314) Building Trust: An Armenian-American's "Return" to Turkey

 

BEFORE

I had a thorough Armenian upbringing from Day One. Growing up in the 50's, my parents taught me that as Armenians, we were different from others. I grew up speaking Armenian before I could speak English. As a young child my mother taught me about the "murderous Turks". I was told many times that my mother's mother was the only survivor in her entire family; the Turks had killed her parents, sisters, brothers, her first husband, baby, and in-laws. I was told that Armenian parents loved their children more and better than American parents loved their children. I was sent to Armenian school on Saturdays and Armenian Sunday School. As teenagers, we couldn't socialize with the opposite sex the same way that other kids in school did because we were Armenian and I was sent to the Armenian youth group (ACYOA) socials.

 

When I was old enough to choose, I remained apart from Armenian life. Inwardly, however, being Armenian made me feel different. My grandmother's nightmares about the Turks made us different. The hatred of the Turks toward us made us different. Our hatred of the Turks made us different.

 

I never ran into Turks in day-to-day life, so I had very little idea of what effect all this had on me until I actually encountered some Turks. The first time this happened was at college. I gravitated toward a group of foreign students, probably because they looked similar to me, and struck up a conversation. When they told me they were Turkish, all sorts of alarms started going off in my head. I literally backed away with "Oh, that's nice." I was surprised by my reaction, but that didn't stop me from getting away from them as soon as possible.

 

Another incident occurred several years later. I ran into two older Turkish men in a bar in New York. When I discovered the men were Turkish, my alcohol-induced reaction was to shout loudly, several times "Your ancestors killed my ancestors!" What did I want them to do? Or to say? Maybe I wanted them to agree, "Yes, they did." Getting a Turk to admit it was the obligation of being Armenian.

 

By going to Turkey I hoped to confront and resolve some issues.

 

 

First of all, I wanted to make a statement to my family and relatives about where we came from. When I was young, and I asked where Grandma was from, I was told "Armenia." I believed that for a long time. My mother wouldn't say "Turkey", because the last thing she wanted me or anyone else to think was that we were Turkish. As a result of going to Armenia several times, my parents grew more nationalistic about Armenia and everything Armenian. But that's not where we're from. We came from Turkey.

 

I also wanted to get rid of my fear of Turks. I wanted to stand in front of the Turkish people and say "I am Armenian. My grandparents came from here. I came to see my ancestral homeland."

 

And, I no longer wanted the obligation of holding the Turkish people of today responsible for the crimes that their ancestors committed.

 

A Jewish friend that I grew up with decided she would like to go to Turkey also. We left America with whatever we could carry on our backs, our plane ticket and the first night's hotel reservation in Istanbul. The rest would just happen.

 

DURING

When I first stepped off the plane in Istanbul there was almost a sense of homecoming. I was already used to the sound of Turkish because when I was growing up my father spoke Turkish rather than Armenian. The Turkish people not only sounded familiar, they looked like they could be my relatives. The music all around me was like the ethnic music I grew up with.

 

In Istanbul, we stayed at the Conrad and the Pera Palace, both very upscale cosmopolitan hotels. The first people to whom I revealed I was "Ermeni" were the hotel employees. I told one desk clerk there about my Armenian grandparents from Turkey and he enthusiastically responded "Well, that makes you part Turkish!" I smiled and nodded, thinking I was glad that my parents didn't hear that. We needed some help making travel arrangements to Shabinkarahisar and a concierge at the Conrad, knowing full well that I was Armenian, went above and beyond his obligation to help us. We wanted to see an Armenian Church in Istanbul, and the concierge at the Pera Palace knew exactly where it was and told us how to get there. He also told me about an Armenian man that worked at the hotel and arranged for us to meet and talk.

 

I also met others in Istanbul who were interested in the fact that I had come to Turkey to see the birthplace of my Armenian grandparents. Well, I thought, this is Istanbul. Let's see what happens in the rest of Turkey.

 

Traveling in Eastern Turkey between Giresun and Shabinkarahisar, I was on a dolmus filled with rural conservative Moslem people. We were way out of the tourist area. Initially I wasn't sure how the people would take to my being American, much less Armenian. However, everybody on that dolmus seemed to be excited to meet us. We went through a three-hour conversation with a Turkish-English dictionary to arrive at the basic facts: that I was Armenian, I was going to Shabinkarahisar to see the birthplace of my mother's parents, I didn't know an address where they had lived, my grandparents were dead and had died in America, my grandparents had left Turkey in about 1918, and there was nobody in Shabinkarahisar that I knew. What really tickled the other passengers was seeing my map of Turkey. Shabinkarahisar was the only town highlighted. They told us about the ruins of an Armenian monastery and an Armenian castle. They told us that there were some Armenians in the village of Tamsara, which was somewhere outside the town limits.

 

In Shabinkarahisar, we met people who took us up a mountain located outside of town to see the ruins of an Armenian monastery. We met some elementary school teachers who took us up the mountain behind the town, where the ruins of the castle/fortress were located. We were treated warmly by our Shabinkarahisar friends. We were invited into the elementary school, where school children mobbed us, and we visited with the teachers. We were invited into the home of one teacher, Sayim, and also the home of his brother's family. Sayim wanted us to stay at his house, rather than the hotel. When it was time to leave Shabinkarahisar, I was sad. The morning I was leaving, one of our friends, Okan, mentioned to us that the Armenians and Turks were once brothers. I said "Yes, I know." It brought tears to my eyes.

 

We went to Kayseri next, the birthplace of my father's parents. This was a bigger city and therefore less personal. But again, I experienced no hostility to being Armenian, and even some interest. We visited an Armenian Church there that had been restored within the last two years.

 

After Kayseri, we visited, for the most part, the tourist areas of Turkey: Cappadoccia, Konya, Ephesus, and back to Istanbul. In Konya, we were invited inside a mosque and allowed to take pictures (which was usually a taboo). We met several school children studying English who wanted to become our pen pals. The people were basically friendly. One day as we were buying some bus tickets, an employee asked me the usual "Where are you from?" When I mentioned I was Armenian, he said, "Well first you had to leave. Who knows, maybe one day we have to leave too."

 

AFTER

I left Turkey feeling very happy. My being "Ermeni" had been either a non-event for Turks or a subject of interest. I had exchanged addresses with many people and had taken over 400 pictures to show family, relatives and friends. Originally, my parents had pressured me not to go on this trip. After my return, they were glad that I went and very excited about the information and images I brought back. It was their first and probably the only glimpse they will have into the homeland of their parents.

 

The glow of the experience stayed with me for several weeks. My relatives were interested in my experience and my pictures. I sent copies of pictures to all those in Turkey with whom I had exchanged addresses. I sent Turkish-English dictionaries to two teachers in Shabinkarahisar, as they had requested. A Turkish boy in Shabinkarahisar wrote to me after I got home and asked me to be his pen pal.

 

My uncle gave me a book about the 1916 Armenian resistance in Shabinkarahisar, which happened to have taken place at the fortress on top of the mountain behind the town, the

 

mountain which we had climbed. As I read, I wondered what Okan knew about this. It would be ironic if he believed the Armenian resistance had unjustly killed many Turks, and he used my visit to Turkey as an opportunity for him to forgive the Armenians. The language barrier was an obstacle to knowing how much factual knowledge Turks had about the whole Armenian situation or what they believed to be the case.

 

I would say that my trip to Turkey enabled me to accomplish all my basics goals: I took our family's real homeland "out of the closet", so to speak. I was no longer frightened of Turks. And I no longer felt any obligation to hold the Turkish people of 1997 responsible for the massacres of 1915. Neither did I feel it was any longer productive to hold the Turkish government of 1997 responsible for the Turkish government's actions of 1915. Neither did I feel that I was dishonoring my grandparents by letting the past go.

 

"You can never trust a Turk", my mother said to me the other day, not wanting me to become too complacent. It's not the Turk who is the problem, it's human beings. The issue is, "Who can you trust?" My answer is, "All those who I choose to trust."

 

 

 

Carol Kelejian,
Armenian-American
dwhite3@erols.com

 

civilsoc.org//travels/kelejian.htm