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The Price to Pay for Being an Armenian
An Essay by Apo Torosyan
*
What happened in the past is not our fault, but denying what has happened in the past is our fault. As Israel Charny has said, “Denial is not a distinct act, but is part of genocide.”
*
I am a second-generation genocide survivor, and an artist.* I was born and raised the son of an Armenian father and a Greek mother in Istanbul, Turkey, the old city of Constantinople.* My artwork has my personal history, which is similar to many others under similar circumstances. The bread, which is the staff of life, was taken away from my ancestors.* It represents victims of oppression.* They died of starvation during the Armenian Genocide of the early twentieth century, including my grandparents.*
I believe that in order to understand the present, we have to understand the past.* As a young man growing up in Istanbul, I experienced discrimination, racism, prejudice and injustice.* How and why?* Because my name is Armenian.* I was an Armenian, a Christian minority in a Muslim country.* My Turkish birth certificate names my religion as Armenian.* And the Turkish government today refuses to recognize that the Armenian Genocide, in which close to 1.5 million Armenians were killed, happened at all.
In Turkey, I lived in a society titled “Democracy” on the façade, with a military fist in control in the background.* Many of my Turkish and Armenian friends in Turkey were imprisoned in the 1970’s, because the military had broken into their homes and found books by the poet Nazim Hikmet or by Karl Marx and others.
*
I remember the violence of September 1955 very well.* As a 13-year-old child, I was watching terrified from our apartment window in Istanbul as mobs smashed windows and destroyed businesses owned by Christians all over the city of Istanbul.* During that terrible night, Greek priests were hanged from the bells of their churches, and their daughters were raped.* My older sister, who was pregnant and was at home alone with her young son, was waiting for the mob to come to her 4th floor apartment.* If they did, she was ready to jump out the window with her child.* Fortunately, the mob turned away when they saw a Turkish flag flying downstairs.*
*
My father had to walk all the way home from work, a four-hour trip, carrying a 2” x 4” piece of wood and pretending to be part of the mob.* We were safe in our 2nd-floor flat because the 1st floor tenant was a policeman.* But the crowd did not hesitate to destroy the Greek grocery store right across from our apartment, smashing it into pieces.* I still remember it like yesterday.* The next day you could not even walk in the streets, there was so much trash and merchandise everywhere.* These demonstrations were organized by the authorities.* The mob was not from the city, as we could tell by their peasant clothing.* No police force or military force intervened to stop the attacks for over 24 hours.
*
Like most Armenians living in Turkey, my family had been almost wiped out by the Genocide.* Almost 1.5 million Armenians were killed, raped, tortured or starved to death during the planned extermination from 1894-96 and 1915-1922. **Living under the rule of the Muslim Ottoman Empire for over 600 years, the Christian Armenians had become productive, law-abiding, educated, and somehow well-to-do Ottoman citizens. In 1915, the population of Turkey was approximately 15 million.* Three million of that was Armenians.* That is how widely Armenians were spread all over Anatolia, in their ancestral lands of thousands of years.
*
The Ottoman government made a conscious attempt to destroy the Armenian population during the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century.* Entire towns and villages were forced from their homes into exile, where many died of starvation.* Hundreds of thousands of others were killed in the most brutal ways imaginable – women, children, and elderly included- by drowning, burning, firing squads, swords, and other cruel ways.
*
Young Armenian men were gathered together for Turkish military service, and then forced to dig a ditch before being shot in the head from behind.* One of them was my uncle Sarkis Hagopian, married to my father’s sister Repekha.* He survived with a bullet hole in his ear, by falling into the ditch after the rifle misfired and acting dead, lying for three days and nights in the ditch with the dead and dying.* I saw my uncle with my own eyes in 1964, in Sofia, Bulgaria, with the bullet hole still in his ear.* When he hugged me goodbye at the train station, he kept telling me “don’t go back, Apo, they’ll kill you, don’t…”* He was still reliving the trauma 50 years later.
*
Another atrocity committed by a Turkish perpetrator happened to my cousin, who was six months old.* He was tossed in the air in front of his mother and caught with a sword.* These Armenian people were not the enemy, they were law-abiding Ottoman citizens.* They were my family.
*
Sometimes I used to question my father about those events.* He would not comment, all he would say is “There is no God.* If there was a God, what happened would not have happened!”
*
However, my father did not teach me hate.* On the contrary, he taught me love and tolerance, which is the message I try to givetoday.* I have many wonderful Turkish friends in Turkey, who know my family history and are still my friends today.
*
In 1968, I emigrated to the United States with my family.* I have been a U.S. citizen for almost 32 years, and have developed my art in this country.** I did not go back to Turkey for 27 years.* I finally returned to my homeland in 1995, and then again in 2000 and 2003.*
*
I now believe I cannot go back home ever again, because while I was in Turkey in 2003 I made a movie “Discovering My Father’s Village”, and started speaking out about the Armenian Genocide in lectures and public presentations in the U.S.
*
In 2003, I was visiting friends in Istanbul, and was searching for books on Armenian and Turkish history.* My friends directed me to a particular bookshop run by the city government.* After seeing a few books by Armenian authors on the shelves, I was encouraged and felt that I was in an intellectual environment.* My question to the shop owner was whether there were any books about the relations between Ottomans and Armenians in the second half of the 19th Century.* To my surprise, the shop owner gave me the common Turkish view, that the Armenians were traitors, they paid very little tax, did not do military service to defend the country and got rich.* The other part of this typical view is that the Genocide did not really happen, it was all part of the war, and Armenians rebelled and killed Turks as well.* (In reality, a small number of Turks were killed in retaliation for the massacre of almost 1.5 million Armenians, just as some Jews fought back in the ghettos of Poland).*
*
Momentarily forgetting I was back in Turkey, I started arguing with the man in the bookshop about his view of history, reminding him that Armenians did fight in the Balkan War of 1912 in the Ottoman military, when they were allowed to join military service.** When I told my friends about this discussion later, they were horrified, and informed me of how much danger I had been in by speaking up.* These friends are Turkish, but are well-educated and aware.
*
While filming “Discovering My Father’s Village” in Edincik in the fall of 2003, one of the people I interviewed was a local Turkish historian.* The historian in Edincik made it clear that today Armenians are looked at as traitors in Turkey because they revolted against the government.* Prior to the Genocide, Armenians were double taxed, discriminated, and abused by “chetes” (gangs of thugs) and Kurds which were organized and let loose by the government to attack the Armenians.* The chetes were allowed to move into Armenian homes and take everything they wanted.* Some Armenians resisted with arms, of which the number was very small.* When Armenians resisted this kind of oppression, it was looked on as a revolt.* It was not.* They were protecting their own families against the perpetrators.* Yes, there were a few Armenian foreign revolutionists, who were caught and hanged, but most of the resistance was in self-defense.
*
The historian from my father’s village said, following the general view of the Turkish so-called “educated” public, that Armenians did not go to military service, and they paid a very minimal amount of tax.* The truth was, the Armenians paid a very large tax, both property tax and “poll” tax for being a minority.* This poll tax was known as “neck” tax; it meant that if you were lucky enough to still have your neck, you were double taxed. For the most part, Armenians were not allowed to go into the military.* The Armenians were in powerful positions and well-to-do, because they worked day and night and educated themselves and their children. They learned skills instead of sitting at the café all day and playing backgammon or cards and discussing politics, in lieu of working.* That was the difference between Turkish and Armenian society at that time, in some pockets of the country.*
*
During the past 14 years in the U.S., I have met several American Turkish families and community leaders in New England.* I have established friendships with them, going against the trend of most Armenian society in the U.S.* I had two goals in mind in doing so.* One was to create a dialogue and trust between Turks and Armenians, and the second was to satisfy my nostalgia for my homeland.* I thought I succeeded in gaining their trust, but we were unable to have a dialogue about our mutual history.
*
My American Turkish friends and I have been in many graduations, engagements, and weddings together, sharing the extended families of our children and grandchildren.* I remember sharing troubled times as well as the joy of life and common traditions in our relations.
*
Very few times, the question of minorities in Turkey came up in our social gatherings, and, with one exception, most of them unanimously dismissed my explanation of what it is like to be a minority citizen in Turkey in history or today.
*
On one occasion, I discussed the Armenians and their history with one of my American Turkish friends.* He was denying all the historic facts of the Armenian Genocide.* I asked,* “How about witnesses?* Did you read Henry Morgenthau’s memoirs from 1916, when he was the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and begged the U.S. Congress to intervene in the slaughter of Armenians?”* My friend’s answer was that “Morgenthau’s information was coming from his Armenian chauffeur”.* The fact is that there are over 100,000 pages of documents in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. alone, to prove that these historic facts are real.* On top of that, a detailed 35-page record of my family history written by my uncle in 1969 is in my hands.
With the release of my documentary “Discovering My Father’s Village” in the fall of 2003, local newspapers featured articles about my experience in making the movie, and my speaking about the Armenian Genocide for the first time in public presentations.
Since then (the Fall of 2003), most of my American Turkish friends have stopped talking to me.
I believe I cannot go back to Turkey again to visit because I spoke about a taboo subject.* The punishment for speaking in public about the Armenian Genocide is 10 years imprisonment in Turkey.* Even though I am no longer a Turkish citizen, the danger exists.
I will miss my friends and the land where I was born.* This is my price to pay for being an Armenian and speaking the truth. *But, my message is “hope not hate.”*
*
I ask my American Turkish friends: who in your family was killed by Armenians?* Ask those demonstrating American Armenians.* They all have a family tragedy to tell.
*
I have kept my friendships for over 40 years with my Turkish friends in Turkey.* I have discussed my history openly with them, and I still maintain friendships with them that I am proud of.*
*
I was hoping in our relation of all these years, my American Turkish friends would have the wisdom of my intention, trust and good will. By denying my family history and pain they have disrespected the painful, unjust deaths in my family.* What they did is like grave desecration.**
*
I want my American Turkish friends to know, in those horrible times in history, there were a lot of good Turkish and Kurdish citizens who risked their lives to save their Armenian neighbors and their children.*
*
In the future, I will be either participating in conferences or presenting my family history to the American public.* I invite all Turks to express their opinions in public.* Please join me, let us share our pain.* Remember Kosovo?*
*
I invite everyone, please come and meet my friends, survivors of the Holocaust, and see my live video interviews with the Armenian Genocide survivors.* At AGBU, I will present a preview of my new film “Witnesses”.* This is a historical documentation of Armenian Genocide survivors, all still living at ages 96-104.* The most recent one, in 2005, is a 104-year old lady living in a nursing home in Massachusetts. She was telling me how as a 10-year-old in 1915 she was xxxxxled by naked Armenian refugees who were forced to strip, and then surrounded and massacred with swords by mounted Turkish and Kurdish soldiers.
*
The point I am trying to make is how our perspective about the same subject can change in time.* How politicians or governments manipulate history.* How deceiving to customize the truth to their own benefit.* As Buddha said:
*
*********** Good overcomes evil
*********** Kindness overcomes anger
*********** Truth overcomes lies.
*
I am hurt but not hateful.* I still keep the dates of my American Turkish friends’ children’s weddings, birthdays, and other events on my calendar.* I hope love and respect will fill their hearts, at least for the sake of their children and grandchildren.
*
I would like to end by quoting a 1950 poem by Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet:
*
*********** Evening Stroll
*
*********** The grocer Karabet’s lights are on.
*********** This Armenian citizen has not forgiven
*********** The slaughter of his father in the Kurdish mountains.
*********** But he loves you,
*********** Because you also won’t forgive
*********** Those who blackened the name of the Turkish people.
*
(Hikmet, Nazim, Things I Didn’t Know I Loved, Selected Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, New York: Persea Books, 1975).
*
Some of my Turkish friends were imprisoned in the 1970’s in Turkey for having Nazim Hikmet’s books.* And now he is a Turkish national hero, which he deserved to be a long time ago.
*
There is no politics, but truth, in my writing.* I am grateful to be able to practice my freedom of speech.
*
Sincerely,
*
Apo Torosyan
An Essay by Apo Torosyan
*
What happened in the past is not our fault, but denying what has happened in the past is our fault. As Israel Charny has said, “Denial is not a distinct act, but is part of genocide.”
*
I am a second-generation genocide survivor, and an artist.* I was born and raised the son of an Armenian father and a Greek mother in Istanbul, Turkey, the old city of Constantinople.* My artwork has my personal history, which is similar to many others under similar circumstances. The bread, which is the staff of life, was taken away from my ancestors.* It represents victims of oppression.* They died of starvation during the Armenian Genocide of the early twentieth century, including my grandparents.*
I believe that in order to understand the present, we have to understand the past.* As a young man growing up in Istanbul, I experienced discrimination, racism, prejudice and injustice.* How and why?* Because my name is Armenian.* I was an Armenian, a Christian minority in a Muslim country.* My Turkish birth certificate names my religion as Armenian.* And the Turkish government today refuses to recognize that the Armenian Genocide, in which close to 1.5 million Armenians were killed, happened at all.
In Turkey, I lived in a society titled “Democracy” on the façade, with a military fist in control in the background.* Many of my Turkish and Armenian friends in Turkey were imprisoned in the 1970’s, because the military had broken into their homes and found books by the poet Nazim Hikmet or by Karl Marx and others.
*
I remember the violence of September 1955 very well.* As a 13-year-old child, I was watching terrified from our apartment window in Istanbul as mobs smashed windows and destroyed businesses owned by Christians all over the city of Istanbul.* During that terrible night, Greek priests were hanged from the bells of their churches, and their daughters were raped.* My older sister, who was pregnant and was at home alone with her young son, was waiting for the mob to come to her 4th floor apartment.* If they did, she was ready to jump out the window with her child.* Fortunately, the mob turned away when they saw a Turkish flag flying downstairs.*
*
My father had to walk all the way home from work, a four-hour trip, carrying a 2” x 4” piece of wood and pretending to be part of the mob.* We were safe in our 2nd-floor flat because the 1st floor tenant was a policeman.* But the crowd did not hesitate to destroy the Greek grocery store right across from our apartment, smashing it into pieces.* I still remember it like yesterday.* The next day you could not even walk in the streets, there was so much trash and merchandise everywhere.* These demonstrations were organized by the authorities.* The mob was not from the city, as we could tell by their peasant clothing.* No police force or military force intervened to stop the attacks for over 24 hours.
*
Like most Armenians living in Turkey, my family had been almost wiped out by the Genocide.* Almost 1.5 million Armenians were killed, raped, tortured or starved to death during the planned extermination from 1894-96 and 1915-1922. **Living under the rule of the Muslim Ottoman Empire for over 600 years, the Christian Armenians had become productive, law-abiding, educated, and somehow well-to-do Ottoman citizens. In 1915, the population of Turkey was approximately 15 million.* Three million of that was Armenians.* That is how widely Armenians were spread all over Anatolia, in their ancestral lands of thousands of years.
*
The Ottoman government made a conscious attempt to destroy the Armenian population during the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century.* Entire towns and villages were forced from their homes into exile, where many died of starvation.* Hundreds of thousands of others were killed in the most brutal ways imaginable – women, children, and elderly included- by drowning, burning, firing squads, swords, and other cruel ways.
*
Young Armenian men were gathered together for Turkish military service, and then forced to dig a ditch before being shot in the head from behind.* One of them was my uncle Sarkis Hagopian, married to my father’s sister Repekha.* He survived with a bullet hole in his ear, by falling into the ditch after the rifle misfired and acting dead, lying for three days and nights in the ditch with the dead and dying.* I saw my uncle with my own eyes in 1964, in Sofia, Bulgaria, with the bullet hole still in his ear.* When he hugged me goodbye at the train station, he kept telling me “don’t go back, Apo, they’ll kill you, don’t…”* He was still reliving the trauma 50 years later.
*
Another atrocity committed by a Turkish perpetrator happened to my cousin, who was six months old.* He was tossed in the air in front of his mother and caught with a sword.* These Armenian people were not the enemy, they were law-abiding Ottoman citizens.* They were my family.
*
Sometimes I used to question my father about those events.* He would not comment, all he would say is “There is no God.* If there was a God, what happened would not have happened!”
*
However, my father did not teach me hate.* On the contrary, he taught me love and tolerance, which is the message I try to givetoday.* I have many wonderful Turkish friends in Turkey, who know my family history and are still my friends today.
*
In 1968, I emigrated to the United States with my family.* I have been a U.S. citizen for almost 32 years, and have developed my art in this country.** I did not go back to Turkey for 27 years.* I finally returned to my homeland in 1995, and then again in 2000 and 2003.*
*
I now believe I cannot go back home ever again, because while I was in Turkey in 2003 I made a movie “Discovering My Father’s Village”, and started speaking out about the Armenian Genocide in lectures and public presentations in the U.S.
*
In 2003, I was visiting friends in Istanbul, and was searching for books on Armenian and Turkish history.* My friends directed me to a particular bookshop run by the city government.* After seeing a few books by Armenian authors on the shelves, I was encouraged and felt that I was in an intellectual environment.* My question to the shop owner was whether there were any books about the relations between Ottomans and Armenians in the second half of the 19th Century.* To my surprise, the shop owner gave me the common Turkish view, that the Armenians were traitors, they paid very little tax, did not do military service to defend the country and got rich.* The other part of this typical view is that the Genocide did not really happen, it was all part of the war, and Armenians rebelled and killed Turks as well.* (In reality, a small number of Turks were killed in retaliation for the massacre of almost 1.5 million Armenians, just as some Jews fought back in the ghettos of Poland).*
*
Momentarily forgetting I was back in Turkey, I started arguing with the man in the bookshop about his view of history, reminding him that Armenians did fight in the Balkan War of 1912 in the Ottoman military, when they were allowed to join military service.** When I told my friends about this discussion later, they were horrified, and informed me of how much danger I had been in by speaking up.* These friends are Turkish, but are well-educated and aware.
*
While filming “Discovering My Father’s Village” in Edincik in the fall of 2003, one of the people I interviewed was a local Turkish historian.* The historian in Edincik made it clear that today Armenians are looked at as traitors in Turkey because they revolted against the government.* Prior to the Genocide, Armenians were double taxed, discriminated, and abused by “chetes” (gangs of thugs) and Kurds which were organized and let loose by the government to attack the Armenians.* The chetes were allowed to move into Armenian homes and take everything they wanted.* Some Armenians resisted with arms, of which the number was very small.* When Armenians resisted this kind of oppression, it was looked on as a revolt.* It was not.* They were protecting their own families against the perpetrators.* Yes, there were a few Armenian foreign revolutionists, who were caught and hanged, but most of the resistance was in self-defense.
*
The historian from my father’s village said, following the general view of the Turkish so-called “educated” public, that Armenians did not go to military service, and they paid a very minimal amount of tax.* The truth was, the Armenians paid a very large tax, both property tax and “poll” tax for being a minority.* This poll tax was known as “neck” tax; it meant that if you were lucky enough to still have your neck, you were double taxed. For the most part, Armenians were not allowed to go into the military.* The Armenians were in powerful positions and well-to-do, because they worked day and night and educated themselves and their children. They learned skills instead of sitting at the café all day and playing backgammon or cards and discussing politics, in lieu of working.* That was the difference between Turkish and Armenian society at that time, in some pockets of the country.*
*
During the past 14 years in the U.S., I have met several American Turkish families and community leaders in New England.* I have established friendships with them, going against the trend of most Armenian society in the U.S.* I had two goals in mind in doing so.* One was to create a dialogue and trust between Turks and Armenians, and the second was to satisfy my nostalgia for my homeland.* I thought I succeeded in gaining their trust, but we were unable to have a dialogue about our mutual history.
*
My American Turkish friends and I have been in many graduations, engagements, and weddings together, sharing the extended families of our children and grandchildren.* I remember sharing troubled times as well as the joy of life and common traditions in our relations.
*
Very few times, the question of minorities in Turkey came up in our social gatherings, and, with one exception, most of them unanimously dismissed my explanation of what it is like to be a minority citizen in Turkey in history or today.
*
On one occasion, I discussed the Armenians and their history with one of my American Turkish friends.* He was denying all the historic facts of the Armenian Genocide.* I asked,* “How about witnesses?* Did you read Henry Morgenthau’s memoirs from 1916, when he was the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and begged the U.S. Congress to intervene in the slaughter of Armenians?”* My friend’s answer was that “Morgenthau’s information was coming from his Armenian chauffeur”.* The fact is that there are over 100,000 pages of documents in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. alone, to prove that these historic facts are real.* On top of that, a detailed 35-page record of my family history written by my uncle in 1969 is in my hands.
With the release of my documentary “Discovering My Father’s Village” in the fall of 2003, local newspapers featured articles about my experience in making the movie, and my speaking about the Armenian Genocide for the first time in public presentations.
Since then (the Fall of 2003), most of my American Turkish friends have stopped talking to me.
I believe I cannot go back to Turkey again to visit because I spoke about a taboo subject.* The punishment for speaking in public about the Armenian Genocide is 10 years imprisonment in Turkey.* Even though I am no longer a Turkish citizen, the danger exists.
I will miss my friends and the land where I was born.* This is my price to pay for being an Armenian and speaking the truth. *But, my message is “hope not hate.”*
*
I ask my American Turkish friends: who in your family was killed by Armenians?* Ask those demonstrating American Armenians.* They all have a family tragedy to tell.
*
I have kept my friendships for over 40 years with my Turkish friends in Turkey.* I have discussed my history openly with them, and I still maintain friendships with them that I am proud of.*
*
I was hoping in our relation of all these years, my American Turkish friends would have the wisdom of my intention, trust and good will. By denying my family history and pain they have disrespected the painful, unjust deaths in my family.* What they did is like grave desecration.**
*
I want my American Turkish friends to know, in those horrible times in history, there were a lot of good Turkish and Kurdish citizens who risked their lives to save their Armenian neighbors and their children.*
*
In the future, I will be either participating in conferences or presenting my family history to the American public.* I invite all Turks to express their opinions in public.* Please join me, let us share our pain.* Remember Kosovo?*
*
I invite everyone, please come and meet my friends, survivors of the Holocaust, and see my live video interviews with the Armenian Genocide survivors.* At AGBU, I will present a preview of my new film “Witnesses”.* This is a historical documentation of Armenian Genocide survivors, all still living at ages 96-104.* The most recent one, in 2005, is a 104-year old lady living in a nursing home in Massachusetts. She was telling me how as a 10-year-old in 1915 she was xxxxxled by naked Armenian refugees who were forced to strip, and then surrounded and massacred with swords by mounted Turkish and Kurdish soldiers.
*
The point I am trying to make is how our perspective about the same subject can change in time.* How politicians or governments manipulate history.* How deceiving to customize the truth to their own benefit.* As Buddha said:
*
*********** Good overcomes evil
*********** Kindness overcomes anger
*********** Truth overcomes lies.
*
I am hurt but not hateful.* I still keep the dates of my American Turkish friends’ children’s weddings, birthdays, and other events on my calendar.* I hope love and respect will fill their hearts, at least for the sake of their children and grandchildren.
*
I would like to end by quoting a 1950 poem by Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet:
*
*********** Evening Stroll
*
*********** The grocer Karabet’s lights are on.
*********** This Armenian citizen has not forgiven
*********** The slaughter of his father in the Kurdish mountains.
*********** But he loves you,
*********** Because you also won’t forgive
*********** Those who blackened the name of the Turkish people.
*
(Hikmet, Nazim, Things I Didn’t Know I Loved, Selected Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, New York: Persea Books, 1975).
*
Some of my Turkish friends were imprisoned in the 1970’s in Turkey for having Nazim Hikmet’s books.* And now he is a Turkish national hero, which he deserved to be a long time ago.
*
There is no politics, but truth, in my writing.* I am grateful to be able to practice my freedom of speech.
*
Sincerely,
*
Apo Torosyan