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REMEMBERING ARMENIANS in VAN, TURKEY This Thesis Is Submitted View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sabanci University Research Database REMEMBERING ARMENIANS IN VAN, TURKEY This thesis is submitted to the Faculty of Art and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Cultural Studies by Gözde Burcu Ege Sabancı University Fall 2011 © Gözde Burcu Ege Fall 2011 All Rights Reserved REMEMBERING ARMENIANS IN VAN, TURKEY APPROVED BY: Prof. Dr. Leyla Neyzi .............................. (Dissertation Supervisor) Prof. Dr. Sibel Irzık .............................. Prof. Dr. Meltem Ahıska .............................. DATE OF APPROVAL: .............................. ABSTRACT REMEMBERING ARMENIANS IN VAN, TURKEY Gözde Burcu Ege Cultural Studies, MA, FALL 2011 Thesis Advisor: Leyla Neyzi This thesis analyzes how Armenians are remembered in Van, a city in eastern Turkey, which had a significant Armenian population before 1915. Through the subjective narratives and everyday practices of the current residents of Van, I argue that there is not a single way of remembering Armenians. The most significant factor that affected the way my informants remembered the Armenians is the way they perceived the Kurdish issue. In the narratives of those politicized by the Kurdish movement feelings of guilt and responsibility along with wishes for reconciliation and compensation were present. My Informants claimed that in childhood they used to listen to their elderly who proudly narrated the massacres Armenians went through. However, after experiencing similar state violence as a result of the conflict between the PKK and the state, these stories of violence began to disturb them. I argue that by forming a historical connection between themselves and Armenians, they created a subversive discourse. The remnants of Armenians figured as mnemonic devices enabling them to imagine the past. I also argue that those who are politically and/or religiously conservative did not share the same sympathy towards Armenians. Moreover, the narratives of some other informants were in line with Turkish nationalist discourse. They argued that they were the real victims of 1915 and drew parallels between the current Kurdish issue and the events of 1915. Through the study of a particular locality, Van, this research shows that analyzing different interpretations of the past constructed through different subjective positions opens a way to attend to plural meanings of the past in relation to the present. This thesis makes a contribution to current debates on postmemory and perpetrator memory in a context in which the violence of the past bleeds into the violence of the present. Keywords: Postmemory, Violence, Armenians, Remembering, Kurdish Movement, Oral History, Van, Turkey i ÖZET ERMENİLERİ VAN'DA HATIRLAMAK, TÜRKİYE Gözde Burcu Ege Kültürel Çalışmalar, MA, SONBAHAR 2011 Tez Danışmanı: Leyla Neyzi Bu tez Türkiye'nin doğusunda, 1915'ten önce önemli bir Ermeni nüfusuna sahip olan Van'da Ermenilerin nasıl hatırlandığını analiz etmektedir. Öznel anlatımlar ve gündelik pratikler üzerinden Van'da Ermenileri hatırlamanın tekil bir yolu olmadığını iddia ediyorum. Ermenileri hatırlama şekillerini etkileyen en önemli faktörün Kürt meselesinin nasıl algılandığı olduğunu idda ediyorum. Kürt hareketi içinde politize olan kişilerin anlatılarında suçluluk duyguları, sorumluluk, telafi ve barışma istekleri öne çıkıyor. Görüşmeciler çocukluktan beri yaşlılardan Ermeniler'in katledilmesine dair hikayeler dinlediklerini söyledi. Fakat PKK ve devlet arasındaki çatışmanın sonucunda benzer bir devlet şiddetini yaşadıktan sonra bu hikayelerin onları rahatsız etmeye başladığını söylediler. Görüşmeciler Ermenilerle kendileri arasında tarihsel bir bağ kurarak yıkıcı bir söylem yarattılar. Ermenilerden kalan kalıntılar geçmişi yeniden düzenlemelerinde yardımcı anımsatıcı araçlar olarak işlev görüyor. Politik ve/ ya da dindar olan görüşmecilerde Ermenilere karşı benzer bir sempatinin mevcut olmadığını iddia ediyorum. Dahası, bazı başka görüşmecilerimin anlatıları ise Türk milliyetçi söylemiyle aynı doğrultuda idi.1915'in asıl mağdurları olduklarını iddia ettiler ve bugünkü Kürt meselesi ve 1915 olayları arasında parallelikler kurdular. Belirli yerellere odaklanmak, farklı bağlamlarda yaşayan insanların günümüzde geçmişi hatırlamada kullandığı çoklu stratejiler hakkında bilgi veriyor. Bu tez, posthafıza ve faillerin hafızasına yönelik tartışmalara katkıda bulunurken, araştırma mekanında geçmişte yaşanan şiddet günümüzde yaşanan şiddete karışıyor. Anahtar Kelimeler: Post-hafıza, Şiddet, Ermeniler, Hatırlama, Kürt Hareketi, Sözlü Tarih, Van, Türkiye. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been written unless many people had supported me. I owe my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor Leyla Neyzi who encouraged and stood by for me from the beginning to the end and provided me with her invaluable feedback. I am thankful to the members of my thesis committee, Sibel Irzık and Meltem Ahıska, for their interest, comments and critiques without which this thesis would have been impossible. I would like to express my gratitude to Banu Karaca not only for her support and friendship, but also for our wonderful discussions that guided me sources I otherwise would have missed. I would also like to thank to Bilgesu Sümer, Sami Görendağ, Zozan Özgökçe, Ramazan Kaya and Yakup Kızıltaş who made me feel at home in a place which I had not even visited before and made my fieldwork possible. I greatly owe to all the people I met in Van who shared their life stories with me and became my friends. I would also like to thank Carina Rosenlof for proof-reading this thesis in detail. I am also indebted to Onur Calap, since he patiently listened to me throughout my writing process, read my thesis and helped me frame my ideas with his discreet comments. Lastly, I would like to thank all my friends and parents for their tireless support. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1.Outline of the Study 7 CHAPTER 2: HISTORY AND MEMORY IN VAN 11 2.1. From the Late Ottoman Period to the Establishment of the Turkish 11 Republic 2.2. A Brief History of the Turkish Republic and its Relationship to its 15 “Others” 2.3. The Past in the Present: The Role of Postmemory in Van 20 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 27 CHAPTER 4: REINTERPRETING AND REFRAMING TRANSMITTED 32 MEMORIES OF ARMENIANS 4.1. Accepting a Perpetrator Identity within Victimization as the Line 32 between the Past and the Present Blurs 4.2. “We began to understand their tragedy after we experienced our own” 43 4.3. “If we are the breakfast, then you will be the dinner” 48 4.4. Unfinished Business: Regarding the Loss of Others as Your Own and 51 Strategies to Overcome the Loss 4.5. Interpretations on the Memories of the Elderly: Generation Gap or 59 Political Subjectivity? 4.6. The Secrecy around Armenian Ancestors 64 4.7. The Remnants that Give No Rest 69 4.8. Perpetrators or victims? 82 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 96 BIBLIOGRAPHY 104 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Nazım: Somehow, some people caused the degeneration of the Armenians here; now, I mean, the Kurds have come to their senses somehow. But the damage is already done. The Armenians are no longer a product of this geography… It is necessary to account for some things as the events unfold… With the lapse of time, they really turn into legends; they are distorted a thousand times. This (degeneration of the Armenians) should have been accounted for at the time just like what was done for the Jews who were massacred in the years of 1944 and 1945 and then a state was established three years later.1 It was the last day of my fieldwork, when Yener took me to his village in Amik and showed me the Armenian graves that were dug up by treasure hunters. We both were very moved by what we saw and when we went back to the city center, we headed to a coffee house to meet some of his friends. Nazım was one of the two Kurdish men who were already talking at the table. They were both in their thirties and easily compelled to have a discussion after Yener told them what we had seen. They began to talk to each other and to me. Nazım told me that his grandfather witnessed the massacres and he spoke of a very old blind man who narrated chilling stories of violence against the Armenians. They told me that there used to be approximately sixty Armenian villages in 1 Nazım: Ya bir şekilde Ermenileri birileri burda soysuzlaştırdı şu an yani Kürtlerin aklı başına geldi bir şekilde. Ama işte iş işten geçti. Ermeniler artık bu coğrafyanın ürünü değil... Olaylar sıcakken bir şeylerin hesabını sormak gerekiyor.... Zaman aşımına uğradı mı gerçekten ortaya bir efsane çıkıyor bin tane tahribata uğruyor. Yahudiler nasıl 44-45 yıllarında katledildiyse, 3 yıl sonra devlet kurulduysa, zamanında bunun hesabı sorulmalıydı. Biz artık efsaneler peşindeyiz gerçekten. 1 Van and Nazım commented that they were said to have been given as a dowry by an Armenian Bey to his daughter. Like many others, they also noted that local people still call these villages by their Armenian names, even though the Turkish state has renamed them (Öktem, 2008). However, even though all these discussions took place in a highly enthusiastic atmosphere, Nazım's last comments betrayed the mood. When I transcribed this discussion, I was amazed at his comments since he was the one who brought up his grandfather's witnessing the massacres and the Armenian villages. It was also surprising for me because this feeling of belatedness was not something I had encountered in most of my informants' narratives. They were quite enthusiastic to talk about their life histories by weaving them together with the lives of the Armenians of Van. For Nazım, the memories about the Armenians of Van people shared with each other sounded very familiar, because they had been in circulation since he was a child. For me, the stories about Armenians I heard in Van were quite new. It still surprises me today that as a person who grew up in Adana, it was only at the beginning of my university years that I became aware of the Armenian history of that city.
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