“Who are you? This is Turkey. Do you know what Turkey is?” a man asked me, his thick glasses magnifying the fear in his eyes. He belonged to the little-known Armenian Gypsy community, in the Kurtuluş district of Istanbul. I was at a teahouse where Armenian Gypsy men usually gathered, trying to interview them.
And he was right. I didn’t know what Turkey is. But Turkey, and many Armenians themselves, didn’t know who he was either.
In Turkey, there lives a mysterious minority known as the “secret Armenians.” They have been hiding in the open for nearly a century. Outwardly, they are Turks or Kurds, but the secret Armenians are actually descendants of the survivors of the 1915 Genocide, who stayed behind in Eastern Anatolia after forcibly converting to Islam. Some are now devout Muslims, others are Alevis –generally considered an offshoot of Shia Islam, even though that would be an inaccurate description by some accounts–, and a few secretly remain Christian, especially in the area of Sassoun, where still there are mountain villages with secret Armenian populations. Even though Armenian Gypsies wouldn’t strictly qualify as Secret Armenians, they share many traits with the latter, including reluctance or fear to reveal their identity even to fellow Armenians.
Mehmet and Fatih Arkan, Muslim Armenians from Diyarbakir. Ten years ago, he would still fear to admit he was Armenian, “but now it’s no longer unsafe in Diyarbakir,” Mehmet says./ © A. Hadjian
No one knows whether the secret Armenians are in the thousands or the few million. For the most part, they fear coming out. “Turkey is still a dangerous place for Armenians,” one secret Armenian woman from Palu told me.
The secret Armenians do not mingle with the other, “open” Armenians, of the active but dwindling community in Istanbul. Most don’t talk to strangers. Breaking taboos in Turkey can be deadly. After all, they remember what happened to Hrant Dink. Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist, was shot dead in Istanbul in 2007 by a young man, enraged by his unforgiving pen on controversial issues ranging from the Armenian Genocide to modern Turkey’s founding father, Kemal Atatürk.
It is not easy to define who is a secret Armenian. Some refuse to be called Armenian, even though they admit their parents or grandparents were so, but sometimes, often against their own will, they are still considered Armenian by other Turks or Kurds, unconvinced about their conversion. Some are known to be Armenian to their neighbors and don’t hide it, while others keep it even from their own children, some of whom find out from other kids, who taunt them for being Armenian.
Rafael Altıncı, the last Armenian in Amasya, was raised a Christian and for one year studied in Istanbul at the Üsküdar Surp Haç Armenian High School, where Hrant Dink was also a student at the time. For all practical purposes however, he’s a Muslim and is married to a Turkish woman, with whom he has had a daughter raised as a Turk. Still, he considers himself an Armenian.
Rafael Altıncı, the last Armenian of Amasya, at home with his wife./ © A. Hadjian
In the mountains of Mush, Jazo Uzal is the last Armenian in the Armenian village of Nish, four hours of tortuous drive from Bitlis. Mr. Uzal remains a practicing Christian, spending the winters in Istanbul, but back in the village he observes the Muslim feasts, including the Ramadan.
For his part, Mehmet Arkan, a lawyer in Diyarbakir, didn’t know his family was Armenian until he got into a fight with a Kurdish kid when was 7 years old and came back home crying, saying he had been called “Armenian.” He soon found out from his father that they were indeed Armenian, though telling anyone outside home was strictly forbidden.
“Ten years ago we would not admit it, but now it’s no longer unsafe in Diyarbakir,” he said in an interview, as the local government is embracing its Armenian past, recently restoring the St. Giragos Church and instituting a course in Armenian for beginners. Mr. Arkan feels no less Armenian for being an observant Sunni Muslim.
As my trip in search of secret Armenians was drawing to a close last summer, I experienced a final incident that shed new light on the characters that play out the drama of Turkey every day, a reminder that we are all actors trapped in the plot of history, playing roles most of us haven’t chosen.
An Armenian Gypsy (not the one quoted in the story) at a teahouse in Kurtuluş, Istanbul./ © A. Hadjian
I was heading to the Istanbul Airport, where my flight to New York awaited me. I took the metro, and I got off at Lâleli Station for my transfer. After a ten-minute walk, I learned that I had disembarked at the wrong station. Then, trying not to panic, I also realized that I had left a four-foot tube on the tram, wrapped in old newspapers, containing valuable and potentially troublesome material: a map of Tünceli, a rebellious province, with the name “TÜRKİYE” torn off. Inside the cylindrical tube, I had also placed compromising notes written in Turkish of an interview with a Zaza activist. (Zazas are a branch of the Kurdish people who are in the majority in Tünceli.) But what I really wanted was what I had rolled inside the map: four precious, autographed photos by Armenian-Turkish photo-reporter Ara Güler.
I debated whether I should try to recover the tube. I knew that should anyone unwrap the map, the contents could get me into trouble with the police. I was also aware of how slim the chances were of getting back an item lost in the mass transit system of a city of 13 million people.
Secret Armenian pilgrims at Mt. Maruta, Sassoun. The young girl was scared when I approached her after seeing the embroidered Armenian cross in her bag, which she turned to the other, blank side. “We are Muslim,” said her mother, when asked whether they were Armenian./ © A. Hadjian
The map of Tünceli had been given to me by the Zaza activist, who had torn off the name of Turkey from it –fragments from the E in “TÜRKİYE” were still visible at the bottom of the map, looking like stripes of a tattered flag. The name of Tünceli had been angrily crossed out in thick, black sharpie, and atop it the activist had written the province’s old name, Dersim. “Dersim is not Turkey,” the activist said.
Turks mention “Dersim” and “1938” in the same breath, the way people elsewhere speak of the Olympic Games. Nineteen thirty-eight was the year of a massacre by Turkish military forces sent to suppress an uprising. Although Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had recently apologized for the massacre, calling it “the biggest tragedy in our history,” the name “Dersim” still has subversive resonances. Any Turkish police officer looking at the defaced map would have no difficulty getting the point. And it would easily pass for an “insult to the Turkish nation,” as defined in Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, punishable by up to three years in prison.
But that was small beer compared to what the notes revealed. During an interview conducted in a building facing the Turkish military base in Dersim, this Zaza activist had told me, as recorded in the notes:
“You are Armenian. This land has been waiting for you. Come and claim back your land. Get a gun, and go to the mountains to fight. If your wife doesn’t join you, we’ll get you one of our women, and she’ll fight alongside you.”
An Armenian woman at home in Dersim, posing with a picture of the Twelve Imams. She found out she was Armenian at the age of 15. To strangers, she is an Alevi Zaza, but her friends and neighbors in Dersim know she’s Armenian and Christian. She says she is not afraid to be known as an Armenian in Dersim, “but I would fear for my life if they found out at the university,” where she studies as an undergraduate in Economics./ © A. Hadjian
Dersim probably has the highest concentration of secret Armenians, a topic that obsessed Hrant Dink, who claimed that there are about 2 million of them in Turkey. And, in a way, Dersim and secret Armenians are connected to Dink’s murder.
In an article published in his newspaper Agos, Dink claimed Sabiha Gökçen, the first female combat pilot in both Turkey and the world, and Atatürk’s adoptive daughter, was an Armenian orphan from the 1915 genocide, Khatun Sebilciyan.
Thus, she was a secret Armenian. Gökçen is considered a Turkish hero, in no small part due to her role in suppressing the Dersim uprising in 1938, strafing rebel positions at close range. Dink was murdered in the furious aftermath that followed his story on Gökçen’s alleged Armenian origin and the tragic irony of an Armenian genocide orphan, with the identity of a Turk, taking part in a massacre of Kurds, only two decades after the Genocide.
Back at the tramway station in Istanbul, I went to see the stationmaster to report the lost map. A polite, solemn young man, he spoke with a thick Eastern Anatolian accent, his K’s turning into “Kh’s.”
Jazo Uzal, the last Armenian of Nish, a village in the mountains of Mush. / © A. Hadjian
After taking my report, the stationmaster invited me for tea. Someone dropped by to greet him. The station master’s friend wanted to know where I was from. “Argentina,” I replied, but he wasn’t buying any of it and kept pressing me about my origins. Why did I speak Turkish? Why did I look “almost like a Turk?” I insisted that I am Argentine. “Yes, of course, I’m Japanese,” he said with a sour smile. “You loved Turkey, didn’t you?” he asked me and walked away without waiting for my reply. As I watched him leave, I remembered that a few months earlier, Argentina had received unflattering coverage in the Turkish press over formally recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Many Turks are aware of Argentina’s sizable Armenian community.
A transcription in Armenian script of a sura from the Koran, in the handwriting of Kirkor Oğgasian from the village of Argat, near Palu, after he converted to Islam following the Genocide. This copy is kept by his grandchildren, one of whom is teaching himself Armenian and runs a website on Western Armenian history under a pseudonym. They are distant relatives of Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan, Prelate of the Armenian Prelacy of New York./ © Avedis Hadjian
A few minutes later, a young man in sunglasses, a black T- shirt, and trousers, flashed a police badge and passed through the turnstile. He reminded me of a similarly dressed plainclothes agent who had given me trouble in Dersim, after I walked out of the building where the Zaza activist had given me the map. The man did not approach me.
Then, the telephone rang inside the supervisor’s booth. “They found the map,” he said stoically, staring at me through his dark sunglasses. “It will be here in fifteen minutes.” I began to steel myself for a trip to the police station.
Indeed, the tram pulled over fifteen minutes later. The driver quickly stepped outside and handed the tube with the map to the stationmaster. The stationmaster walked up to me, shook my hand, and wished me a safe trip home –“wherever that is,” he said. He returned the tube with the map to me unopened, the old Hürriyet newspapers rolled along the outer side, with a photograph of Prime Minister Erdoğan sporting an angry expression and wagging his finger at God knows what.
Avedis Hadjian is a writer based in New York. He has published in the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Bloomberg News and other newspapers and news sites. This article is an excerpt from his book “A Secret Nation: The Hidden Armenians of Turkey,” due in fall 2013
Que historia tan interesante, la verdad uno se pone en el lugar del que perdió el tubo y es medio angustiante y la seguís con el interés de saber que pasó después. Buen reportage sobre la población del cual se ignoran muchas etnias en occidente!
All communities have rules for inclusion and exclusion, and ours is ultimately confessional. There are two ethnic names for Muslims of Armenian origin: Hamshen and Turkish. Those who kept the identity in secret, they are a part of the community, but those who are outside the 304 AD event are not. It is that simple, people made choices and they have to live with them as much as hundreds of thousands of us died for theirs — on our Golgotha: 1915.
Jack, I prefer not to judge people unless I have walked a mile in their shoes. Many of those Armenians who converted were young (some very young), some of them were directed to do so by their parents. Who knows?
I am just glad that there are still people who identify themselves as Armenian in Western Armenia.
Who exactly do you think I am judging? People make choices, that is their right. We should respect that right, including the right to renounce their heritage. But once you do, and you no longer do the things that make us who we are, then you are outside the community. That is a fact Ara, whether you and the self hating crowd that writes the articles in this forum like it or not.
Jack, just not to confuse curious readers, Christianity was accepted in Armenia in 301 AD.
Narek,
Decades ago,my uncle Robert was at a post game party at Ara Parseghian’s house,when a wealthy Irish Catholic woman made a comment about n Armenian helping the Christian school (Notre something) return to prominence.Bob corrected her kind of roughly.Father Joyce said, “You’re correct,my boy.But she’s rich and I’m trying to get some money fromher,so be gentle>
I’m an agnostic. Does that mean I have “renounced my heritage”? Even though I speak, read, and write Armenian, cook Armenian, and am doing research on Armenian cuisine?
My great-aunt was forced to marry a Turk and live as a Turk for 10 years. Are you suggesting she should have killed herself instead? Oh, wait, suicide is a sin.
I do not suggest that anyone commit suicide. I think you need help AraK and that you need to simply understand some things: first, humans live in communities; second, communities have criteria of inclusion and exclusion, sometimes these are very unfair; third, people have a right to leave their communities by choice; fourth, people who are forced out their communities also have a choice whether to maintain their identity or not, even if “forced to marry a Turk,”; and finally, those people who choose to strip themselves of their community’s criteria of inclusion are essentially incapable of being part of the community, not matter how they identify themselves. Now if you are a “cultural” Christian, then you would be a member by ritual. Your individualist discourse is borne out of the globally isolated political discourse of the US, which is one the most ironically CONFESSIONAL, TRIBAL and ETHNOCENTRIC cultures on earth.
I wish they had all converted and saved their lives as well as the nation. Christianity has not given us anything for us to lose the nation
It is never too late for you Mr. Hamian, simply head to the closest Gulen movement mosque and say the Shahada and leave the community whose markers of identification you so deeply resent.
Jack Kalpakian is correct here. Identity for Armenians is rooted in Christianity and in particular the Apostolic Church. As the Armenian language is inevitably lost in Diaspora, Christianity becomes even more important for the preservation of Armenian identity.
This is so even for non-believers.
The good news Jack is that many hidden Armenians wish to become Christian. Each year the Patriarchy in Bolis baptizes many of these.
I am sorry I don’t agree with you …
We were Armenian before Christ …
We carry Armenian Artful Honest Gene wherever we live…
Even if we change our religion we are Armenians …this is my theory .
In every religion there is a faith, if you are an honest person…but if you are devil and carry the bad genes, thus you are faithless…!!!
Jesus did come for us he came to teach his nation…we are intruders to Christianity…I believe in my genes and not in my religion…
Let me understand, Jack: Who makes the criteria for inclusion in a community? You? Pardon me if I don’t agree.
Who has the right to determine the identity of another person ? Who has the right to lock or expel this person in an identity ?
This is fascism, sectarianism and simply racism.
Shame on all the arrogant inquisitors and temple keepers who condemn the Other.
Actually, Shame on you TZARA masaquerading as “Azad.” You endorse the destruction of the identity. If you do not like what it entails to be Armenian — the door is wide open. You do not have to belong.
yo Jack,
with friends like you who needs …
Azad, you are asking the right questions, the answers of which are obvious. JK cannot handle your questions. That’s why he is showing you the door.
One wonders if JK has enough intelligence to realize that it is very easy to turn the tables around and claim him not to be an Armenian.
But then if we do that, we might slip down to his level of intelligence.
Dont agree, that still will not change reality. The key criterion for inclusion and exclusion is faith among Armenians. You may not like it, but whatever you do, if the Narek means nothing to you and if the festival of Avaryar is meaningless to you, you are not part of the ritual community and therefore not part of the community. As to the usual presses, “who has the right” — the individual does. If you want to join a group, you apply and you go through the steps of becoming a member. If you do not have a union membership card, are you a union member? It is the same with being an Armenian. You choose to be out of the community and that is your right. Now no one needs to chase you out, you left on your own.
Jack, your reality is screwed up. We are outside your twisted reality, and don’t wish to be part of it.
Actually, the Patriarchate in Istanbul has refused to baptize many of these so-called hidden or half Armenians.In Turkey, returning to the Mother Church is a mere vehicle for these Armenians from the provinces to regain a part of their Armenian identity. In the West, once the language is lost, so too is a huge chunk of self-identity. Going to church every Sunday won’t make up for the loss…
@tlkatintsi, you are proving my point when you say “returning to the Mother Church is a mere vehicle for these Armenians from the provinces to regain a part of their identity”. Religion is about identity, not just about belief, as our Jewish friends know. That these born Muslims, with Turkish or Kurdish names, not speaking the Armenian language, would seek to join the Church “to regain a part of their identity” indicates the centrality of the Church in Armenian identity.
I agree with you that losing the language is a big loss. This seems inevitable and not just in the West but also in Turkey, Russia, even the Arab countries.
Richard…returning to the Armenian Church provides them with a sense of being “other” and “different” from 99% of the population that is Muslim. It works in Turkey….much less so in the West.
The patriarchate has refused to baptize ?????
I am not surprised at all.
The patriarchate has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, other than give lipservice to him.
Jesus Christ’s command to his followers is very clear and direct. “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, teach ALL NATIONS, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (KJV; Matthew, chapter 28, verses 18 – 20).
If the Armenian church was truly obedient to Jesus Christ, they would have taken his command very, very seriously. Instead, just like JK (their lackey) have taken upon themselves to decide who is an Armenian and who is not; and on that basis to conduct a baptism. That is totally contrary to the teachings of Christ, whom they profess to follow.
In case you disagree with the veracity of the above quotation from Christ, I will quote from the Armenian Bible, the supposed foundation of the Armenian church. “Եւ մատուցեալ Յիսուս խօսեցաւ ընդ նոսա և ասէ, Տուաւ ինձ ամենայն իշխանութիւն յերկինս և յերկրի. Գնացէք այսուհետև, աշակերտեցէք զամենայն հեթանոսս, մկրտեցէք զնոսա յանուն Հօր և Որդւոյ և Հոգւոյն Սրբոյ: Ուսուցէք նոցա պահել զամեայն որ ինչ պատուիրեցի ձեզ. և ահաւասիկ ես ընդ ձեզ եմ զամենայն աւուրս, մինչև ի կատարած աշխարհի”: (Աւետարան ըստ Մատթէոսի, գլուխ ԻԸ, 18-20). [Աստուածաշունչ Մատեան Հին Եւ Նոր Կտակարանաց, Ըստ Ճշգրիտ Թարգմանութեան Նախնեաց Մերոց, Կոստանդնուպոլիս 1895].
Doesn’t all this tell you something about the Armenian church?
JK and R, you can bray till the cows come home. According to your own understanding you guys have made up definitions, and self-imposed limitations in order to define yourself as Armenian. I don’t need neither your nor anyone else’s definitions to define my nationality. I am fluent in my language; consider the so-called apostolic church a veritable den of deception, and have been financially supporting several orphans in Armenia and Artsakh for well over a decade. In my book neither your linguistic knowledge, nor your cultural peculiarities, nor your church affinity defines you as Armenian. I have seen far too many so-called “hays”, who are only good at gasbagging. If you are prepared to put your hand into your pocket and alleviate the suffering in your fatherland, then and only then will I define you as an Armenian and a human being.
Speaking Armenian and being of Armenian origins does not make anyone an Armenian — the Hamshen do both and the vast majority deny being Armenian in public and in private, with some exceptions.
Jack, if you think you will decide my nationality and not I, you are just not worth wasting time with.
I pity you for your low level of intelligence.
Guess what, the only time I would deny being an Armenian, would be in the company of the likes of you. That’s because I would be too ashamed to be associated with your type.
As for that church of yours, to which you have tied your identity, I’ll leave it to you to guess what you can do with it.
No Herepta, I am saying you decide your nationality, but it takes something a little bit more than you asserting it.
In agreement with Herepta, your perceived definition’s of a community are not universal, nor binding. I am glad there are people like these left in there indigenous areas. I’m glad Turkey for one is changing though very slowly, and (event though it might possibly take a turn for the worst). We should all be friends, we should not antagonize a sub-population in our Armenian community.
Keeeping the identity (and it is faith based as the demenads for baptism show) is very different from leaving it. And yes, as with all things related to identity — the individual chooses at the end of the day. If you do not associate with Christianity, at least in the Robin Cook way, your claim of membership is essentially aspirational. Again, ALL identity communities have criteria for inclusion and exclusion and these are SOCIAL not INSTITUTIONAL and are ultimately personal. You choose not to be part of the corpus of an Armenian Church, then you are outside the community, whatever else you may call yourself.
thank u for the info i never knew about them .god bless them
First of all Turks are not Muslims…
Arab poet Assad Rustom
wrote from USA when his friends were hanged in May 6,1916…
“The sons of the Turks you are never Muslims…”
If they are real muslims they will never hang the literates…
They never apply what is written in Quran…
They are Seljuk -Turks …
Their god is Turkish…Has sharpest scimitar
like to kill Armenians …!!!
Could we stop demonizing all Turks this way? Being raised Turkish or choosing to become Turkish is not something we should have any issue with.
I advice all those Armenians to go and live in Saudi Arabia
A real Muslim land where there is
No torture
Neither a fear for being Armenians
They will be welcomed and
Respected without having fear in their Eyes…
They are living in open prison in Turkey…!
Thank you for the extremely interesting article.
I am Jewish, but my gradnfather by marriage, the only grandfather I ever knew since my biological grandfather died before I was born, was Armenian, originally from the part or Armenia that wound up in the Soviet Union. His name was Stephan Zazunyan (Zazunian).
If I am not mistaken, the name Zazunyan (Zazunian) means “son of Zazun”. However, I am curious: the place name “Sassoun” is mentioned in the article. I know nothing about the Armenian language or naming customs in Armenia, but is it possible that “Zazun” and “Sassoun” are connected?
Thank you in advance for any information you might be able to provide.
Ephraim,
Your grandfather’s last name was probably Sassounian. Most probably he came from Sassoun.
My name is Harut Sassounian. My ancestors also came from Sassoun.
Harut:
Thanks for thr information. My grandfather passed away many years ago, so I have no way of finding out anything about where he was originally from.
I know that his name was some version of “Zazunyan/Zazuniyan/Zazouinian” because when he came to the U.S. he shortened it to “Zane”, with a “Z” after one of his favotie writers, Zane Gray.
Anyway, thank you. Even though I am not Armenian, I guess my grandfather had some effect on me; I have always felt a special affection for the Armenians, and i would like to visit Armenia one day.
Also, my grandfather made the best lamb shish kabob I have ever eaten anywhere.
And I mean the best. Not just good, the BEST. Every time I make it I think of him.
If you ever want to visit Armenia, I will be happy to help. Please let me know.
Thanks.
Someday, I hope.
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For those of you who insist on remaining clueless about how identity is built and transmitted in contexts outside North America, and yes I mean the authors and editors of this journal as well, check out the following to understand WHY “Churching” is a crucial aspect of being Armenian. http://www.todayszaman.com/columnistDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=301328&columnistId=78
Jack Kalpakian obviously has slipped his moorings and still defines the Armenian nation as the sultan would the Ermeni millet in the Ottoman Empire, by associating intimately and solely with the Church. Then we wonder we Armenians are so few, if we allow the jacks like this one to impose, only for himself -for, seriously, who listens to him in this world and age?- criteria for excluding fellow Armenians who consider themselves Armenian, who happen to have been born into different circumstances and who still love our nation and feel part of it.
More importantly, in one stroke of the pen, little Jack is leaving out of the Armenian nation the Mekhitarist Congregation (they’re Roman Catholic, owing allegiance to the Pope) and their monumental contributions to the Armenian nation and culture. He’s also leaving out Yeghishe Charents and all other Marxist, atheist intellectuals we’ve had.
Jack is also monumentally ignorant, as he completely ignores that there are Christian Hamshen Armenians in Abkhazia, Armenia and elsewhere. He’s only speaking of those who are in Turkey and are Muslim, some of whom feel very Armenian (see film-maker Ozcan Alper, who recently got married in the Armenian Church in Constantinople to an Armenian woman of the Dink family.) So, Jack, before going to Church next Sunday, dust off your old books & do some reading.
Happily, for those of us who don’t live with a delay of 500 years, these people you’re writing off as Armenians will go on feeling as such, and will make our nation great. And don’t worry, they won’t come to your place for coffee.
Andrew, there is more things in this than you would ever care to or actually be able to understand. Since you appear determined, both in your previous articles, and now with your comments here to blast away at the organic link between Christianity and Armenian identity, I will not argue with you, but I will leave you with something to ponder, if your brain can actually do so, which is doubtful at best.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/are-turks-acculturated-armenians/#.UM_Iaqz6cfQ
Put simply my unthinking, knee-jerk, Christianity-hating opponent, there is NO a single difference between Armenians and Turks in any real sense of the world in terms of objective population markers. The difference is CO CONSTRUCTED through religion. The Cherekesohai are the exact foil of the Hamshen — historically, they spoke Kipchak TURKISH. If you take the construction away, you are essentially ending the identity, and as an outsider, you may not care. Again, STOP PROJECTING YOUR ISSUES WITH YOUR COMMUNITY on mine. That is all I will say to you from now on.
The Mekhitarists belong to the Armenian Catholic Church — I said AN ARMENIAN CHURCH, not THE ARMENIAN CHURCH. Obviously you cannot read.
Andrew,
You resorted to personal attacks first, when these were absent in all my discourse. There will be absolutely no further responses to any of your nonsense, anywhere, anytime. I am personally FED UP with your projection of your problems with your identity on to mine. So until you actually apologize, I will not interact with you except in terms of responses to your articles.
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More to the point: Turks are basically the same population in terms of biology. They also have the same culture in terms of material, cuisine, crafts, music, etc.; if fact, due to their Armenian roots, they are just as entitled to that common heritage as we are. This means that the two communities cannot really distinct without active differentiation through some socially constructed boundary line — in both our cases, we use religion as Taspinar put it well. We are not the first or the last to do so, and we have nothing to apologize for. None of this means that one should hate the other, as an earlier post put it — describing our Turkish relatives as “scimitar” holding, and none of this is a warrant for intolerance towards anyone. In fact, there was a festival of Christophobia here, and frankly, it is disgusting.
If you kept your identity in secret, you are part of the community, no one ought to exclude from the table and I mean that particular table where the community is ritually constructed.
I had no clue I was not an armenian because I am an armenian catholic!…..
What does the form of belief in a Supreme Being got to do with ethnicity? Religious institutions do NOT define who we are but are reflections of how we may think or behave. It can be claimed (and rightfully so)that the Armenian Church (Primarily Apostolic and later Catholic as well (Who has faithfully kept old armenian manuscripts?))kept the armenians from disappearing from the face of this earth. However, if any one of us chooses to believe in God in a different manner, He/she does not become any less armenian. Is a vietnamese catholic or protestant any less vietnamese that a Buddist one? There are so many more factors than religion to define who someone is!
I never said that — last time I checked, Catholicism is Christian; the numerous papal-Gatoghigal exchanges establish the common origin of both Churches, and there is An Armenian Catholic Church to which some of my relatives belong. Christianity is key. There may be some other “factors” for you Zaven, but when it comes down to it, languages are not sufficient (the Turkish Hamshen speak Armenian and deny being Armenian and the Cherkesohai spoke Kipchak Turkish and now speak Russian while clinging with fury to Armenian identity defined in terms of the Church), the material culture is IDENTICAL, the food, clothes, dances, crafts are all the same; the genetic population base is nearly IDENTICAL. What is left? What one call him or herself? Where is the commitment and how does it show itself? So we and the Turks have a problem if we both want to be distinct communities, so we both use RELIGION. The Turks likewise do not make a fuss on whether one is Hanafi Sunni or Beshketi, but do seem to insist on being Muslim. If a Liberal like Taspinar is saying this, take it seriously. For more on this, leave the Armenian and Turkish identity issue out of it, and check out the thoughts of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan on constructing community based on lore and ritual. It is not whether the community embraces the individual, that is actually a prescription to an extremely unhealthy situation, the question is whether the individual embraces the community and signifies his or her belonging to to. Thus, Crypto Armenians, who would otherwise not need any justification, WANT to get baptized. Alas, they may be getting turned away.
Religion is man’s concept, created by man, to control, define and classify others. It is designed to create homogeneity among people, or within groups. Once the concept of religion is well established among people, the ruling powers create divisions and sub-divisions, sects, all designed to keep tab on the people overall. In the case of Christianity, for example, Jesus preached the message of “love towards God and love towards/among fellow human beings”. Humans, on the other hand, instead of following his precepts of love, chose to adopt various interpretations of his message, dividing and subdividing the masses into groups, creating conflicting sects and denominations. The concept was applied to ethnic and racial groups, creating even more potential for division and conflict. In the case of Armenians, a Parthian with some clout, called Gregor(y)or Krikor was able to impose his own belief system on an entire nation, causing destruction and chaos (according to Agathangelos the historian) based on his stories/dreams, succeeding to destroy the local’s faith system. He basically succeeded to create a governing system within the existing government of the time. So, you ended up with two (2) sets of governing powers, imposing themselves on the simple, mostly uneducated, powerless masses. To establish themselves further, they came up with the theatrics of mass, rites, liturgy, a dressing up system, hymns(songs), special architecture for buildings called “church” etc, which were not part of the original message of love at all. All these and more similar ideas and paraphernalia, coupled with the concept of attaining “life after death”, subject of course, to the approval of the “spiritual” government, served very well to control/enslave the people, who had lost track ot the forest because of the bushes that surrounded and choked them. Down through history, Jesus’ simple message of LOVE, hijacked by power seeking individuals turned into divisions, conflicts, innumerable wars, bloodshed and utter misery. One way or another, all churches are part of this equation, including the Armenian church, (with which the Armenians are supposed to identify) which has persecuted, and still persecutes anyone or any group of people who challenge its so-called authority, rather, hegemony. Well folks, according to some people, your identity/nationality can only be determined within the framework of some church entity or let’s call it belief system. They will insist that you are not an Armenian unless you conform to a certain set of ideas of their own. People with low IQs, who are themselves mentally enslaved (possibly even demented), will not acknowledge you as part of the tribe unless you fall within their well-defined parameters. Jews have done the same down through history; rabbinic Jews have persecuted and killed the Karaite Jews (whose only fault was to believe the Old Testament but not the Talmud, thereby not coming under the control of the rabbis). Moslems still do the same, Sunnis against the Shiites, Alawites. One wonders which group Mohammad would have favoured had he been alive. Catholic Croats against Orthodox Serbs; Russian Orthodox against Molokans; even Buddhist/Shinto Japanese couldn’t stomach the concept of a Christian Japanese, so they have done their best to homogenize their tribe down through the centuries. I say, be your own person. Don’t let others decide for you without your expressed permission. The world is full of respectable-looking, supposedly knowledgeable morons. In the 21st century the world is a mess and getting even messier. Guess why. Because cretins rule.
Some “cretins” like to cast stones at the Armenian Church. Who exactly has it persecuted during the last five centuries or so? Let us compare it with CP of the USSR instead, the CUP, or even the traditional parties. Last time I checked, it has had no temporal authority whatsoever; of all the religions of the area, it saw the harshest persecution, yet it is the ONLY religion in the area to reach out and speak for the human rights of Yezidis. Again, the door is open to whoever wants to come in and whoever wants to leave the community, but true belonging is more than just an assertion. And yes, there is no “authority,” because it is a “Do It Yourself” — you decide whether or not you are part of the community. And note, plenty of Cypto-Armenians ask for baptism “to reclaim their identity.” Those who do not also make a choice — not be a part of the community and that is ENTIRELY within their human rights and MUST be respected. Those insisting that such persons are “really” Armenian are negating the basic right a person has NOT to belong to a community and represents a hijacking of their right to self-define.
Jacko, you don’t get it. You have no right to say who is Armenian and who is not. You do not set these guidelines. You have your opinions and that’s just fine, but you are as entitled as anyone -which is to say, not at all- to set benchmarks to define what makes an Armenian after all we have been through as a nation. I suspect you don’t live in Armenia nor you intend to, so that, according to some, excludes you from the nation as well. I’m not active in the community, mostly because of pig-headed people like those who define what makes an Armenian and what doesn’t, or political or Church affiliation, but that doesn’t make me any less Armenian than you, Jacko, just because you put on your Sunday’s best to breathe in the sweet smell of incense and feel more Armenian in the comfy American suburb where you probably live.
Andrew,
Until you apologize, you will not be responded to. You do not know me, and I do not hide behind any pseudonym. I have never claimed anything to myself. I simply pointed out how the COMMUNITY sets its lines of inclusion and exclusion. Have a good life.
Andrew,
Please do not address me. I do not wish to talk to you or know you.
I see nothing but beauty on the faces of my people in the above photos.
Hang in there my lovable brothers and sisters. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
I yearn to kiss each and every one of you, and I don’t care what your religion is. I see each one of you as a shining, beautiful person.
May God be with each and everyone of you, always.
ALL people are beautiful. Community and building it are something else. Everyone closes the door behind them when they go home — and no one stops and thinks what a dreadful act of exclusion such an action really is.
Let us be very clear, there is nothing in my arguments that give me personally any right to define anyone. People define who they are, but these definitions must be congruent with how groups define themselves. They do so through ritual in our region of the world. All human communities have criteria for exclusion and inclusion — sorry, this is real life. As I said repeatedly and was deliberately misinterpreted and had words put in my mouth, constructing communities is not a warrant for harming anyone. I also think that we have to accept a very close relationship with Turkish people — as the genetic research is showing beyond any doubt: Turks are Muslim descendants of Armenians, for all intents and purposes. The implications of all this are detailed above. No, I do not think that the collective identity should actively exclude anyone, but belonging must be confirmed beyond mere assertion. Saying you are X is not enough, since X is a community with its own socially constructed criteria. I could call myself Japanese, but would ring hollow wouldn’t it.
The reason Jack Kalpakian’s claim to Japanese identity would ring hollow is because presumably he has no link whatsoever to the Japanese nation. Unlike him, the hidden Armenians have a strong claim to Armenian identity: they are descended from Armenians, they are aware of their national identity and have been preserving it and, crucially, they live on our historical lands, UNLIKE most Armenians who speak the language -declining numbers in the Diaspora- and nominally are members of the Church (even though very few attend badarak.) The rigid -and brittle at that- notion put forth by Jack Topalian is hinged on an Ottoman definition of identity by which Armenian and Christian are mutually interchangeable. In other words, he has no use whatsoever for evolution, and he insists on a very narrow definition of “community.”
No responses to Andrew until he withdraws his personal attacks.
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