The Story of Zeitoun

[Joseph]

An open letter to His Eminence Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan
>From Rachel Goshgarian, a Diasporan Armenian

Your Eminence:

I read with great interest your interview of Monday, September 17, 2007 in
Today’s Zaman. I would like to thank you for being so candid in your
responses.

I am an Armenian, a Diasporan Armenian. I am one of those you place in that
monolithic block you call “Diaspora.” Having lived in Turkey, I know that
there are many misconceptions about this “Diaspora.” My introduction to the
Diasporan construct came when I was taking a Turkish language class at Bogazici
University several years ago. During one of our conversation lessons, my
classmates were asked questions like, “What is your favorite color?” or “Where
do you like to vacation in the summer?” I was asked, “Why is the Armenia
Diaspora so powerful?” I gulped. I really didn’t know how to respond. I
don’t remember even how I answered – or if I did -- I was so shocked by the
question. But the question stuck in my mind, like a piece of gum that sticks
to your shoe. I had never before considered the “Diaspora” powerful, let alon
during that first summer I lived in Turkey, when Armenians seemed so small and
where the word “Armenian” seemed to annoy people, somehow. But the power of
the word “Diaspora” chilled the classroom. And I recognized then that it
carried a heavier meaning there, in that overheated room on the shores of the
Bosphorous, than it ever had in my own mind

Several years later my Turkish had improved and I was back and living in
Istanbul. I remember speaking with my grocer in Beyoglu. He was confused by
my Turkish accent. Finally I admitted to him that I was Armenian from America.
He was shocked. “You are from the Diaspora?” he asked me. “Yes,” I replied.
“I thought you all hated us,” he answered. I smiled and told him he listened
to the news too much. That he should try and listen to some Armenian music or
read an Armenian author. That he should try to learn more before making
assumptions.

A few months after that, as Spring was turning to Summer, the owner of the
internet café I frequented called out to me, “We are with you, Rakel Hanim. On
the 24th of April we support the entire Armenian Diaspora.” I was shocked, even
though I knew he was a leftist. As he brought me my tea, he xxxxed his head and
asked, “Abla, what is Diaspora?”

In my life as an Armenian-American who has spent significant amounts of time in
Turkey, I can say that from my own experiences I have become quite aware of
this monolithic notion that exists in Turkey regarding what seems to be
considered a super-powerful, anti-Turkish, hate-filled Diaspora with no regard
for the average Turkish citizen. And I have learned that in many respects it
is this construction of “Diaspora” in Turkey that stands as a roadblock in
terms of the relations between Armenians and Turks, between Armenia and Turkey.

I have seen this and I accept it as a product of a complicated situation. Not
everyone has time to read academic articles, watch movies, or enjoy novels
dealing with this “Diaspora.” Not everyone has the means to try and understand
what propels Armenians around the world to engage in such an enthusiastic
encouragement of genocide recognition. Not everyone has the possibility to
communicate with the “Other.”

But you do.

Your Eminence, I gather from your interview that you do not consider the
Armenians living in Turkey as part of the “Diaspora.” And yet, you come to the
United States this week to involve yourself in the affairs of this “Diaspora” of
which you are, ostensibly, not a part. The Armenian Patriarchate of
Constantinople was founded during the reign of Mehmet the Conqueror as a center
of religious/secular power for the Armenians living in what was then a foundling
Ottoman Empire. The Patriarchate exists until today. The constituency that you
serve is the Armenian community of Turkey and Cyprus. As you stated in your
interview, there are three other Patriarchates – those of Holy Etchmiadzin,
Jerusalem and Antilias (Lebanon). As you mentioned in your interview, each of
these Patriarchates is meant to look over its respective constituencies, while
the Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians remains he who holds the See of
Holy Etchmiadzin. You mentioned in your interview that the four Patriarchs
don’t get involved in each other’s affairs.

And, yet, the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America lies under the
Patriarchal jurisdiction of the Catholicos of All Armenians -- not under yours
-- unless, of course, you would like to claim the constituency of the Diocese
of the Armenian Church of America as your own since the majority of its members
are children and grandchildren of Armenians who survived whatever Your Eminence
prefers to call the deportations and massacres of Armenians from Amasya,
Diyarbakir, Harput, Malatya, Sivas, Van, etc.. If you don’t claim authorit
over these descendents of Armenians from Anatolia, and if the four patriarchs
“don’t meddle in each other’s affairs much,” then I can only speculate about
what it is you are doing in Washington this week. Why travel across the
Atlantic to give a speech and eat some food? It would seem that with this
visit, this sharing in the celebration of the iftar, this speaking at
Georgetown University, your aim is quite simply to insert yourself into the
very center of the “political issue” you pretend to disdain so.

So be it. Let another voice be heard in this already complicated discussion.
But let that voice be a strong voice. Let it not be a voice mitigated by fear.
Let that voice be a realistic voice. Let it not be a voice informed by a
growing intolerance, of the type recently witnessed in the offensive song
composed by Ozan Arif and sung by Ismail Turut. Let that voice understand the
weight of its resonance. Let that voice take into consideration not only the
70,000 Armenians living in Istanbul and in Anatolia (whom we all know live
under a great deal of pressure, particularly in the paralyzing aftermath of the
assassination of journalist Hrant Dink). Let that voice also take into account
the voices of the over 7 million Armenians living outside of Turkey. If you
come here as an international Armenian voice, let your voice be supranational
and wise. If you come here as one of the four patriarchs of the Armenian
people, if you come here not only as Patriarch of the Armenians of Istanbul but
as a representative of all Armenians, and, yes, of the Diaspora, then let your
statements reflect your mandate as a leader of the Armenian people. Let it not
be mitigated by fear. Let it not be informed by intolerance.

I write this letter and I call on you. I call on you to speak to the Armenians
of the Diaspora. I call on you to visit the communities of Armenians living in
New York, in D.C., in Los Angeles and in Detroit. I call on you to inform the
communities of the United States when you plan a visit here, so that we may
invite you into our churches and homes, rather than learn of your imminent
arrival to discuss a “political issue” in DC without any plans to meet with any
of the over one million Armenians here.

I call on you to recognize that you are, in fact, a part of the Armenian
“Diaspora.” And to recognize that you are a part of the “Diaspora” for th
same reason the “Diaspora” exists everywhere in the world.

So long as intellectually powerful individuals like yourself, with a real
knowledge of the Armenians living both inside and outside of Turkey, continue
to refer to – and treat -- the “Diaspora” as one, great, negative entity, there
will be no future for the relations between two peoples who deserve a more
honest and dignified future than the past that they have lived for the last 100
years. So long as Your Eminence, leader of the Armenians of Turkey, continues
to act without engaging in discussion of your thoughts and positions with
Armenian leaders and people outside of Turkey, there will be no end to this.
There will be no real discussion. There will be no solution to this political
situation.

I call on you, Mesrob Patriarch, to remember your position as one of four whose
jurisdiction lies under the one amongst equals. I call on you to become a
translator, to become a light, to become a way.

Rachel Goshgarian
PhD Candidate in History and Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA
Director, Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center, New York, NY

Armenian Patriarch of Turkey in U.S.

On Turkish Propaganda Tour Once Again

*

By Harut Sassounian

Publisher, The California Courier

*

This week Mesrob Mutafyan, the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, is making his second visit to the United States in the past 6 months.

During his highly controversial first visit in April, the Patriarch participated in a conference organized by a Turkish group at the Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. The conference was titled, "Turkish-Armenian Question: What to do Now?"

Despite intensive efforts by various Armenian-American groups to persuade the Patriarch not to speak at that conference, he went ahead with his speaking engagement. All other Armenian invitees, for one reason or another, refused to take part. The concern was that the Turks would use the conference as a ploy to convince the outside world that Armenians and Turks were "reconciling" with each other, and therefore, there was no need to pressure Turkey into genocide recognition.

Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, the Primate of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern Diocese), was so incensed by the Patriarch’s planned participation that he wrote to University officials objecting to its sponsorship of this politically tendentious and one sided "Armenian-Turkish dialogue." The University complied with the Primate’s request and withdrew its support from the conference. Archbishop Barsamian rightly pointed out that Patriarch Mutafyan "has a very limited ability to freely express his true thoughts and concerns because of oppressive Turkish free-speech laws." The Primate aptly described the Patriarch as "a virtual ‘prisoner of conscience’ of the Turkish government."

Interestingly, the Patriarch repeated word for word in Dallas what he had said a year earlier during a similar conference held at Erciyes University in Kayseri , Turkey . The April 2006 conference was entitled: "The Art of Living Together in Ottoman Society: The Example of Turkish-Armenian Relations."

Patriarch Mutafyan will most probably repeat the same remarks during his talk on September 20, at the Georgetown University in Washington , D.C. The sponsors of both the April and September conferences are affiliated with the Islamic Fethullah Gulen group.

To gain an advance insight into what the Patriarch might say this week, here are some excerpts of his previously delivered talks in Kayseri and Dallas which consist of some straight talk mixed with words meant to appease Turkish officials.

"It is certainly not possible to idealize every phase in the history of Ottoman-Armenian relations and to say that Armenians never had any problems. Being Christians, the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were never first class citizens. And they certainly did suffer discrimination. However, we know that the first acquaintance between Turks and Armenians dates back to at least 1300 years ago…. In this long history of commercial and political interactions between neighbors, there are relatively few instances where we observe exchanges of physical violence," the Patriarch said.

He then went on to say that "especially towards the end of the 19th century there was an increase in tension in relations, whether responsibility for this was due to the Ottoman government, or the German, American, French, British and especially Russian governments, Armenian political parties, or even the Armenian Patriarchs of Istanbul of that period, who discharged their obligations under the surveillance of the Temporal Affairs Council that then consisted of Armenian secularists in Turkey. Even if the various parties were not all equally responsible, it is not a moral approach in view of the painful after-effects for any one of them to deny any accountability in the development of these events, or to place all the responsibility on the other parties."

After several Turkish propagandists delivered their talks at the Dallas conference, the Armenian Patriarch responded by making the following statement outside of his written text: "Did some Armenian political parties promote armed rebellion in the Armenian community? They did. In some areas, did armed Armenian gangs work together with the Russian army? They did. But the Government of the Committee for Union and Progress, being in charge of the country, is chiefly responsible for the painful events that occurred and the great suffering that was endured. If you do not hold the government in charge of the behavior of the country as responsible for that behavior, then whom will you hold responsible? Instead of eliminating in their local areas the armed Armenian factions who were in rebellion, the Government of the Committee for Union and Progress sent all Armenians in the Ottoman Empire on a sort of death march to the Syrian Desert ; it sentenced them to death. Therefore this party is chiefly culpable for the 1915 events."

A day before his Georgetown speech this week, the Armenian Patriarch is invited to participate at the 2nd Congressional Interfaith and Intercultural Ramadan Iftar Dinner on Capitol Hill, where he will speak along with several other clergymen from various faiths.

There has been some speculation as to who arranged for the Armenian Patriarch to come to Washington , D.C. , shortly before the anticipated vote in the House of Representatives on the Armenian Genocide resolution and less than a month before the Pontifical visit of His Holiness Karekin II to the nation’s capital? Many see the sinister hand of the Turkish government orchestrating the Patriarch’s speaking engagements, using the connections of high-powered lobbying firms hired by Ankara .

This writer has repeatedly urged the Armenian Patriarch to stay away from involvement in political matters and instead tend to the spiritual needs of his flock. He must at all cost resist the pressures exerted upon him by Turkish officials, in order not to allow them to use him as a propaganda tool serving Turkey ’s denialist agenda.

In the meantime, Armenian religious and secular leaders have an obligation to point out that the Patriarch does not speak for the Armenian Church and that his political statements are made under Turkish pressure and do not reflect his true views on the Armenian Genocide.