Speaking to One Another: Personal Memories of the Past in Armenia and Turkey
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Speaking to One Another: Personal Memories of the Past in Armenia and Turkey Wish they hadn’t left L E Y L A N EYZİ Whom to forgive? What to forgive? H R A N U S H K HARATYAN- A RAQELYAN Published by: Institut für Internationale Zusammenarbeit Des Deutschen Volkshochschul-Verbandes (dvv international) ISBN 978-3-88513-780-1 Project coordinators: Matthias Klingenberg, Vanya Ivanova, Nazaret Nazaretyan Editor (Turkey section): Liz Erçevik Amado Editor (Armenia section): Nouneh Dilanyan Translator from Armenian to English: Samvel Simonyan Design & Layout: Maraton Dizgievi Cover photo: © Parajanov Museum Yerevan Photographs (Turkey section): © Sibel Maksudyan Print: MAS Matbaacılık A.Ş. Hamidiye Mahallesi, Soğuksu Caddesi, No: 3 Kağıthane-İstanbul-Türkiye +90 212 294 10 00 • [email protected] Opinions expressed in papers published under the names of individual authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Pub- lisher and editors. This publication, or parts of it, may be reproduced provided the source is duly cited. The Publisher asks to be furnished with copies of any such reproductions. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2010 dvv international dvv international Obere Wilhelmstraße 32 – 53225 Bonn Federal Republic of Germany Tel: +49/228-975 69-0 Fax: +49/228-975 69-55 [email protected] www.dvv-international.de For further information please also see www.learningtolisten.de 2 Speaking to One Another: Personal Memories of the Past in Armenia and Turkey Wish they hadn’t left LEYLA NEYZİ Whom to forgive? What to forgive? HRANUSH KHARATYAN-ARAQELYAN “Adult Education and Oral History Contributing to Armenian-Turkish Reconciliation” 3 Contents Foreword ..................................................................................................................................................................7 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................... 9 Introduction: “Speaking to One Another: Personal Memories of the Past in Armenia and Turkey” .............................................................................11 Research in Turkey: “Wish they hadn’t left”: The Burden of Armenian Memory in Turkey - Leyla Neyzi ......................................................13 “Wish they hadn’t left”: The Burden of Armenian Memory in Turkey .....................................................15 Loneliness of Galileo: Grandpa, Who are these Gavurs? ..............................................................................22 How to Come to Terms with Phantom Pain ....................................................................................................27 Of Men and Family Secrets .................................................................................................................................31 Sosi’s Green Eyes: Why am I different? ...........................................................................................................35 What Was Wrong Came From Above ..............................................................................................................39 What if My Mother is Armenian? ......................................................................................................................44 A wedding and a curse: How did this village end up like this? ..................................................................47 Shame and blame: How come my granddaughter doesn’t speak Armenian? .........................................52 The Three Poles: What are We, Brother? .........................................................................................................56 Fear of Losing a City .............................................................................................................................................59 I Didn’t Love You to Forget You .........................................................................................................................62 The Charm of Ararat ............................................................................................................................................67 The Story of the “Night People” ........................................................................................................................71 Research in Armenia: Whom to Forgive? What to Forgive? - Hranush Kharatyan-Araqelyan ..............................................................................................................75 Brief Historical Summary ....................................................................................................................................77 “Whom to forgive? What to forgive?”: Sources of “Oral Stories” ...............................................................79 “Private Stories” ...................................................................................................................................................81 Recalling Memories ..............................................................................................................................................83 Ritualization of Past Memories ..........................................................................................................................91 “Ergir’s soil is strong, Ergir’s fruits are sweet, Ergir’s water is clear as the eye of a crane” .................96 The Past in the Present and The Present in the Past (“My father’s name is Serob, my mother’s name is Sose”) ..........................................................................99 “Thanks great God, that my baby died clean, she died innocent, no Turk used her” .........................108 “Their faces are not bristled, the Sultan ordered to kill boys with bristled faces” (From the story of Avetis Keshishyan) ...........................................................................................................112 Water, Fire, Desert ..............................................................................................................................................115 Massacre, Slaughters, Get-away, Exodus, Deportation, Yeghern, Genocide ..........................................120 “They lost no less than ours, there is no doubt about it” ..........................................................................122 “Well, they are human too” .............................................................................................................................125 To Speak or to Stay Silent, to Tell or not to Tell (“My parents were avoiding speaking about this”) .....................................................................................128 “I don’t know...” .................................................................................................................................................133 “My dear Almast, write it down, write it down” ..........................................................................................135 “My father used to tell me at home” ..............................................................................................................145 “Our house was demolished...” .......................................................................................................................154 Table of the respondents ..................................................................................................................................167 Foreword The project “Adult Education and Oral History: Contributing to Armenian-Turkish Reconciliation” was launched in August 2009 by the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association (dvv international) in partnership with Anadolu Kültür and Armenian Centre for Ethnolog- ical Studies “Hazarashen”, with the financial support of the German Foreign Office. The main objective of the project was to contribute to the reconciliation process in this region by initiating an open dialogue through professional oral history research. This project is an extension of the efforts of dvv international in one of its main spheres of work – adult education – in dealing with the past and sensitive issues in recent history. For more than fifteen years, dvv international has been engaged in contemporary witness and reconciliation work, as well as oral his- tory as a means to deal with the recent past. This is how the dvv international History Network, which in- cludes a number of successful projects in various regions, was created. In Russia, the project was mainly concerned with the reconciliation between former soldiers of the German armed forces and the Red Army. In South Eastern Europe the focus was on interactive meth- ods of teaching and learning about the recent past; one of the methods used being oral history (www. historyproject.dvv international.org). In Uzbekistan, methods associated with contemporary witness work (world café, biographical method, interviews with contemporary witnesses) from the projects in the Russian Federation were adapted and used for the processing of the Soviet past in Central Asia. The Uzbek dvv international project, which took place for the fifth time last year in Tashkent, is part of the project series “History and Identity” initiated by dvv international in cooperation with DAAD,