Three Poems by By Khatchig Mouradian
Translated by Tatul Sonentz
The Armenian Weekly
December 23-30, 2006
PITY
Already the newspeak Pegasus
Pines wasted in the stable
It never ventured a visit
To its native clouds.
Tomorrow when its body
Is committed to the soil
And its soul to radiance,
We shall long lament the fact
That it was fed hay instead of words.
(1999)
TOAST
Tonight as I dock
The boat of silence
Endless words old and new
Thrash restless in my net.
Tomorrow morning
Dear reader
I shall bring to your table
The flaming loot of treasured momentos
Ablaze with longings.
(Oct. 15, 2000)
ETERNAL LOVE
Love was eternal—
An Eternity of mere months…
And now, memories frolicking
A few fortnights in the backyard of dreams,
Dreams limping along behind the pause,
Come ever closer in single file
To sprinkle a fistful of soil…
They approach one by one
To sprinkle a handful of dust…
As you slip into the new infinity
Patched up by your fancy
Your love still prompts my thoughts
From the great beyond…
(June 13, 2000)
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Paulo Coelho’s Journey Among the Armenians
An Alchemist’s Pilgrimage
Best-Selling Author Paulo Coelho’s Journey Among the Armenians
By Khatchig Mouradian
The Armenian Weekly
October 28, 2006
“This book, telling the story of a shepherd boy named Santiago, is about following your dreams,” said my Chinese friend.
“Its message is powerful and simple: If you really believe in something, the whole universe conspires with you to achieve it. Take it to Beirut with you and read it,” she continued.
Thousands of miles away from home, I was being offered a book I had on my own bookshelf, but had never read. Thus, on September 10, 2000, in Shenyang, China, my story with The Alchemist had begun.
As I was reading the book on the plane on my way back, I felt I could easily relate to the message of the novel: We had to go to far away lands, sometimes, to find treasures hidden in our backyard.
“I will translate this book to Armenian one day,” I thought, as the captain was announcing our arrival at the Beirut International Airport.
In October 2003, I started interviewing writers, artists and academics from around the world for the Lebanese-Armenian daily newspaper Aztag. “My first interviewee ought to be the author of The Alchemist,” I thought.
I emailed the author’s literary agency requesting an interview and, much to my surprise, I received a positive response. One of the top best-selling authors of the world had agreed to share his thoughts with a small community newspaper in Beirut.
The last question I asked Paulo Coelho was whether there were plans to translate his book, The Alchemist, to Armenian. Already translated into 54 languages, I felt it was time Armenians read the book in their mother tongue. He expressed hope that a publishing house would be interested in such an endeavor.
On October 30, the interview appeared in Aztag. A few days later, I received a phone call from the Hamazkayin publishing house in Beirut. “We would love to have The Alchemist translated to Armenian. Would you be interested in translating it?” asked the voice on the other side.
I remembered my Chinese friend, Paulo Coelho’s quote about wanting something, and the wish I had expressed on my flight to Beirut. When we obtained the rights from Coelho’s literary agency, the shepherd boy Santiago in me was thrilled.
A year later, I was holding the first copy of my translation of The Alchemist. I flipped to page 5 where the Translator’s Foreword appeared, titled “the 55th [translation].” There, I had told my story with the book, without knowing it was not yet over. In a few hours, I had a plane to catch to Yerevan, where I would be joined by Paulo Coelho himself for a series of book events.
The Pilgrimage
A large crowd of journalist, photographers and cameramen had gathered right outside the VIP Lounge at the Zvartnots Airport in Yerevan. “Where is Khatchig?” asked the man in dark clothes coming out of the VIP room. As I approached and we embraced, he made his first statement to the media: “He is too young to be a translator.”
“And too old to be Santiago,” I thought.
“The Pilgrim has arrived to the land of Pilgrimages: to yerkir Hayastan,” wrote the daily Hayastani Hanrapetudyun a few days later.
As Armenia was bracing for the greatest literary events in its history, Coelho had other things in mind. He had an Armenian driver, he went to Armenian restaurants in Paris, he had met many Armenians in the Diaspora and heard so much about their heritage and their country, and now, he was on a pilgrimage to discover both, first-hand.
We strolled in the streets of Yerevan that night. The following day, when he was asked about his impressions of the city, he said that the buildings and streets are almost the same everywhere around the world. “It is the people that make the difference, and my best impression was the people,” he added.
Weeks before his arrival, as we were preparing the program of his week-long visit, Coelho’s literary agency stressed that the author wanted to spend time with the people, with his readers, and that official meetings had to be minimal. We ended up including lunch with the president of Armenia Robert Kocharian at the Parajanov Museum, a visit to the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II at Etchmiadzin, and a meeting with the Minister of Culture Hovig Hoveyan in the program.
On October 6, 2004, the book-launching event dedicated to the translation into Armenian of The Alchemist took place at the Writers’ Union Great Hall. Organized by Hamazkayin and the Writers’ Union of Armenia, the event was a huge success. The hall was packed with people hours before the event, and hundreds of latecomers waited outside, pushing at the gates that were closed because the hall couldn’t handle any more people.
In my introductory speech, I told my story with The Alchemist, beginning, as always, in China. I said, “Just like Paulo, I, too, believe we have to go to far away lands, sometimes, to find treasures hidden in our backyard. And for us, Diaspora Armenians, whose grandparents had to walk through deserts in much harsher conditions than Santiago did in his quest, the real treasures are hidden here, in Armenia, whether we realize it or not.”
In his speech, Coelho, who Publishing Trends had declared the number one best-selling author a year before, also alluded to the Armenian Diaspora saying he believed that one day, Diaspora Armenians would return, like rain, to the land of their ancestors, bringing with them all that they have learned and accomplished.
“At the Writers’ Union Hall there was no room to cast a needle,” wrote the weekly Yerkir in its coverage of the event. “We cannot recall any other time when that hall was packed like that.” In its history, the Writers’ Union had witnessed such an event only once, and that was during the visit of William Saroyan to Yerevan, wrote Grakan Tert.
Coelho’s second meeting with Armenian readers came two days later in the Tcharents Hall at Yerevan State University. Some 900 people packed the hall, with many sitting on the floor or leaning against the walls. Coelho said he did not want to give a speech and, instead, invited 10 students to the podium and gave them each a chance to ask a question.
I was translating Paulo’s answers to Armenian. At one point, replying to a question on his most recent novel Eleven Minutes, Paulo started talking about sex. While I was having difficulty translating words like “masturbation,” “orgasm”, “penis” and “vagina,” and blushing every now and then, the audience was having a blast. Rarely, if ever, had a speaker talked so openly about sex on that podium.
Asked whether at some point he would write a novel on Armenia, Coelho said he never plans in advance what to write about. He compared himself to a sailor who sets out without having a specific destination. “I do not know if I will write a novel about Armenia,” he said. “But Armenia wrote a novel in my heart.”
A day later, the daily Azg wrote: “From the meetings of Paulo Coelho with the public in Yerevan, it became clear that it is not true to say the Armenian reader has became indifferent towards literature.”
In the following days, Coelho lay wreaths at the Armenian Genocide memorial, visited the Genocide Museum, and planted a tree at the memorial garden in Dzidzernagapert. He also went to Oshagan on Holy Translators’ Day, and lay a flower on the tomb of Mesrob Mashdots, the creator of the Armenian alphabet.
He was particularly impressed by the fact that the Armenians sanctified their translators, who enlightened their people after the alphabet was discovered. He said he had toured the world and had never encountered such a practice. Coelho later wrote an article, syndicated in newspapers around the world, on his visit to Armenia and specifically his impressions from the Holy Translators’ Day.
It was impossible to walk even a few steps on the streets in Yerevan without encountering an admirer of Coelho’s work asking for an autograph. He patiently autographed books for everyone. The utmost respect and love he showed to each and every reader was heartwarming indeed.
Once, when we were visiting the vernissage, the open-air art market in Yerevan, a painter in his 70s approached and hugged the author, giving him a painting as a gift. “Tell the world we love life, and we will prevail in the face of economic and political difficulties,” said the painter. His words, full of determination, reminded me of Paulo’s literary style: simple, but powerful, inspiring and heartwarming.
Before we knew it, we were at the Zvartnots Airport again. “Partir, c’est mourir un peu” (Leaving is a bit like dying), say the French. “Heratsman mech el ga mi veratarts” (There is a return in every departure), says an Armenian song. I believe in the latter.
***
Recently, I asked Paulo to send an email and wish a happy birthday to a female friend of mine, who is a great fan of his.
“A man in love asks, and a man who respects love obeys,” he wrote her a day later. “Happy Birthday!” As always, Paulo had found the best way to reach the heart of his readers.
Best-Selling Author Paulo Coelho’s Journey Among the Armenians
By Khatchig Mouradian
The Armenian Weekly
October 28, 2006
“This book, telling the story of a shepherd boy named Santiago, is about following your dreams,” said my Chinese friend.
“Its message is powerful and simple: If you really believe in something, the whole universe conspires with you to achieve it. Take it to Beirut with you and read it,” she continued.
Thousands of miles away from home, I was being offered a book I had on my own bookshelf, but had never read. Thus, on September 10, 2000, in Shenyang, China, my story with The Alchemist had begun.
As I was reading the book on the plane on my way back, I felt I could easily relate to the message of the novel: We had to go to far away lands, sometimes, to find treasures hidden in our backyard.
“I will translate this book to Armenian one day,” I thought, as the captain was announcing our arrival at the Beirut International Airport.
In October 2003, I started interviewing writers, artists and academics from around the world for the Lebanese-Armenian daily newspaper Aztag. “My first interviewee ought to be the author of The Alchemist,” I thought.
I emailed the author’s literary agency requesting an interview and, much to my surprise, I received a positive response. One of the top best-selling authors of the world had agreed to share his thoughts with a small community newspaper in Beirut.
The last question I asked Paulo Coelho was whether there were plans to translate his book, The Alchemist, to Armenian. Already translated into 54 languages, I felt it was time Armenians read the book in their mother tongue. He expressed hope that a publishing house would be interested in such an endeavor.
On October 30, the interview appeared in Aztag. A few days later, I received a phone call from the Hamazkayin publishing house in Beirut. “We would love to have The Alchemist translated to Armenian. Would you be interested in translating it?” asked the voice on the other side.
I remembered my Chinese friend, Paulo Coelho’s quote about wanting something, and the wish I had expressed on my flight to Beirut. When we obtained the rights from Coelho’s literary agency, the shepherd boy Santiago in me was thrilled.
A year later, I was holding the first copy of my translation of The Alchemist. I flipped to page 5 where the Translator’s Foreword appeared, titled “the 55th [translation].” There, I had told my story with the book, without knowing it was not yet over. In a few hours, I had a plane to catch to Yerevan, where I would be joined by Paulo Coelho himself for a series of book events.
The Pilgrimage
A large crowd of journalist, photographers and cameramen had gathered right outside the VIP Lounge at the Zvartnots Airport in Yerevan. “Where is Khatchig?” asked the man in dark clothes coming out of the VIP room. As I approached and we embraced, he made his first statement to the media: “He is too young to be a translator.”
“And too old to be Santiago,” I thought.
“The Pilgrim has arrived to the land of Pilgrimages: to yerkir Hayastan,” wrote the daily Hayastani Hanrapetudyun a few days later.
As Armenia was bracing for the greatest literary events in its history, Coelho had other things in mind. He had an Armenian driver, he went to Armenian restaurants in Paris, he had met many Armenians in the Diaspora and heard so much about their heritage and their country, and now, he was on a pilgrimage to discover both, first-hand.
We strolled in the streets of Yerevan that night. The following day, when he was asked about his impressions of the city, he said that the buildings and streets are almost the same everywhere around the world. “It is the people that make the difference, and my best impression was the people,” he added.
Weeks before his arrival, as we were preparing the program of his week-long visit, Coelho’s literary agency stressed that the author wanted to spend time with the people, with his readers, and that official meetings had to be minimal. We ended up including lunch with the president of Armenia Robert Kocharian at the Parajanov Museum, a visit to the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II at Etchmiadzin, and a meeting with the Minister of Culture Hovig Hoveyan in the program.
On October 6, 2004, the book-launching event dedicated to the translation into Armenian of The Alchemist took place at the Writers’ Union Great Hall. Organized by Hamazkayin and the Writers’ Union of Armenia, the event was a huge success. The hall was packed with people hours before the event, and hundreds of latecomers waited outside, pushing at the gates that were closed because the hall couldn’t handle any more people.
In my introductory speech, I told my story with The Alchemist, beginning, as always, in China. I said, “Just like Paulo, I, too, believe we have to go to far away lands, sometimes, to find treasures hidden in our backyard. And for us, Diaspora Armenians, whose grandparents had to walk through deserts in much harsher conditions than Santiago did in his quest, the real treasures are hidden here, in Armenia, whether we realize it or not.”
In his speech, Coelho, who Publishing Trends had declared the number one best-selling author a year before, also alluded to the Armenian Diaspora saying he believed that one day, Diaspora Armenians would return, like rain, to the land of their ancestors, bringing with them all that they have learned and accomplished.
“At the Writers’ Union Hall there was no room to cast a needle,” wrote the weekly Yerkir in its coverage of the event. “We cannot recall any other time when that hall was packed like that.” In its history, the Writers’ Union had witnessed such an event only once, and that was during the visit of William Saroyan to Yerevan, wrote Grakan Tert.
Coelho’s second meeting with Armenian readers came two days later in the Tcharents Hall at Yerevan State University. Some 900 people packed the hall, with many sitting on the floor or leaning against the walls. Coelho said he did not want to give a speech and, instead, invited 10 students to the podium and gave them each a chance to ask a question.
I was translating Paulo’s answers to Armenian. At one point, replying to a question on his most recent novel Eleven Minutes, Paulo started talking about sex. While I was having difficulty translating words like “masturbation,” “orgasm”, “penis” and “vagina,” and blushing every now and then, the audience was having a blast. Rarely, if ever, had a speaker talked so openly about sex on that podium.
Asked whether at some point he would write a novel on Armenia, Coelho said he never plans in advance what to write about. He compared himself to a sailor who sets out without having a specific destination. “I do not know if I will write a novel about Armenia,” he said. “But Armenia wrote a novel in my heart.”
A day later, the daily Azg wrote: “From the meetings of Paulo Coelho with the public in Yerevan, it became clear that it is not true to say the Armenian reader has became indifferent towards literature.”
In the following days, Coelho lay wreaths at the Armenian Genocide memorial, visited the Genocide Museum, and planted a tree at the memorial garden in Dzidzernagapert. He also went to Oshagan on Holy Translators’ Day, and lay a flower on the tomb of Mesrob Mashdots, the creator of the Armenian alphabet.
He was particularly impressed by the fact that the Armenians sanctified their translators, who enlightened their people after the alphabet was discovered. He said he had toured the world and had never encountered such a practice. Coelho later wrote an article, syndicated in newspapers around the world, on his visit to Armenia and specifically his impressions from the Holy Translators’ Day.
It was impossible to walk even a few steps on the streets in Yerevan without encountering an admirer of Coelho’s work asking for an autograph. He patiently autographed books for everyone. The utmost respect and love he showed to each and every reader was heartwarming indeed.
Once, when we were visiting the vernissage, the open-air art market in Yerevan, a painter in his 70s approached and hugged the author, giving him a painting as a gift. “Tell the world we love life, and we will prevail in the face of economic and political difficulties,” said the painter. His words, full of determination, reminded me of Paulo’s literary style: simple, but powerful, inspiring and heartwarming.
Before we knew it, we were at the Zvartnots Airport again. “Partir, c’est mourir un peu” (Leaving is a bit like dying), say the French. “Heratsman mech el ga mi veratarts” (There is a return in every departure), says an Armenian song. I believe in the latter.
***
Recently, I asked Paulo to send an email and wish a happy birthday to a female friend of mine, who is a great fan of his.
“A man in love asks, and a man who respects love obeys,” he wrote her a day later. “Happy Birthday!” As always, Paulo had found the best way to reach the heart of his readers.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Commemorating the Armenian Genocide
Commemorating the Armenian Genocide
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
April 23, 2006
“Today I bow down before the memory of all Armenians who lost their lives and look forward to the day when the souls of their grandchildren will finally be at peace. In order for our souls, however, to be at peace, and for this country [Turkey] to account for this crime against humanity, I guess people have to make many more journeys to the past to see the truth,” says Turkish Human Rights activist Nese Ozan. She is referring to the deportation and massacre of the Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, a genocide commemorated every year on April 24 by their descendents around the world.
Although the Armenian Genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish state continues to vehemently deny that there was a state-sponsored annihilation process that took the lives of approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in their ancestral lands. The Armenians were, it argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these “unfortunate events” is exaggerated.
Ozan, a metallurgy engineer by education, recounts to me how two years ago, she embarked on a “journey to the past” to find what is left of the Sourp Sarkis Church and the Mesropian School, two of the countless reminders in modern day Turkey of the destruction that befell upon the Armenians in 1915. “When you asked me to write what I feel about April 24, I remembered how we stood watching, engulfed in a deep sorrow, the ruins, hiding in them the memory of the long lost lives,” says Ozan.
A growing number of intellectuals and activists in Turkey are, like Ozan, speaking up about the importance of facing the past and recognizing the horrors committed against the Armenians. In a country shaped with a predominantly nationalist ideology, in a country where human rights violations and oppression of minorities had become the norm for the better part of the 20th century, speaking about one of the greatest taboos in Turkey could get one in all sorts of troubles. Examples abound. In 1994, for the first time in Turkey, a book affirming the Armenian Genocide was printed by publisher Ragip Zarakolu. Soon afterwards, his editorial office was bombed. More recently, world renowned Turkish author Orhan Pamuk was taken to court for “denigrating Turkish identity” by telling the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in February 2005 that “30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands [Turkey].” The court case was eventually dropped. Many similar cases, however, are pending, and many others have concluded in prison sentences and fines. Turkish scholars like Halil Berktay and Murat Belge, who publish and speak in Turkey about the mass annihilation of the Armenians, are bombarded with hate-mail and are subjected to slanders by Turkish nationalists.
Mujgan Arpat, a Turkish TV reporter and Human Rights activist, also commemorates the Armenian Genocide. “For me too, April 24 is the date marking the start of the Armenian Genocide planned by the leaders of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP),” she tells me.
In 1908, the CUP gained control in the Ottoman Empire, with promises of sweeping reforms and equal rights to all peoples of the empire. However, in 1913, the nationalist faction of the CUP, keen on cleansing Turkey from non-Muslim peoples, gained control of the CUP and, under the guise of World War I, embarked on the deportation and the massacre of the Armenians living in the Empire. “The Armenian Genocide was largely a by-product of the First World war –as far as its successful execution is concerned. But the preconditions were already created through an ideology that aimed at transforming the troublesome heterogeneous social structure of the Ottoman Empire into a more or less homogeneous one,” explains Taner Akcam, the first Turkish Scholar to publicly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, in his book “From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide” ( Zed Books, 2004).
However, this was not the first round of mass- killings against the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. As Arpat recounts, “In the pre-Genocide period, the perpetrators of the 1894-96 pogroms and 1909 massacres, also known as “Hamidiye massacres”, had gone unpunished and this was one of the factors that encouraged the perpetrators of the Genocide.”
“What stands in the way of Turkey’s confronting its past is the fact that the Turkish Republic was founded by the very same figures who were in leading positions in the Committee of Union and Progress,” notes Arpat.
According to many historians, the Turkish Republic was built on genocide and the Turkish state understands that recognizing the Armenian Genocide would shake its foundations. In an interview, Turkish sociologist Fatma Muge Gocek, an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Michigan, agrees with them. However, “If there is a foundation and you know there are problems with it, would you live in that house?” she asks. “You would know that at one point, it's going to cause trouble. You know you'll eventually have to fix the foundation. Otherwise, the whole thing will collapse,” she notes.
Gocek herself had the following to say to the Armenians commemorating the 91st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide this year: “I want you to know that as an ethnic Turk I am not guilty, but I am responsible for the wounds that have been inflicted upon you, Armenians, for the last century and a half. I am responsible for the wounds that were first delivered upon you through an unjust deportation from your ancestral lands and through massacres in the hands of a government that should have been there to protect you. I am also responsible for the wounds caused by the Turkish state’s denial to this day of what happened to you back then. I am responsible because all of this occurred and still occurs in the country of which I am a citizen. Yet I want to tell you that I personally travel every year to your ancestral lands to envision what was once there and what is not now. When I am there, I realize again and again how much your departure has broken the human spirit and warped the land and the people. I become more and more aware of the darkness that has set in since the disappearance of so many lives, minds, hopes and dreams.”
Ayse Gunaysu, an activist from the Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, wrote the following when I asked her about her thoughts on the Armenian Genocide: “Asia Minor never found peace, happiness and well-being after the Armenian Genocide. A big curse fell upon this land. The settlements where once artisans, manufacturers, and tradesmen produced and traded goods, where theatres and schools disseminated knowledge and aesthetic fulfillment, where churches and monasteries refined the souls, where beautiful architecture embodied a great, ancient culture; in short, a civilized, lively urban world was turned into a rural area of vast, barren, silent, uninhabited land and settlements marked by buildings without a history and without a personality.”
Gunaysu continued that, “Governments brought highways and electricity and water supply systems, which are the symbols of civilization but the land didn’t even become half as civilized as it was a century ago. The history of the homeland of Armenians since then has always been marked with bloodshed. Kurdish uprisings, their violent suppression, massacres never ended. No democracy prevails; no hope for the future is nurtured. Yes, the Armenian Genocide left these lands damned. Only agony, deprivation, conflicts, killings, unsolved murders, disappearances under custody, rapes linger. Bloodshed continues. It will continue until the day Turkey surrenders to the call of conscience, sense of justice, and honest confrontation with its past.”
Unfortunately, 91 years after the Armenian Genocide, there are very few survivors of the horrors of 1915 who are still alive and who could be comforted by the words of courageous Turkish-born individuals who acknowledge their suffering and apologize. The descendents of those survivors, however, will lay wreaths on genocide memorials around the world today, knowing that a minority of Turks are also commemorating-- in their own way-- with them, in a country that will, hopefully, one day build its own memorials of the Armenian Genocide.
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
April 23, 2006
“Today I bow down before the memory of all Armenians who lost their lives and look forward to the day when the souls of their grandchildren will finally be at peace. In order for our souls, however, to be at peace, and for this country [Turkey] to account for this crime against humanity, I guess people have to make many more journeys to the past to see the truth,” says Turkish Human Rights activist Nese Ozan. She is referring to the deportation and massacre of the Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, a genocide commemorated every year on April 24 by their descendents around the world.
Although the Armenian Genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish state continues to vehemently deny that there was a state-sponsored annihilation process that took the lives of approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in their ancestral lands. The Armenians were, it argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these “unfortunate events” is exaggerated.
Ozan, a metallurgy engineer by education, recounts to me how two years ago, she embarked on a “journey to the past” to find what is left of the Sourp Sarkis Church and the Mesropian School, two of the countless reminders in modern day Turkey of the destruction that befell upon the Armenians in 1915. “When you asked me to write what I feel about April 24, I remembered how we stood watching, engulfed in a deep sorrow, the ruins, hiding in them the memory of the long lost lives,” says Ozan.
A growing number of intellectuals and activists in Turkey are, like Ozan, speaking up about the importance of facing the past and recognizing the horrors committed against the Armenians. In a country shaped with a predominantly nationalist ideology, in a country where human rights violations and oppression of minorities had become the norm for the better part of the 20th century, speaking about one of the greatest taboos in Turkey could get one in all sorts of troubles. Examples abound. In 1994, for the first time in Turkey, a book affirming the Armenian Genocide was printed by publisher Ragip Zarakolu. Soon afterwards, his editorial office was bombed. More recently, world renowned Turkish author Orhan Pamuk was taken to court for “denigrating Turkish identity” by telling the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in February 2005 that “30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands [Turkey].” The court case was eventually dropped. Many similar cases, however, are pending, and many others have concluded in prison sentences and fines. Turkish scholars like Halil Berktay and Murat Belge, who publish and speak in Turkey about the mass annihilation of the Armenians, are bombarded with hate-mail and are subjected to slanders by Turkish nationalists.
Mujgan Arpat, a Turkish TV reporter and Human Rights activist, also commemorates the Armenian Genocide. “For me too, April 24 is the date marking the start of the Armenian Genocide planned by the leaders of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP),” she tells me.
In 1908, the CUP gained control in the Ottoman Empire, with promises of sweeping reforms and equal rights to all peoples of the empire. However, in 1913, the nationalist faction of the CUP, keen on cleansing Turkey from non-Muslim peoples, gained control of the CUP and, under the guise of World War I, embarked on the deportation and the massacre of the Armenians living in the Empire. “The Armenian Genocide was largely a by-product of the First World war –as far as its successful execution is concerned. But the preconditions were already created through an ideology that aimed at transforming the troublesome heterogeneous social structure of the Ottoman Empire into a more or less homogeneous one,” explains Taner Akcam, the first Turkish Scholar to publicly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, in his book “From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide” ( Zed Books, 2004).
However, this was not the first round of mass- killings against the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. As Arpat recounts, “In the pre-Genocide period, the perpetrators of the 1894-96 pogroms and 1909 massacres, also known as “Hamidiye massacres”, had gone unpunished and this was one of the factors that encouraged the perpetrators of the Genocide.”
“What stands in the way of Turkey’s confronting its past is the fact that the Turkish Republic was founded by the very same figures who were in leading positions in the Committee of Union and Progress,” notes Arpat.
According to many historians, the Turkish Republic was built on genocide and the Turkish state understands that recognizing the Armenian Genocide would shake its foundations. In an interview, Turkish sociologist Fatma Muge Gocek, an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Michigan, agrees with them. However, “If there is a foundation and you know there are problems with it, would you live in that house?” she asks. “You would know that at one point, it's going to cause trouble. You know you'll eventually have to fix the foundation. Otherwise, the whole thing will collapse,” she notes.
Gocek herself had the following to say to the Armenians commemorating the 91st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide this year: “I want you to know that as an ethnic Turk I am not guilty, but I am responsible for the wounds that have been inflicted upon you, Armenians, for the last century and a half. I am responsible for the wounds that were first delivered upon you through an unjust deportation from your ancestral lands and through massacres in the hands of a government that should have been there to protect you. I am also responsible for the wounds caused by the Turkish state’s denial to this day of what happened to you back then. I am responsible because all of this occurred and still occurs in the country of which I am a citizen. Yet I want to tell you that I personally travel every year to your ancestral lands to envision what was once there and what is not now. When I am there, I realize again and again how much your departure has broken the human spirit and warped the land and the people. I become more and more aware of the darkness that has set in since the disappearance of so many lives, minds, hopes and dreams.”
Ayse Gunaysu, an activist from the Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, wrote the following when I asked her about her thoughts on the Armenian Genocide: “Asia Minor never found peace, happiness and well-being after the Armenian Genocide. A big curse fell upon this land. The settlements where once artisans, manufacturers, and tradesmen produced and traded goods, where theatres and schools disseminated knowledge and aesthetic fulfillment, where churches and monasteries refined the souls, where beautiful architecture embodied a great, ancient culture; in short, a civilized, lively urban world was turned into a rural area of vast, barren, silent, uninhabited land and settlements marked by buildings without a history and without a personality.”
Gunaysu continued that, “Governments brought highways and electricity and water supply systems, which are the symbols of civilization but the land didn’t even become half as civilized as it was a century ago. The history of the homeland of Armenians since then has always been marked with bloodshed. Kurdish uprisings, their violent suppression, massacres never ended. No democracy prevails; no hope for the future is nurtured. Yes, the Armenian Genocide left these lands damned. Only agony, deprivation, conflicts, killings, unsolved murders, disappearances under custody, rapes linger. Bloodshed continues. It will continue until the day Turkey surrenders to the call of conscience, sense of justice, and honest confrontation with its past.”
Unfortunately, 91 years after the Armenian Genocide, there are very few survivors of the horrors of 1915 who are still alive and who could be comforted by the words of courageous Turkish-born individuals who acknowledge their suffering and apologize. The descendents of those survivors, however, will lay wreaths on genocide memorials around the world today, knowing that a minority of Turks are also commemorating-- in their own way-- with them, in a country that will, hopefully, one day build its own memorials of the Armenian Genocide.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
A Storyteller's Quest
A Storyteller's Quest
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
March 14, 2006
"Anatolia has always been a mosaic of flowers,
filling the world with flowers and light.
I want it to be the same today"
Yasar Kemal
The Anatolia Yasar Kemal, arguably the greatest Turkish author of the 20th century, wants to see and the Anatolia he can actually see today cannot possibly be considered the same region of Turkey. What was a century ago a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups (Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, etc.) is now almost homogenized through blood and destruction, and the memory of many of the peoples that once dwelled in the region of Eastern Turkey is being negligently allowed to pass into oblivion.
A number of Turkish intellectuals are striving to push Turkey to face its past and recognize the "mosaic of flowers" that Anatolia once was. Will their vision one day become reality? Much depends on the changes currently taking place in Turkey. Novelist Elif Shafak, one of the courageous intellectuals struggling today for the preservation of memory and recognition of cultural diversity, spoke to me of Turkey today and the Turkey she would like to see tomorrow.
The Two Faces of Turkey
"I feel connected to so many things in Turkey, especially in Istanbul. The city, the people, the customs of women, the enchanting world of superstitions, my grandmother's almost magical cosmos, my mother's humanism, and the warmth, the sincerity of the people," Shafak tells me, speaking of her native country. "At the same time I feel no connection whatsoever to its main ideology, its state structure and army," she notes.
Turkey is the country of opposites which oftentimes, defying the laws of physics, repel one another. Eastern and Western, Islamic and secular at the same time, the country is torn between democracy and dictatorship, memory and amnesia. These dualities, bordering on schizophrenia, are unsettling for Shafak, an author of five published novels. "I think there are two undercurrents in Turkey, both very old. One is nationalist, exclusivist, xenophobic and reactionary. The other is cosmopolitan, Sufi, humanist, embracing. It is the second tide that I feel connected to," she says.
Not surprisingly, the first tide she mentions is not at all happy with her line of conduct. Hate-mail and accusations of being a traitor to her country have become commonplace for the young writer.
"The nationalist discourse in Turkey-- just like the Republicans in the USA-- is that if you are criticizing your government, you do not like your nation. This is a lie. Only and only if you care about something you will reflect upon it, give it further thought. I care about Turkey. It hurts me to be accused of hating my country," she explains.
However, Elif Shafak, who spent most of her childhood and adolescence in Europe and later moved to Turkey to pursue her studies, is anything but wrong when she points out that her country has come a long way in the last few years. "There are very important changes underway in Turkey. Sometimes, in the West, Turkey looks more black-and-white than it really is, but the fact remains that Turkey's civil society is multifaceted and very dynamic. Especially over the past two decades there have been fundamental transformations," she says.
"The bigger the change, the deeper the panic of those who want to preserve the status quo," she adds.
A cornered tiger is the fiercest, however, as an Eastern proverb says. This is why the prospect of membership to the European Union (EU) is deemed necessary by the country’s cosmopolitan undercurrent, which is struggling against the status quo. For decades, those, who have dared to challenge the official rhetoric on a wide spectrum of issues, have faced oppression, persecution, and imprisonment, and they know well that the only way not to take the country back in time is to keep it going in the direction of the EU. Shafak herself believes that Turkey's bid to join the EU "is an important process for progressive forces both within and outside the country". She adds: "Definitely the whole process will reinforce democracy, human rights and minority rights. It will diminish the role of the state apparatuses, and most importantly the shadow of the military in the political arena."
Dealing with the Turkish Society's 'Underbelly'
"For me, the recognition of 1915 is connected to my love for democracy and human rights," says Shafak. 1915 is the year when the Turkish government embarked on a genocidal campaign to exterminate the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. This topic remained the greatest of all taboos in Turkey until very recently.
Although the Armenian genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish government's official stand maintains that the Armenians were not subjected to a state sponsored annihilation process that killed more than a million and a half people in 1915-16. The Armenians were, the Turkish official viewpoint argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these "unfortunate events" is exaggerated.
Like a growing number of fellow Turkish intellectuals, it is against this policy of denial that Elif Shafak rages. "If we had been able to face the atrocities committed against the Armenians in Anatolia, it would have been more difficult for the Turkish state to commit atrocities against the Kurds," she argues.
"A society based on amnesia cannot have a mature democracy," she adds.
Why did she choose to tackle this very sensitive issue, knowing well that harassment and threats were inevitable? "I am a storyteller. If I cannot "feel" other people's pain and grief, I better quit what I am doing. So there is an emotional aspect for me in that I have always felt connected to those pushed to the margins and silenced rather than those at the center", she notes. "This is the pattern in each and every one of my novels; I deal with Turkish society's underbelly."
Her upcoming novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul", is no exception. The Turkish translation of the novel, titled “Baba ve Pic” was released in Turkey on March 8, 2006. The original novel in English will be released in the U.S. in January 2007 out of Penguin/Viking press. "The novel is highly critical of the sexist and nationalist fabric of Turkish society. It is the story of four generations of women in Istanbul. At some point their stories converge with the story of an Armenian woman and, thereby, an Armenian-American family. I have used this family in San Francisco and the family in Istanbul as mirrors," she explains. "Basically, the novel testifies to the struggle of amnesia and memory. It deals with painful pasts both at the individual and collective level," she adds.
The Turkey she would like to see in 2015, a century after the Armenian genocide, stands in deep contrast to the Turkey the world has known for the better part of the past century. It is "a Turkey that is part of EU, a Turkey where women do not get killed on the basis of "family honor", a Turkey where there is no gender discrimination, no violations against minorities; a Turkey which is not xenophobic, homophobic, where each and every individual is treated as valuably as the reflection of the Jamal side of God, its beauty."
It would be hard to disagree with Shafak that only in the Turkey she envisions can cosmopolitism overshadow nationalism and remembrance emerge victorious over denial.
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
March 14, 2006
"Anatolia has always been a mosaic of flowers,
filling the world with flowers and light.
I want it to be the same today"
Yasar Kemal
The Anatolia Yasar Kemal, arguably the greatest Turkish author of the 20th century, wants to see and the Anatolia he can actually see today cannot possibly be considered the same region of Turkey. What was a century ago a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups (Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, etc.) is now almost homogenized through blood and destruction, and the memory of many of the peoples that once dwelled in the region of Eastern Turkey is being negligently allowed to pass into oblivion.
A number of Turkish intellectuals are striving to push Turkey to face its past and recognize the "mosaic of flowers" that Anatolia once was. Will their vision one day become reality? Much depends on the changes currently taking place in Turkey. Novelist Elif Shafak, one of the courageous intellectuals struggling today for the preservation of memory and recognition of cultural diversity, spoke to me of Turkey today and the Turkey she would like to see tomorrow.
The Two Faces of Turkey
"I feel connected to so many things in Turkey, especially in Istanbul. The city, the people, the customs of women, the enchanting world of superstitions, my grandmother's almost magical cosmos, my mother's humanism, and the warmth, the sincerity of the people," Shafak tells me, speaking of her native country. "At the same time I feel no connection whatsoever to its main ideology, its state structure and army," she notes.
Turkey is the country of opposites which oftentimes, defying the laws of physics, repel one another. Eastern and Western, Islamic and secular at the same time, the country is torn between democracy and dictatorship, memory and amnesia. These dualities, bordering on schizophrenia, are unsettling for Shafak, an author of five published novels. "I think there are two undercurrents in Turkey, both very old. One is nationalist, exclusivist, xenophobic and reactionary. The other is cosmopolitan, Sufi, humanist, embracing. It is the second tide that I feel connected to," she says.
Not surprisingly, the first tide she mentions is not at all happy with her line of conduct. Hate-mail and accusations of being a traitor to her country have become commonplace for the young writer.
"The nationalist discourse in Turkey-- just like the Republicans in the USA-- is that if you are criticizing your government, you do not like your nation. This is a lie. Only and only if you care about something you will reflect upon it, give it further thought. I care about Turkey. It hurts me to be accused of hating my country," she explains.
However, Elif Shafak, who spent most of her childhood and adolescence in Europe and later moved to Turkey to pursue her studies, is anything but wrong when she points out that her country has come a long way in the last few years. "There are very important changes underway in Turkey. Sometimes, in the West, Turkey looks more black-and-white than it really is, but the fact remains that Turkey's civil society is multifaceted and very dynamic. Especially over the past two decades there have been fundamental transformations," she says.
"The bigger the change, the deeper the panic of those who want to preserve the status quo," she adds.
A cornered tiger is the fiercest, however, as an Eastern proverb says. This is why the prospect of membership to the European Union (EU) is deemed necessary by the country’s cosmopolitan undercurrent, which is struggling against the status quo. For decades, those, who have dared to challenge the official rhetoric on a wide spectrum of issues, have faced oppression, persecution, and imprisonment, and they know well that the only way not to take the country back in time is to keep it going in the direction of the EU. Shafak herself believes that Turkey's bid to join the EU "is an important process for progressive forces both within and outside the country". She adds: "Definitely the whole process will reinforce democracy, human rights and minority rights. It will diminish the role of the state apparatuses, and most importantly the shadow of the military in the political arena."
Dealing with the Turkish Society's 'Underbelly'
"For me, the recognition of 1915 is connected to my love for democracy and human rights," says Shafak. 1915 is the year when the Turkish government embarked on a genocidal campaign to exterminate the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. This topic remained the greatest of all taboos in Turkey until very recently.
Although the Armenian genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish government's official stand maintains that the Armenians were not subjected to a state sponsored annihilation process that killed more than a million and a half people in 1915-16. The Armenians were, the Turkish official viewpoint argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these "unfortunate events" is exaggerated.
Like a growing number of fellow Turkish intellectuals, it is against this policy of denial that Elif Shafak rages. "If we had been able to face the atrocities committed against the Armenians in Anatolia, it would have been more difficult for the Turkish state to commit atrocities against the Kurds," she argues.
"A society based on amnesia cannot have a mature democracy," she adds.
Why did she choose to tackle this very sensitive issue, knowing well that harassment and threats were inevitable? "I am a storyteller. If I cannot "feel" other people's pain and grief, I better quit what I am doing. So there is an emotional aspect for me in that I have always felt connected to those pushed to the margins and silenced rather than those at the center", she notes. "This is the pattern in each and every one of my novels; I deal with Turkish society's underbelly."
Her upcoming novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul", is no exception. The Turkish translation of the novel, titled “Baba ve Pic” was released in Turkey on March 8, 2006. The original novel in English will be released in the U.S. in January 2007 out of Penguin/Viking press. "The novel is highly critical of the sexist and nationalist fabric of Turkish society. It is the story of four generations of women in Istanbul. At some point their stories converge with the story of an Armenian woman and, thereby, an Armenian-American family. I have used this family in San Francisco and the family in Istanbul as mirrors," she explains. "Basically, the novel testifies to the struggle of amnesia and memory. It deals with painful pasts both at the individual and collective level," she adds.
The Turkey she would like to see in 2015, a century after the Armenian genocide, stands in deep contrast to the Turkey the world has known for the better part of the past century. It is "a Turkey that is part of EU, a Turkey where women do not get killed on the basis of "family honor", a Turkey where there is no gender discrimination, no violations against minorities; a Turkey which is not xenophobic, homophobic, where each and every individual is treated as valuably as the reflection of the Jamal side of God, its beauty."
It would be hard to disagree with Shafak that only in the Turkey she envisions can cosmopolitism overshadow nationalism and remembrance emerge victorious over denial.
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