Dark heritage: a derelict Armenian church in Diyarbakir. All photos courtesy of the author.
Most of the coverage of the 100th
anniversary of the Armenian genocide has concentrated on the Turkish
government’s continuing refusal to recognise the organised massacre of over 1m
Armenians as such. The centenary has arrived and the US has once again refused
to call it genocide, though Germany and many others now have. Yet, after the
international media attention passes, what can be done to seek reconciliation
and recognition for the suffering of those who died?
Below the din of the angry debate, many
Turks, Kurds and Armenians are working together to heal the wounds of 100 years
ago. I followed Ara Sarafian, an Armenian-British-Cypriot historian, who is
attempting to create spaces for communities to reconcile in the towns and
villages where the massacres happened.
Ara Sarafian holds a forget-me-not flower at the site of a massacre of
Armenians near Batman.
“In the morning, the government ordered
us to kill them, and in the evening we shared their houses, fields, lands,
money. Why did our ancestors kill them? They said ‘it’s only money’.” Barzan,
our Kurdish guide in Bitlis, recounted this story as he pointed to a tree
outside St Alberik Armenian monastery on the remote slopes of the windy Kurdish
highlands in eastern Turkey. Gold-diggers have dug all the way under the roots
from one side to the other, looking for money they believed Armenians had
hidden as the massacres spread out across Anatolia.
Inside the remains of the monastery, 30
or 40 people sheltered from the intemperate weather, as locals who had come
with us made a fire and Armenian women from the diaspora began a hymn which
made the Kurds fall silent. The smoke from the fire stung the eyes, and the
scene transported me temporarily to a time when members of diverse ethnic and
religious groups had lived and worked together in this rugged landscape.
Sheltering by a fire inside St Alberik monastery.
On the way down the hill, a young Kurdish
man helped one of the older Armenian women down the muddy slopes. “In my life I
never thought a Kurdish man would be helping an Armenian like me”, she said as
the young man sang Turkish love songs.
Sarafian organised this goodwill mission
to Turkey’s Kurdish region to commemorate the 1915 tragedy. He told me he
wanted to be a partner for Kurds who wanted to draw reconciliation from the
legacy of the genocide and he hoped the example could inspire others to visit
the lands of their ancestors.
Broken bridges
With some Armenian nationalists demanding
reparations in the form of lands or money, Sarafian wants clarity on why
recognition of the genocide is sought. If the goal is to end the pain of denial
for the descendants of the victims, then this depends on a shift in internal
Turkish politics. Those who retain the deeds of their lost lands should be able
to go to court and receive compensation or the return of the lands they own,
but there are also important Armenian sites which continue to crumble and
require conservation. The latter would benefit everyone: the local population
who could gain from tourism, Armenians who would see that the state took their
suffering seriously and Turkey itself, which could mend its broken bridges with
the Armenian state and people.
Recognition of the genocide is still a
fundamental goal, but Sarafian believes that this will come only after a
process of healing within Turkey which involves Armenians, Kurds, Turks and
other minorities who suffered persecution. “If we can’t influence the
[Armenian] diaspora by the example of being here, to take Turkey more
seriously, to think about the issues more seriously and to take on the burden
of engaging with these issues and opportunities, then we’ve failed,” he said.
For those still unwilling to accept the
term genocide, there is little that will convince them otherwise. But slowly a
younger generation of people in Turkey is coming to a fuller understanding of
what happened: 9% of Turks favour a formal apology
and the admission of genocide, another 9% favour an apology without using the
term and 12% favour expressing regret for the Armenians who died.
Interestingly, another 23% favour
expressing regret for all those who died, including Muslims who fled from the
Balkans in the late 19th century due to the rise of European nationalism. Many
Turks are descended from Balkan Muslims and, while understanding the
ethno-nationalist violence of the period, feel that the concentration on
Armenian suffering ignores their own narrative.
Comparing the suffering of different
groups feels wrong and the systematic nature of the massacres of Armenian (and
Assyrians, Pontic Greeks and Chaldeans) was on a horrific scale hard to compare
with the persecution of Ottoman
Muslims in Europe. Remembering the terrible suffering of 1915 does not mean we
don’t care about the suffering of other people; the persecution of Balkan
Muslims was one of the factors which led to the genocide in the first place.
Legacy of oppression
On the way to Dudan (‘waterfall’ in
Turkish), there was a reminder of the legacy of political oppression in the
Kurdish region when the military police decided to stop our convoy of cars and
demanded to see our passports. Luckily, we had lawyers from the Diyarbakir Bar
Association with us, who managed to convince them to let us pass without
incident.
Military police stop the group’s convoy en route to Dudan.
Dudan is the site of a massacre by Turkish
soldiers of 10,000 women, children and elderly people in July 1915. A chasm
opens there into which a stream gushes and it is impossible to see the bottom.
After murdering the men and boys, the soldiers brought the remaining Armenians
here and slit their throats before pushing them into the hole—some chose to
jump.
The Dudan crevass, where up to 10,000 Armenians were killed by Ottoman
soldiers.
Firat, a Kurd from the city of Batman,
who works with Sarafian’s Gomidas Institute, told me why Kurds who lived in
this area felt the need to push for recognition of the genocide within Turkey:
“Now, people feel the pain that happened at that time. They tried to kill the
Kurds also in this region, but they couldn’t because Kurds resisted against the
state, but at that time Armenians were weaker and it was wartime. Now Kurdish
people feel that pain like Armenian people. People in this region, they know the
truth.”
The landscape of the Kurdish region is
lush and dramatic, its people open and eager to begin a new chapter of their
history after the suffering of the past half century. A common Armenian phrase
is ‘we were the breakfast; you will be the lunch’. Now Kurds are fighting to
stop the Islamic State dinner party ravaging the Levant;
they are keen to make amends for not defending their Christian brothers and
sisters in 1915.
Not all Kurds collaborated in the
genocide, however. When we visited a small village near the city of Batman to
pay respects at the grave of a local leader who refused to carry out the
massacres ordered by the local governor in 1915, residents were touched to have
so many people come to honour their ancestor. These exchanges are important,
and could be the first step towards more people making a cultural pilgrimage to
where their ancestors lived for millennia and died a century ago.
Political freedom
The progress made in highlighting and
recognising the genocide, especially in the Kurdish region, is dependent both
on the Kurdish peace process and the level of political freedom in the country
generally. Ten years ago, authors like Orhan Pamuk were being prosecuted for
using the word ‘genocide’; now it is commonly used by writers and politicians
without any consequences.
The upcoming election is also vital to
the fortunes of genocide recognition in Turkey. A party must gain 10% of the
vote to win any seats at all under the electoral system , so small parties
often stand candidates as independents. This time, the pro-Kurdish HDP party is
gambling that it can get over the threshold.
If it succeeds, it is unlikely that the
president, Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan, will gain the seats he needs to install the executive
presidency he craves, to cement his hold on power for another generation. But
if it fails, there could be violence in the Kurdish region should people think
that his Islamist AKP government used fraudulent means to shut the HDP out.
All of Turkish society wins or loses
depending on the health of its political system. The authoritarian
regime Erdoğan
desires would put the religious conservative faction in a position of power
which it would inevitably start to abuse even more than it already does.
For diaspora Armenians, there is much
that can be done beyond criticising the Turkish government once a year.
Diyarbakir is a beautiful city which in 20 years will probably be a major
tourist destination. It has a beautiful old part and a progressive
administration eager to work with Armenians to bring investment and tourism.
Sarafian’s work is calling those from the
diaspora to come back to the lands of their ancestors, to see where they lived
and to work with Kurds to save the Armenian cultural legacy that remains. There
is so much opportunity to build a new, inclusive Armenian identity in touch
with its roots, rather than carrying around the pain of the genocide and simply
waiting for the Turkish government to decide one day to recognise that pain.
A lot of work
remains. On the eve of the genocide anniversary, the bells of Sourp Giragos
began to ring but were then cut short. Someone had told the church authorities
to stop ringing their bells. Inside, hundreds of Kurds and Armenians had
gathered to pay their respects. Little by little, it is becoming harder to deny
what happened—but when recognition does come, it will be because Turks and
Kurds have sought the truth for themselves, not because they have been forced
to admit it.
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