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Home , Armenians in Istanbul, Hrant Dink

Rubina Peroomian, UCLA, [email protected]

"Truth is Not Only Violated by Falsehood; it May be Equally Outraged by Silence" or The Suppression of the Memory of the Armenian in

Beginning from the inception of the Turkish Republic, the CUP (Committee of Union and Progress, also known as the Young Turk party) policy of resumed full force and was implemented upon ethnic and religious minorities, among them the Armenian remnants of the 1915 Genocide. The Armenian cultural revival in , between 1918 and 1923, was cut short by the encroachment of the Kemalist army and Mustafa Kemal’s eventual control over the entire country. The CUP ideology of “Turkey for the Turks only” was revived but camouflaged by a less threatening and inherently more inciting notion of “One Nation, One Language, One Religion!” The goal was achieved not only by impositions on the Republic’s infrastructural domains, especially the educational system and media, but also by the implementation of special laws and regulations, such as the abolition of non-Turkish surnames in 1934,1 denying , among others, who could claim Armenianness by a name that related to their ancestors. This was followed by the 1942 wealth tax (varlik vergisi), extreme and disproportionate taxation levied on non-Muslims, stripping them of their belongings, driving them out of business. The 1955 pogroms, 6-7 September, against Greeks spreading over Armenians as well, was another show of intolerance against non-Muslim ethnic minorities. The policy of Turkification was accelerated by the 1960s campaign highlighting the 1928 slogan “Fellow citizen, speak Turkish! (Vatandaş, Türkçe Konuş!) prohibiting the use of any language but Turkish.2

1 Even before the promulgation of The Law on Surnames, No. 2525, June 21, 1934, which prohibited surname suffixes denoting a minority ethnic identity, non-Muslims chose to change their surnames to avoid discrimination and harassment in schools and in the society as their names betrayed their ethnic identities. Changing of surnames, voluntarily or forcibly under the law, did not, however, prevent the discrimination and persecution. 2 Significantly, beginning in 1965, the State Institute of Statistics omitted the question from the census concerning a person’s mother tongue, the presumption being that Turkish is the only mother tong in the country with no other option.

1 Conversion to Islam, forced or voluntary, was always an open option for minorities to escape ongoing discrimination, harassments, and persecutions —most of the times unrewarding however. Another option was to leave everything and get out. In any case, the winner was the process of homogenization of the Turkish society and the forging of Turkish national identity, idealized in a society of Turkish citizens across the Republic of Turkey whose language was Turkish and whose religion was Islam. The policy of forced Turkification was coupled with the suppression of the memory of the pre-Republican era which signified, on the one hand, the enforcement of a nationalistic and selective historiography and educational policy to achieve a prescribed Turkish national identity for all; on the other hand, it portended a conspicuous Silence over the atrocities committed against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Speaking or writing about this subject became a taboo, a punishable transgression. This Silence was enforced both on the Armenian community, mainly in ,3 and on the Turkish society at large. Unable to speak and write freely and to express the lasting pain of the recent past, refrained from speaking out or writing at all. They were always cautious to stay within the boundaries of tolerated ethnic expressions. In my latest work,4 I have shown the alternative literary direction chosen by Turkish-Armenian literati to be that of universalism, singing the love, hope, dreams, yearnings, pains and sufferings of mankind and the struggle for equality and justice in this unjust world. The county’s tight censorship, however, did not tolerate even these expressions of universal dimension. Armenian writers along with their Turkish counterparts, modernized intellectuals struggling for the realizations of a freedom and justice in Turkey, were persecuted as leftist elements.

3 Istanbul became the only locale in Turkey where Armenian life still persisted. This occurred gradually as the survivors of the were not allowed to return to their hometowns and villages; then, in the 1930s by the orders of Mustafa Kemal another wave of deportation drove Armenians out of the interior of the country; and again, as living in the hostile and discriminatory environment, surrounded by intolerant Turks and Kurds, forced Armenian remnants to leave their belongings and migrate abroad or to Istanbul. The successive governments of the Republic of Turkey were able to accomplish what the CUP had begun, and that is the cleansing of the Armenian element in the interior. 4 Rubina Peroomian, And those who Continued Living in Turkey after 1915, The Metamorphosis of the Post-Genocide Identity as Reflected in Artistic Literature, (Yerevan: Published by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, 2008).

2 In the sphere of education of Armenian youth in Istanbul, the Turkish government pursued a policy of control over the Armenian schools and their curricula, eliminating sensitive subjects such as Armenian history, especially history of the recent past, geography of historic , literature of nostalgia or patriotism. Using the name and speaking about the pre-Republican massacres and deportations of Armenians was not tolerated. The Government’s policy aimed at obstructing the transmission of historical memory from a generation to the other. However, this does not mean that the silence dominating public expression was not broken by an audacious teacher, or a parent at home, or by skilled writers and poets who circumvented direct expressions by using symbols and allusions, ambiguity and double meaning to let out their cries of suffering past and present. Hagop Mintzuri (1886 Armadan, Agn – 1978, Istanbul) describes his village and the thriving Armenian life before the War, as if to provoke the question, where are these Armenians now. He speaks of his own family, who were “driven away from their home” in 1915. Note the cautious way of putting it, instead of using the word exile or deportation. And this is in 1950s, after a long silence.5 Gourgen Terents (1888, Hajen – 1972, Istanbul) laments the impossibility of returning to his hometown and to the joys of his childhood. The subtle and hesitant echoes of pain, of nostalgia, and the cries for justice beginning in the late 1950s gradually gain momentum in Migirdic Margosyan's and later in 's writings. In a fairytale fashion, Margosyan (b.1938, Diyarbakir) tells the story of the kingdom of Aghajan Dayi, actually Aghajan’s house with many rooms rented out to Armenian families in the Khenchebek quarter of Tigranakert or the Gâvur Mahalle of Diyarbakir. These Armenians are all gone now, Margosyan notes, and other people live in their stead. The pomegranate and mulberry trees have dried up, and “We, the living remnants are yearning for our house, our pomegranate and mulberry trees and the shadow they used to cast.” 6 No mention of how and why they were gone!

5 Apparently, the memoirs of this old man and reminiscences of an old village published in Armenian papers did not arouse suspicion. They were for limited Armenian readers. Mintzuri’s works are only recently being translated into Turkish for the pre-war stories of Armenian life in Turkey to reach the Turkish audience. 6 This story was published in , an Istanbul Armenian newspaper, then as a collection of stories in Mer koghmere (In those places of ours) in 1984. The book was translated in Turkish and published in 1992, titled Gâvur Mahallesi. Margosyan has also published stories of the same genre in Turkish: “Söyle Margos

3 The imposition of Silence went smooth and uninhibited within the mainstream culture, education, and media. According to Ömer Türkeş, this was a result of the Turkish successive governments’ insisting on one and only one “national history,” in line with the official discourse, in which many socio-political issues were left out among them the Armenian issue. Indeed, Turkish writers have always been under pressure and dispossessed of their right to write history. The historical knowledge and the Turkish past for the generations of the Republican era began from 1923 with no awareness of the role or even existence of Armenians in the Turkish past history and culture. This phenomenon translated into silence in the Republican literature on the existence of Armenians as players and as a component of Turkish society; or it echoed at best in insignificant passing remarks. Moreover, the government policy of changing Armenian geographic names and the destruction of Armenian cultural and religious edifices throughout the country worked hand in hand with the enforcement of Silence over Armenian past and helped erase the memory of Armenians ever existing in the Turkish past. They were evidences of the Truth denied and had to be eliminated. In the atmosphere of government’s hostility and intolerance towards minorities and Armenians in particular, Armenian survivors of massacres and deportations were cautious not to speak about their traumatic experience and especially share them with their closest Turkish friends. That was the case in Constantinople which boasted having a cosmopolitan multiethnic, multi-religion society and a thriving cultural life. From the fear of discrimination and persecution and for the sake of the future of their offspring, Islamized Armenians as well as the many thousands of Armenian young women serving Muslims as servants, wives, concubines, or sex-slaves and thousands of orphans taken into Muslim households and Islamized kept silent. They tried in vein to forget their Armenian identity—name, language, and religion—and live with their new identities. Many took the secret to their graves; many entrusted that secret to a kin but never to be

Nerelisin” (Tell us Margos, where are you from, 1995), “Biletimiz Istanbula Kesildi” (Our ticket was to Istanbul, 1998), “Çengelliiğne” (Safety pin, 1999). I have discussed examples of post-WWI Istanbul Armenian literature, from Hagop Mintzuri to Gourgen Terents, A. Shavarsh, to Zahrat, Khrakhuni, Migirdic Margosyan, and others and their expressions of covert yearnings and the pain of the traumatic past in And those who Continued Living in Turkey after 1915.

4 revealed in public. The psychological pressure of a long-kept secret, a hidden truth, enveloped by a mysterious silence about the past impacted their personalities and their behavior as parents and members of the society and was transmitted. Muslim orphanages especially set up to gather young Armenian orphans were centers of renewed suffering and torture as a means to reach the goal of Turkification. Silencing their maternal tongue, eradicating that tongue and all the memories that came with it, was at the root of a false identity the Turkish government implanted within these young orphans. How many did risk escape to return to their true identity? How many, younger more vulnerable spent their purgatory in these orphanages to then live the rest of their lives as “true Moslems”? Horowitz (1976) believes that in order to recover from the effects of trauma, the survivor should give a meaning to his/her experience. For the survivors of a humongous traumatic event as genocide, it is not easy to judge rationally and find meaning, when he/she is confronted with indescribably severe human violence and the murder of the loved ones. Change of environment, new possibilities in life, community solidarity, and especially having the chance to speak about the trauma are ways to recover from the effects of the past experience. Collective remembrance, that is the coming together of the community in commemoration of the great loss which ceases to become individual and takes a collective character, can certainly prove therapeutic. These exercises were not unfamiliar to Jews who gathered in synagogues to mourn the national disasters throughout their history of suffering and dispersion. The exercise had a cathartic effect. All these elements and opportunities were more or less available for Armenian survivors in the Diaspora. However, even with all the healing processes available, total self coherence was not achieved. The rupture was impossible to mend. With the non existence of these conditions and the strong pressure of the cover called Silence in Turkey, recovery was not possible. The effects were not lifted. Forcibly Islamized Armenians, Turkified survivors, young women and children in Turkish households and orphanages, eventually absorbed in the Turkish society at large, pretended to live a normal life and adapt to the new environment and new identity, but the psychological scars were never healed. The chance of recovery was denied to them. The initial Silence in Turkish official narrative, textbooks, and media is broken. In fact, the Turkish government broke the Silence and lifted the heavy cover on the issue of

5 Armenian Genocide in the1970s to provide explanation, in its own way, to its own people why are the Diasporan Armenian youth groups gunning down Turkish diplomats and bombing Turkish institutions. To counteract against the escalating Armenian activities in international forums for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide coupled with armed struggle to draw public attention to the Armenian Cause, the Turkish government introduced another version of the national narrative to replace the old one in history books and in the media. Hulia Adak calls it the “Republican defensive narrative” to ward off the newly burgeoned propagation of the Armenian Cause and discussions on the Armenian Genocide in international media.7 Armenians as non existent elements in Turkish history were now presented as the evil-doers, traitors, and secessionists. With this initiative, Silence as the precursor, the culprit and adjunct to Falsification was shattered. However, not all Turks bought the new prescription on Turkish history. Turkey had opened up to European society, and Turkish progressive intellectuals, university students abroad or within the country began to cast a critical look at the formal national narrative and dig the pre-Republican past on their own. Their venture inevitably brought them face to face with the Armenian issue, and they began to explore and write about it. The theme of the Armenian past, thus, began to resonate in Turkish literature produced by progressive thinkers. In response, the government introduced the infamous Article 301 in the Turkish penal code in June of 2005 to punish those who dared to “insult Turkishness” and “denigrate Turkey” by speaking and writing especially about the Armenian issue. Hrant Dink was one of the most outspoken Turkish Armenian intellectuals in recent years who wrote and spoke freely on the Armenian issue in Turkey. His statement saying “I am not a Turk but an Armenian from Turkey,” that is, his claim to an identity other than a Turk, in a conference in Urfa, 2002, brought charges against him. Later on, he was prosecuted under Article 301for “denigrating Turkey” when during an interview he gave to the Reuter News Service in 2006 he called the events of 1915 genocide. His activities cost his life. He was assassinated by an ultranationalist youth on January 19, 2007 in front of his office, the newspaper , in Istanbul.8

7 Hulia Adak, “Identifying the ‘Internal Tumors’ of World War I” (2007). 8 Hrant Dink was the long-time editor-in-chief of Agos, a Turkish-Armenian bilingual newspaper that published articles on (Islamized Armenians who secretly practiced their traditional Christian religion) and those with Armenian blood running in the family (the offspring of an Armenian

6 In the past decades, as a result of the desperate but violent struggle of ultranationalists in Turkey to counteract the progressive movement, a revival of the old fascist slogan “love it or leave it” is in circulation. Turkey is ours, they declare, and you can leave if you are not happy with what it stands for. And if you do not behave, you will be prosecuted by article 301, regardless of your status in the international community, your fame and reputation. For Turkish ultranationalists, and for the government tacitly following their ideology, speaking about the Armenian issue is a path leading to the eventual recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and that is betraying Turkey. Whereas, for a growing number of Turkish historians, socio-political scientists, and activists, digging the Turkish past and confronting it is a path toward establishing the long overdue democracy in Turkey. This is not to say that they all support the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Turkish scholarship is not ready to unearth the Truth. The complex metamorphosis from Silence to Falsification has come to a dead end, and the new scholarship in faltering steps is trying to find new ways around dealing with the issue of the Armenian Genocide without calling the Truth by its name. The statement by Henri Frédéric Amiel, the 19th century Swiss philosopher, chosen as the title of this paper, conveys the essence of the path Turkish historiography and peripheral Turkish research and studies have taken in which the Truth was outraged by silence and is still violated by falsehood.

orphan or a young woman snatched away, bought, or “rescued” by a Turk, a Kurd, or an Arab during the Genocide. Hrant Dink was bold enough to reveal that Sabiha Gökçen, Mustafa Kemal’s adopted daughter, the first female military pilot and a Turkish national heroine, was Armenian brought up in a Turkish orphanage. The revelation caused a fury in Turkey, and Dink was bombarded with hate mail and threats to his life.

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