A New Kind of Armenian-Turkish Reconciliation

[Cover of \"Les petits-enfants\"] [Cover of \"Les petits-enfants\"]

A New Kind of Armenian-Turkish Reconciliation

By : Jennifer Manoukian

In October 2011, the newly renovated Sourp Giragos Armenian Apostolic Church reopened in Turkey’s southeastern province of Diyarbakir. Among the hundreds gathered to celebrate its first mass in over ninety years were local men and women who had chosen the occasion to be baptized into the Armenian Apostolic Church. Raised as Sunni Muslims, these men and women were the children and grandchildren of Armenians who had converted to Islam to escape persecution in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire.

Living in a society that glorified cultural homogeneity and in a country that still bore the scars of its Ottoman past, the first generation of converts often kept their Armenian heritage hidden from their children. They integrated into the communities around them and adopted, at least outwardly, a new language, religion, culture, and identity.

Less encumbered by the fear that silenced their parents and grandparents, the grandchildren of these Armenians have recently begun to dig into their family histories and to discuss their backgrounds with a kind of pride uncharacteristic of previous generations.

This growing trend in Turkey that values multicultural identities—and, in the process, exposes the absurdity of purity as a cultural ideal—rails against the Turkish nationalist model of identity that has become familiar to those who follow Turkish politics. But it is not the government that is fostering change; it is members of the civil society who are taking the matter of identity into their own hands.

These themes have been most notably explored through personal accounts of the grandchildren of converted Armenians. In examining the impact that the discovery of Armenian ancestry has had on their own identity construction, the grandchildren attest to the possibility of multiple belongings. This is a concept that unhinges the common adversarial depiction of Armenian and Turkish nationalism advanced by states and leaders and inspires a more fluid, inclusive understanding of identity, where both Turkish and Armenian elements can coexist within an individual.

Crypto-Armenians: Then and Now

While the international community is well acquainted with the plight of Armenians driven from Anatolia in 1915, it has only been in the past decade that attention has been focused on the Armenians who stayed in Turkey—known as “crypto-Armenians,” “Islamicized Armenians,” or, more disparagingly, as “leftovers of the sword.”

Although a small fraction of the pre-1915 Armenian community preserved its language and culture in Istanbul after Turkey’s founding in 1923, most Armenians who remained in Turkey faded into the social fabric of rural towns and villages across Anatolia. But, in recent years, these men and women are being pulled from obscurity with increased momentum, thanks in part to the 2004 publication of Fethiye Çetin’s memoir, Anneannem [My Grandmother].

In this groundbreaking text, Çetin—a Turkish human rights activist and lawyer best known abroad as legal counsel for the family of slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink—recounts her grandmother’s personal history. Her grandmother, born Heranoush to an Armenian family, was taken from her mother and siblings by a Turkish gendarme during the death marches in 1915. She was renamed Şeher, was raised as a Turk, and repressed all memory of her Armenian past until the very end of her life.

Çetin’s pioneering account reverberated across Turkey, resonating particularly with families who had uncovered similar stories in their own personal histories. In some cases, My Grandmother prompted these families to discuss their Armenian ancestry openly and without shame, leading to the publication of another unparalleled work, written with Ayşe Gül Altınay, Torunlar [The Grandchildren], published in French as Les petits-enfants.

Les petits-enfants is a series of personal accounts by twenty-five grandchildren of converted Armenians, originally published in Turkish in 2009 and translated into French by Célin Vuraler in 2011. In these interviews, the grandchildren piece together what they know about their grandparents’ childhoods and families, explain how their grandparents were integrated into Sunni or Alevi communities, and describe their relationship with them.

The startling, often brutal way that the grandchildren discovered their grandparents’ Armenian ancestries, rattling whatever clear conception they had of their identities up until that point, is a key feature of each account. For example, one grandchild, the celebrated poet Bedrettin Aykin, remembers first learning of his family’s past unexpectedly when a friend’s mother referred to his mother as “the young infidel,” leading him to question his mother about their origins. Having been treated as a secret within their families and a source of shame within their society, the discovery of Armenian heritage often came as a shock to these grandchildren and forced them to reevaluate the way they understood themselves and their relationships to their communities.

These painful recollections are nevertheless interspersed with bittersweet indications—obvious only in hindsight—of the past their grandparents kept hidden from view. One granddaughter recalls that her grandmother preferred to be called Satenig rather than Süreyya, the Turkish name on her identity card; only when talking about her grandmother to an Armenian friend did she realize that Satenig was, in fact, an Armenian name. Another grandchild remembers coloring eggs with her grandmother every year in the early spring, entirely unaware, at the time, of the insight it gave into her grandmother’s Christian upbringing.

Grappling with Latent Armenian Identity

The grandchildren—raised as Turks, Kurds, or Alevis, speaking Turkish, Kurdish, or Zaza, and practicing, to varying degrees, Sunni Islam or Alevism—reacted to the news of their grandparents’ Armenian heritage in ways representative of the diversity among them. Most took the opportunity to read more about Armenians; a great number of grandchildren cited the work of novelists Migirdiç Margosyan, Elif Shafak, and Kemal Yalçin as fundamental in humanizing an unfamiliar yet vilified group of people. Many also began to read about Ottoman Armenian history, and in the process, challenged the depiction of Armenians as wicked traitors, which had been instilled in them at school and in their larger society from an early age.

Some grandchildren were intrigued by the religious piece of their Armenian ancestry, which prompted them to study the intersections between Christianity and Islam or, like those baptized at Sourp Giragos last October, to convert to the faith in which their grandparents were raised.

Although the conclusions that each grandchild drew from his or her discovery varied considerably, each was compelled to reflect on his or her identity and how this new revelation would impact it. For some, their grandparents’ past had no effect on how they conceived of their identity. One grandchild reflects: “I was born in Turkey. I am Turkish. I am Muslim. Should I, all of a sudden, become Armenian and go to Yerevan?” Or: “Up until today, I have never felt Turkish, Kurdish, or Armenian, even after learning of my family’s history. I don’t identify with any of these nationalities. I don’t want to be attached to anywhere.”

The absence of a single, dominant identity and the significance of multiculturalism are themes repeated in a significant number of accounts. After an initial period of crisis and uncertainty, many of the grandchildren came to value belonging to an eclectic mix of communities: “I have Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish cultures. I know all of them well and I am the product of what they represent. But I don’t know how to respond when one asks me if I am Turkish, Kurdish, or Armenian. I am a bit of all three.” This emphasis on multiple affiliations illustrates a flexible, more inclusive understanding of identity—a break with the prevailing nationalist conceptualization that so often attempts to place people into neat categories that do not represent reality.

Hybrid Identities

There is something hopeful to be said about a generation that can see beyond artificial constructs of nationhood and has the confidence to formulate identities based on its own individual experiences. After successful attempts by their grandparents to assimilate into the dominant culture, and desperate attempts by their parents to conceal any suggestion of their otherness, these grandchildren are bravely rejecting their society’s taboos by acknowledging and, in many cases, embracing their Armenian ancestry. In his interview, one grandchild eloquently comments on the dangers of identity suppression so common in past generations:

I don’t wish for anyone to hide their true identity or to mask past errors. I think that people become much more extremist when they hide their pasts and protect themselves by diverting attention. [Bülent] Ecevit, wanting to erase his Kurdish origins, became a Turkish nationalist politician; my uncle, hoping to make people forget his Armenian ancestry, immersed himself fervently in Islam. People who are sure of themselves would not exist in such contradiction.

The shift towards self-acceptance is promising because it indicates that identities no longer need to be understood as mutually exclusive. One granddaughter, who considers herself a devout Muslim and has chosen to wear hijab, celebrates the fact that she is not a “pure Turk” and credits her converted Armenian grandmother with teaching her about the faith. She shows us that a variety of seemingly irreconcilable identities can coexist harmoniously with one another.

We see this emphasis on coexistence again in the accounts of grandchildren with extended families whose members belong to communities often understood to be in perpetual conflict with one another:

I like this diversity very much because my two families, Armenian and Kurdish, mutually respect each other. For example, when my mother visited my Armenian family, we would always make them a prayer rug. And my mother, during Christian holidays, would always make a meal for the occasion. This proves that it’s completely possible for the two cultures to cohabitate. Communication and common ground is all that is needed.

Another grandchild shared a similar experience:

In our family, there are Syriacs, Armenians, and Muslims. My aunts—my mother’s sisters—married Syriacs and live as Syriacs. My sister married an Armenian. As for my maternal grandparents, they are still Muslim and pray five times a day. It is a mix of different lifestyles.

These stories are models of exceptionally productive understandings of identity. Rather than being used as a way to create divisions among people, these families see identity as a personal code that provides comfort and a sense of belonging, but that resists politicization and spurns the idea of boundaries and limitations.

Implications for the Armenian Diaspora

The struggle to formulate identity is not foreign to Armenians living in the diaspora, who are also exposed to a variety of different cultures and identities from which to choose. The accounts of these grandchildren are in fact quite relevant to diasporic experiences and provide an alternative approach to Armenian identity construction, which encourages a kind of inclusivity that does not often characterize Armenian communities.

The Armenian diaspora today is composed of descendants of Ottoman Armenians who, despite having lived in exile for almost a century, still feel a close connection to their heritage; in some cases, they continue to speak Western Armenian, a linguistic branch distinct from the one spoken in the Republic of Armenia today. Scattered in large part across Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, the people who comprise the Armenian diaspora have, to varying degrees, retained aspects of their ancestral culture while at the same time participating in the societies in which they were raised.

Despite what seems to be fertile ground for the development of dual identities, Armenians in the diaspora have internalized the idea that identity fusion makes their Armenian experience somehow inauthentic. A hierarchy of “Armenianness”— based on the degree to which a person adheres to a perceived, yet undefined paragon of ethnic perfection—is born from these feelings of inauthenticity. This hierarchy is dangerous because there is no ideal way to understand identity or the factors that influence it; the sole requirement is for it to have value to the individual. For some, language may be the most important building block; for others, it may be food, religion, or music.

Identity is personal, but it becomes public when people create an environment welcome only to those who subscribe to the same brand of identity. General feelings of exclusion from the Armenian community are illustrated in a comment from Behçet Avci, one of the grandchildren baptized at Sourp Giragos last October: “We have been ostracized by both Sunni Muslims and Armenians. It is a very emotional moment for me and I’m a bit upset because unfortunately we do not belong to either side.”

Understanding that identity is not static, but rather that it is evolving—constantly being defined and redefined—would encourage others to see the value in multiple belongings, ease feelings of alienation, and eliminate the idea that there is a certain kind of ideal Armenian identity for which to strive.

The accounts of the grandchildren in Les petits-enfants can teach the diaspora that hybrid identities are not corrosive or threatening; they enrich one another and, most importantly, they represent reality. Egyptian-Armenian, American-Armenian, French-Armenian, Syrian-Armenian, Argentinean-Armenian: hyphenated identities describe lived experiences and should be appreciated rather than tinged with guilt.

The accounts in Les petits-enfants also implicitly encourage readers to view each person as an individual with his or her own complex identity, and not as a representative of a country or a culture. They show us that prejudices wear away with personal contact, with time, and most importantly, with knowledge. The grandchildren were forced to come to this realization abruptly, but by learning from their stories, both Turks and Armenians can come to this realization more gradually by transcending the hostility fueled by the nationalist rhetoric on both sides and seeing one another as individuals above all else.

New Texts Out Now: Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education

Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Betty S. Anderson (BSA): I always joke that I conceived the project in the pool of the Carlton Hotel in Beirut. In June 2000, I visited Beirut for the first time so I could attend an Arab American University Graduate (AAUG) conference. One day, I walked with some friends all along the Corniche and up through the American University of Beirut (AUB) campus and then back to the hotel. Since it was late June and ridiculously hot, the only option at that point was to jump in the pool as quickly as possible. Two minutes in the pool and the thought occurred to me that my next research project was going to have to be about Beirut in some way. I had fallen in love with the city in just that one day. A half second later, I thought, I should write a history of AUB.

Besides the fact that I wanted to get back to Beirut as soon as possible, I wanted to know why AUB had been so influential in politicizing its students. At the time, I was doing additional research for my book on Jordan (Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State) and a number of the political activists I studied had attended AUB. Their memoirs were filled with explanations and stories about how important those four years were for the development of their political identities. However, I had no idea as I floated in the pool that day that I’d have to do extensive research on Protestant missionaries and education long before I could even get to those Arab nationalists. At the time, I really knew relatively little about the school’s history.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does it address?

BSA: When I finally got back to Beirut in 2004, it was research on the educational systems offered at the Syrian Protestant College and AUB that eventually ended up directing my thesis. I was struck initially by the goals the American founders and their successors set for the school. They talked more about the transformative process they wanted the students to undertake than the course options they were offering. For example, Daniel Bliss (1866-1902) preached about producing Protestants who understood not only the liturgy but the lifestyle required of one converting to this faith; Bayard Dodge (1923-1948) exhorted students to follow the model of the modern American man as they sought to develop new characters for themselves. The former presided over a missionary educational system, the latter the new liberal education system then being formulated back in America. The first half of the book discusses this shift as the American University of Beirut was renamed in 1920.

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[Main gate of AUB campus. Photo by Betty S. Anderson.]

Liberal education, as American educators developed it in the second half of the nineteenth century, asks its students to be active participants in their educational experience. Before this point, professors taught their students a fixed body of knowledge; students were required to memorize and recite the data to prove that they had learned it. In liberal education, the system asks that professors teach students how to think and analyze so they can produce data on their own.

The second half of the book examines how the students reacted to this shifting pedagogical focus. The American leaders of the school repeatedly stated their goals for the students, and most books and articles on AUB focus on only those voices. However, that stance leaves out an important element of the AUB story, because only the students can truly determine whether the programs are effective. AUB is famous for the many student protests that have taken place on campus, starting with the Darwin Affair of 1882, leading to the Muslim Controversy of 1909, and then on to the large protests of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. As I discovered when I delved into the archives, students used dozens of newspapers to explain why they were protesting. The catalyst was always a particular event, on campus or off, but the students always framed their arguments around the freedom they felt the liberal education system promised. They fought against any administrative attempts to curtail their actions and frequently accused the administration of not following the guidelines set by American liberal education. This issue became increasingly contentious as students worked to define an Arab nationalism that called on them to be politically active while on campus. The administration continually opposed this position, and many of the student-administrative conflicts centered on the differing definitions of freedom put forward on campus. I put “Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education” in the subtitle of the book because by the twentieth century, these were the two dominant elements defining the relationship between the students and the administration.

J: How does this work connect to and/or depart from your previous research and writing?

BSA: Most of my work has centered on education in one form or another. In my book on Jordan, I wrote of the politicizing role high schools in Jordan and Palestine, as well as schools like AUB, played in mobilizing a national opposition movement in the 1950s. I have published a number of articles analyzing the narratives the Jordanian and Lebanese states present to their students in history and Islamic textbooks. Moving on to a comprehensive study of one particularly influential school was a natural progression. The difference was that I now had to study American education in the same way I had previously examined the influence of education in the Middle East.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

BSA: I hope AUB alumni want to read the book and, equally, that they find something of their story in it. I did not want to cite just the Americans who founded and ran the school; I purposely wanted to write about the students themselves. Typical university histories leave out the words and actions of the students in favor of hagiographies about the founders and their famous successors. I also hope that scholars and students interested in studies of education and nationalism will be interested. This is a book that addresses both Middle Eastern and American studies.

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[Assembly Hall and College Hall, AUB Campus. Photos by Betty S. Anderson.]

J: What other projects are you working on now?

BSA:
I have a contract with Stanford University Press to publish a book called State and Society in the Modern Middle East. Like with anyone who undertakes to write a textbook, I am frustrated with those that are currently available. Textbooks of the modern Middle East typically focus just on state formation, the actions of the chief politicians, and the political interplay between states. My text focuses instead on the relationship between state and society as it developed over the last two hundred years. The states in the region centralized in the nineteenth century, faced colonialism in the early twentieth century, and then independence after World War II; these stages created new roles for state leaders. Civil society, in the broadest definition of the term, emerged from the eighteenth century forward as people sought new ways to organize within and against the states now intruding on their lives. They took advantage of the new institutions the states built to establish for themselves new class, national, and gender definitions, while frequently opposing the states that had introduced these very institutions. My text examines how schools, government offices, newspapers, political parties, and women’s groups constantly negotiated new relationships with their respective states.

Excerpt from The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education

From Chapter One:

"The great value of education does not consist in the accepting this and that to be true but it consists in proving this and that to be true," declared Daniel Bliss, founder of Syrian Protestant College (SPC; 1866–1920) and its president from 1866 to 1902, in his farewell address. President Howard Bliss (president, 1902–1920) said in his baccalaureate sermon in 1911, "In a word, the purpose of the College is not to produce singly or chiefly men who are doctors, men who are pharmacists, men who are merchants, men who are preachers, teachers, lawyers, editors, statesmen; but it is the purpose of the College to produce doctors who are men, pharmacists who are men, merchants who are men, preachers, teachers, lawyers, editors, statesmen who are men." Bayard Dodge (1923–1948) stated at his inauguration as president of the newly renamed American University of Beirut (AUB; 1920– ), "We do not attempt to force a student to absorb a definite quantity of knowledge, but we strive to teach him how to study. We do not pretend to give a complete course of instruction in four or five years, but rather to encourage the habit of study, as a foundation for an education as long as life itself." The successors to these men picked up the same themes when they elaborated on the school`s goals over the years; most recently, in May 2009, President Peter Dorman discussed his vision of AUB’s role. "AUB thrives today in much different form than our missionary founders would have envisioned, but nonetheless—after all this time—it remains dedicated to the same ideal of producing enlightened and visionary leaders."

In dozens of publications, SPC and AUB students have also asserted a vision of the transformative role the school should have on their lives. The longest surviving Arab society on campus, al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa, published a magazine of the same name during most academic years between 1923 and 1954 and as of 1936 stated as its editorial policy the belief that "the magazine`s writing is synonymous with the Arab student struggle in the university." From that point forward, the editors frequently listed the society`s Arab nationalist goals. In the fall 1950 edition, for example, al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa`s Committee on Broadcasting and Publications issued a statement identifying the achievement of Arab unity as the most important goal because "it is impossible to separate the history, literature and scientific inheritance of the Arabs" since "the Arab essence is unity." Toward this end, al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa pledged to accelerate the "growth of the true nationalist spirit" among the students affiliated with the organization. In describing education as an activist pursuit, the statement declares, "To achieve political ideas which are aimed at our nationalism it is necessary for we as students to seek information by many different means." In this call, the AUB Arab students must take on the task of studying the Arab heritage as thoroughly and frankly as possible so that when they graduate they can move into society with solutions to the many problems plaguing the Arab world.

Since the school`s founding in 1866, its campus has stood at a vital intersection between a rapidly changing American missionary and educational project to the Middle East and a dynamic quest for Arab national identity and empowerment. As the presidential quotes indicate, the Syrian Protestant College and the American University of Beirut imported American educational systems championing character building as their foremost goal. Proponents of these programs hewed to the belief that American educational systems were the perfect tools for encouraging students to reform themselves and improve their societies; the programs do not merely supply professional skills but educate the whole person. As the quotes from al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa attest, Arab society pressured the students to change as well. The Arab nahda, or awakening, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries called on students to take pride in their Arab past and to work to recreate themselves as modern leaders of their society; the Arab nationalist movement of the twentieth century asked that students take a lead in fighting for Arab independence from foreign control. The students streaming through the Main Gate year after year used both of these American and Arab elements to help make the school not only an American institution but also one of the Arab world and of Beirut, as the very name, the American University of Beirut, indicates. This process saw long periods of accommodation between the American-led administration and the Arab students, but just as many eras when conflict raged over the nature of authority each should wield on campus; the changing relationship between the administration and the students serves as the cornerstone of this book, for it is here where much of the educational history of SPC and AUB has been written.

From Chapter Five:

The 1952 April Fool’s Day issue of Outlook (called Lookout on that day) satirized the proliferation of student protests that had dominated campus life for the previous few years. In the paper’s lead article, the author declared, “A School of Revolutionary Government, designed to equip AUB students with a wide knowledge of modern techniques of conspiracy and revolution, is to be opened during the fall semester, a communique from the President’s Office announced late Friday.” Continuing the same theme, the article reports, “All courses will include a minimum of three lab hours to be spent in street battles with gendarmes and similar applications of theories learned in classrooms.” President Stephen Penrose (1948-1954), the article stated, gave a Friday morning chapel talk on the new school motto: “That they may have strife and have it more abundantly.” In a further announcement, the paper described the day’s protest.

There will be a demonstration this afternoon at three in front of the Medical Gate to object against everything[.] All those interested please report there promptly five [minutes] before time. The demonstration promises to be very exciting—tear gas will be used, and the slogans are simply delightful. If all goes well, police interference is expected. If not to join, come and watch.

This, of course, had not been the first era of student protest; the difference by the 1950s was the widespread and sustained nature of the conflict between the administration and the students. When Lookout published its satirical articles in 1952, students had been organizing demonstrations in support of Palestinians and Moroccans, and against any and all things imperialist, since 1947; these events only petered out in 1955 as the administration banned the two main groups organizing them, the Student Council and the Arab society, al-cUrwa al-Wuthqa. Students engaged in these exercises explicitly as Arabs, proud of their past, and striving toward cultural, political and economic unity in the future. In their actions, students sought to integrate their educational experiences at AUB with the real-life events taking place outside the Main Gate, for only then did they feel they could be trained to function as the vanguard initiating the necessary changes in their society.

[Excerpted from Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education. © 2011 by The University of Texas Press. Excerpted by permission of the author. For more information, or to order the book, click here.]