being Armenian” to be more inclusive, dynamic, and able to interact with other cultures.

“Barsoumian’s discussion, which allowed us the opportunity to explore and unpack identity, confirmed how fluid and multifaceted Armenian identity is,” commented Carla Kekejian, a participant hailing from Los Angeles. “The aspects that make up our individual identities, including our Armenian identities, are unique and ever-changing, and cannot be segmented in columns of right or wrong, good or bad.”

Barsoumian is a graduate student in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB). She was the editor of the Armenian Weekly from 2014 to 2016. Prior to that, she served as assistant editor, from 2010 to 2014. She has reported from Armenia, Artsakh, Javakhk, and Turkey. Barsoumian holds a graduate certificate in Conflict Resolution, and a BA in English and Political Science from UMB. She serves on the Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society’s U.S. Eastern Region Executive Board.

The day waned into the night with dinner, swimming, music, and dance. The participants, speakers, and Hamazkayin leaders also celebrated the birthday of Manoug Joukhajian, a chief ArtLinks organizer, around the campfire. Joukhajian warmly shared words of appreciation and joy over the growth of program over the past three years.

The Status and the Future of Armenian Culture

On Saturday, artist and author Vahe Berberian led the first workshop of the day, centered on Armenian culture. Building on themes discussed at the beginning of the weekend, Berberian reflected on his life growing up in Lebanon and traveling throughout Europe before realizing that his Armenian identity had always been a benefit for him in terms of informing his worldview on art, literature, and film. “It gave me a creative ‘edge’ when interacting with other cultures, and I have always found pleasure in being Armenian,” he said.

Artist Vahe Berberian leading a discussion with ArtLinks participants on culture and identity

This set the stage for an engaging discussion during which participants responded to one another as they dug deep into the current status and future of Armenian culture. One theme was that genocide-inspired art, dance, and music often dominate the conversation of culture. Some participants noted how, although it is very important to be mindful of commemoration and advocacy efforts, this sometimes can prevent new exploration of culture or interaction with non-Armenian cultures.

Another discussion point was the Armenian language, and the frequent judgement that comes with speaking “broken” or no Armenian at all. Participants agreed that people should be free to pursue their own dialect of the language to the best of their abilities when exploring their identity, without feeling pressure from their peers concerning mastery of the language. The role and administration of education in Armenian private schools and Saturday schools were pinpointed as areas where efforts should be made to address this.

One participant crafted a metaphor of comparing culture to a discrete fruit preserve housed in a jar. In the jar, a culture, along with all its traditions, pastimes, and memories can live. And this approach is understandable: The Armenian people have endured genocide, forced refugeedom, purges, and creative repression due to their identity, leading one to comprehend the current emphasis on preserving traditions. Although it is integral to remember the past, honor our ancestors, and maintain traditions, if the jar is left unopened, the culture can remain stagnant. It may become unable to dynamically interact with the rest of the world and thrive. According to some participants, “opening the jar” (in this case, pushing the boundaries of the current definition of Armenian culture) would allow for the culture to grow to, for example, simultaneously honor genocide victims through art while also providing for pathways to explore new themes of art, music, and literature, and interactions with non-Armenians.

Bilemjian noted how he “appreciated how Berberian brought up something that we rarely see any more in the Diaspora: the interest of Armenians with varying dialects making an effort to learn each other’s unique vocabularies instead of carelessly switching to English.”

Reflecting on Berberian’s workshop, Astghik Aprahamian, a Montreal-based participant, remarked, “We furthered our discussions about identity for Armenians with diasporan communities. What became evident is that each individual lives their identity differently: For some, it’s taking an active part in Armenian organizations; for others, it might be more personal, like reading Armenian literature or listening to Armenian music. What became evident through our discussion, though, is the dangers of solely focusing on preservation, which can completely paralyze a culture, and prevent it from creating anything new.”

Born in Beirut, Berberian has been living in the United States for 40 years. With five one-man shows, Berberian has established himself as the leading Armenian monologist. His material is funny, witty, and rich with observations on the Armenian condition. Berberian is the author of numerous plays, including Pink Elephant and Gyank, two novels that have been published in three languages, and over a dozen movie scripts. He is also a prolific painter and has had numerous exhibitions all over the United States and abroad.

Music as a Vehicle for Culture

Following lunch, Ara Dabandjian continued the weekend’s dive into culture that had begun during Berberian’s workshop, but through the lens of music. Dabandjian recounted his experiences of being introduced to the Armenian community in Lebanon as an adolescent, later discovering his passion for music, and then founding Element Band to advance Armenian music. Through Element Band and its at-times intersecting jazz, tango, and rock themes with Armenian folk tunes, Dabandjian found a way to entice a wide variety of international audiences to appreciate Armenian music.

Musician Ara Dabandjian of Element Band leading a workshop on music

The group discussed what constitutes “Armenian music”—whether it is solely defined by Armenian lyrics, instruments, and melodies. Furthermore, participants brought up how Armenian instruments and tunes have been appropriated by other cultures, which we should be aware of. One participant commented on the inherent political nature of music, implying how it can be used as a tool to share widely received messages and, therefore, further the Armenian Cause—an example being Armenian music performed by the likes of Onnik Dinkjian in Western Armenia. Another participant commented on the rise of new, young Armenian musicians, including Tigran Hamasyan and Bei Ru, who both marry traditional Armenian melodies with newer forms of jazz, electronic, and classical music genres. Such musicians, the group discussed, can help modern Armenian culture grow and meaningfully contribute to the greater global conversation on music.

Bilemjian commented that the workshop deeply resonated with him, considering his fascination with Armenian music. “The type of music that Dabandjian particularly focused on, and that I often listen to, is often neglected: oud-heavy Western Armenian music, sometimes with Ottoman flavors,” Bilemjian said. “We had a sincere discussion about the stigma surrounding this ‘Turkish-sounding’ music and Turkish culture in general. A key realization was that we should break boundaries and reject the guilt behind the pleasure in consuming cultural material that has drawn heavily from our heritage in addition to that of the other indigenous communities of the Anatolian region.”

Dabandjian is best known for founding the popular, Los Angeles-based, folk ensemble Element Band. His compositions and musical arrangements have garnered multiple awards. Dabandjian’s compositions deliver unique expression of folk-fusion by incorporating deft instrumentation, lush vocal harmonies, and rich multi-ethnic musical styles that have landed him at prominent stages around the globe. His compositions are credited in several theatrical productions, including Tim Robbins’s “Actors’ Gang,” Academy Award winner Alex Dinelaris’s “Red Dog Howls,” Dr. J. Michael Hagopian’s “The River Ran Red,” and multiple scores for motion pictures and documentaries.

Following Dabandjian’s workshop, Hamazkayin regional board members, including Manoug Joukhajian and Zvig Guedikian, thanked the workshop thought leaders with words of appreciation and gifts. After dinner, participants not only danced and sang the night away but also continued, into the early hours of the morning, the ongoing conversations surrounding identity and their own roles in the community as young Armenians.

Commenting on the camaraderie established at every ArtLinks retreat, Helena Bardakjian, a two-time participant from Detroit, MI, said, “ArtLinks is something much larger than a four-day event! When you leave ArtLinks, you walk away with not only thoughts that encourage you to take another look and examine how you view the world and the Armenian community, but you also become a part of a tight-knit network of young professionals from a variety of different fields and experiences.”

Culture Through Dance

On Sunday, Taleen Mardirossian led the closing workshop on Armenian dance. Reflecting on her own experience of growing up with dance at family gatherings, Mardirossian helped the participants realize that through this medium Armenians not only maintain traditions passed on from previous generations but also genuinely connect with other Armenians from all over the world. Thus, dance can play a key role in the life of the greater Armenian community.

On Sunday, Taleen Mardirossian led the closing workshop on Armenian dance.

The group started by practicing “shoorchbar” fundamentals, led by Mardirossian, and gradually added steps from the “papuri,” “msho khr,” and “mayroke,” among others. By the end of the workshop, the entire group was passionately moving in synchrony to the beat of the “dhol” on the loudspeaker—pinkies interlocked and lyrics proudly recited.

Reflecting on Mardirossian’s workshop, Los Angeles-based participant Lori Kassabian said, “Armenian folk dance is one of my favorite things to engage with, and it is such a beautiful way to connect with Armenian culture. It was an amazing experience to get together with young Armenians from all over the continent and dance these dances that have existed in our culture for centuries.”

Mardirossian is an attorney from Los Angeles, pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Columbia University. A descendant of Sassoun, the land of those whose dances exude the kind of passion that could move mountains, she is a proud inheritor of “yarkhushta” and “msho khr.”

Goodbyes and Reflections

As the participants departed from AYF Camp on Sunday, they affirmed their commitment to staying in touch with one another and continuing the discussions that began during the retreat, and they thanked the Hamazkayin regional boards for organizing the logistics of a wonderful weekend.

A group of participants (Photo: Lori Elagoz)

They noted and appreciated how, although the discussions originated in different topic areas, they all naturally gravitated toward the same conversation on identity—on what it means to be a young Armenian today.

They realized that a consensus of who a “true” Armenian is was not reached because it is virtually impossible to objectively pinpoint the way to be a “true” Armenian: It is open to personal interpretation. The fruitful conversations led to an understanding that the definition of being Armenian is broader and more dynamic than previous generations have conceived it. No matter the sex, creed, religion, mastery of language, citizenship, career, or organizational membership of a person, so long as a conscious, personal effort to be Armenian through any medium is pursued, a genuine connection—and, therefore, contribution—to the culture and greater community is made.

“The rapidly established and intimate connections were reminiscent of my time in Birthright Armenia, as we were all on the same page and possessed a common passion for our collective future as a people,” Bilemjian said.

“Being Armenian, with all its imperfections and difficulties, is such a beautiful, exciting, resilient, and colorful thing; and that feeling, basically of how unbelievably cool it is to be Armenian, was flourishing at ArtLinks,” commented Kekejian. “Beyond the organized discussions, getting to talk, dance, dream, joke, and create with Armenian youth from across the country and Canada was truly magical.”

The next Hamazkayin ArtLinks retreat is tentatively set to be held in the eastern United States. More details concerning the event will be announced in due course.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

The Museum Resource Center in Washington D.C. hosted a reception on June 15 in honor of my father, Bedros Sevadjian, jeweler and silversmith “By Appointment to His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia” (see “Jeweler to an Emperor: Bedros A. Sevadjian (1918-1977)“).

There, at long last, we saw the beautiful silver wreath he had made for the Emperor in 1963. In October of that year, during a state visit to the United States, Haile Selassie I laid the unique silver wreath at the Lincoln Memorial, on the National Mall in Washington D.C., as a tribute to abolitionist U.S. president Abraham Lincoln.

Bedros A. Sevadjian with the finished silver wreath, 1963 (Photo: The Family of Bedros Sevadjian)

A year ago, I was introduced to retired Marines Nanci and Eric Visser, who live in Alexandria, Va., outside Washington D.C. They had been posted to Ethiopia in the mid-’70s, and during that time they had formed a deep friendship with my father. The Vissers and I instantly formed a great rapport and bond.

Needless to say, my father was the subject of many conversations between us. In discussions about my father’s work, I mentioned the wreath that was somewhere in the possession of the U.S. government. Nanci immediately volunteered to look for it. Just a few days later, she confirmed that Eric had found it: It was stored at the Museum Resource Center.

Conservation details (Photo: Matt Andrea)

Not only that, but Museum Resource Center Director Bob Sonderman and Museum Curator of the National Mall and Memorial Parks Laura Andersen had immediately invited Nanci and Eric to visit and to see the wreath. Apparently, the silver was a bit tarnished and some of the leaves were bent, but otherwise it was fine. To my surprise and delight, Bob and Laura undertook to restore the wreath so that it could be readied for display in the future.

Of course, I very much wanted to see it for myself, as did my brother and sisters when I told them about it. I suggested we might all travel to Washington to see it, and then decided it would be great to hold a small reception so that others who were interested could also see it.

R.P. Sevadjian with Nanci and Eric Visser (Photo: Matt Andrea)

The project snowballed, and we eventually held our reception. His Imperial Highness Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie Haile Selassie, grandson of the Emperor, honored us with his presence. Friends came from Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Montreal; my cousin Ada Soaper flew in from Los Angeles, my brother Phillip from Hawaii, my sisters Jeanine and Anaïs and I from the U.K.

New friends and old friends came together to admire a remarkable work of art that is so important historically—a symbol of the longstanding ties between the United States and Ethiopia, as well as the ties that bind Ethiopians and the Armenians who were once an important part of their society.

H.I.H. Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie (Photo: Matt Andrea)

Lij Abiye Abebe, Ada Soaper, H.I.H. Prince Ermias, Jeanine Gulvanessian, R.P. Sevadjian, Phillip Sevadjian, Anaïs Cooper, and Solomon Kibriye (Photo: Matt Andrea)

The wreath itself exceeded all expectation. For although I had seen old black and white photos of it, I had no concept of the sheer size and beauty of it. Fully 580 Maria Theresa thalers were melted down to make it. It is about two and a half feet tall and weighs almost 14 kilograms. The wreath is in the form of two long stems of Ethiopian Tsegereda roses (Rosa Abyssinica), tied together at the base in a bow. A plaque bears an inscription in English and Amharic. In English, it reads as follows:

All men who cherish freedom and equality as the most precious of
God’s gifts owe a vast debt to Abraham Lincoln, whose life and deeds
Gave eloquent expression to his belief that men of all races and creeds
Would one day live together in harmony and brotherhood. We express
Our admiration for this great man and pay tribute to him and to the
Principles for which he stood.

Haile Selassie I
Emperor of Ethiopia

The restored wreath (Photo: Jeanine Gulvanessian)

Detail (Photo: Jeanine Gulvanessian)

Gay Vitzke, superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, Bob Sonderman, and Laura Andersen made it possible for us to host the special viewing of this unique piece of history.

The Museum staff and H.I.H. Prince Ermias.

Phillip Sevadjian (Photo: Matt Andrea)

The wreath had been displayed for some time at the Lincoln Memorial after the Emperor’s visit, but eventually it was removed for safekeeping. It then disappeared from public consciousness as history took its course. The Kennedy assassination, the tumult of the Civil Rights Movement, and the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 intervened, and the wreath became a memory, its image surfacing only in old newsreels.

This wonderful artifact has now been preserved and will be kept in top condition for years to come. We hope it will be displayed from time to time. It is an example of how different communities can come together to share a beautiful legacy.

***

With thanks to Solomon Kibriye.