RUBINA PEROOMIAN
It would be easy for me to speak to you today, as I was asked to do, about my experience as an Armenian woman, an activist of the Armenian cause, an author, and a scholar. It would be easy, but not very satisfying or gratifying. You see, regardless of what I related about my life experience as a professional, a wife, a mother, regardless of the stories of my successes, my failures, the obstacles in my path and the support I received and enjoyed, I’m certain that I would end my speech with sincere recommendations to you all, dear ungerouhies. What would these pearls of wisdom be? To have a goal in life, outside family obligations, to establish your own identity in the community, independent of your husbands’ or family associations, based solely on your own unique potential in any field; that our maxim as Armenian women should be one of diligence and perseverance; that failures in our lives should not disappoint us, and successes should not blind us; that we should live and work with all modesty. But, I’m not one to proselytize or preach, or to self-praise and self-promote, and I would never want to sound arrogant or offensive.
So, I decided to suggest another topic, to dedicate my speech to unearth a forgotten piece of the collective image of Armenian woman through time.
There are numerous stories of Armenian women victims or survivors of the Armenian Genocide, women who endured unspeakable hardship during the deportations but never compromised their virtues, their religious, traditional, and moral principles. We praise their courage and super-human tenacity. Some of these women had the luck to survive and somehow reach freedom outside Turkey. They formed families and raised children. They are our mothers, our grandmothers who are rarely alive today. This generation of martyrs is gone leaving their memories with us and their plea not to forget, not to forgive. Inevitable are also stories of Armenian women who for the sake of mere survival sacrificed all moral standards, debased themselves to the level of lowly creatures with a primitive instinct to survive at any cost.
But what about young women and girls who were kidnapped, or ‘rescued,’ or bought for a few coins and taken to Turkish, Kurdish or Arab harems as a wife or a concubine? Even children of 10-12 years of age became wives of older Muslim men. How did they tolerate this horrible experience? For a long-long time we had no idea how their lives were like. How were these women able to give up their identity their religion, their name? How were they able to forget the culture and the tradition transmitted to them? How were they able to forget the centuries-old prayers to the Armenian God and send their prayers to Allah, the God of Muslims, to whom the murderers prayed and received encouragement to kill the gavours? How were these women able to live with the memory of the horrors they witness, the murder of their parents, their husbands, their siblings, and become the wife of that same murderer, serve him as a sex slave, give birth to his children and raise that half-Armenian children of murderers?
It is about these women that I want to talk today. To me they are the forgotten and long neglected pieces in the fascinating collective image of the Armenian woman to whom the year 2010 is dedicated.
Sultan, a third generation hidden Armenian, remembers her aunt’s tearful uttering, ‘In front of my eyes the Kurd killed my husband and forced me to marry him. I married the murderer of my husband to save my soul. I can never forgive that man, the father of my two sons.’ Yervand Odian remembers the forcibly Islamized women he met on the road to exile. The only words in these women’s mouth were curses against their new husbands. Grigoris Balakian describes how these Islamized women secretly brought food to the Armenian deportees endangering their lives. Sedrak Baghdoyan remembers Sirun, as beautiful as her name. She agreed to go with Ibosh Bey, the Turkish commandant of their caravan of deportees with a condition that her six-year-old brother and her surviving relatives, too, could go with her. Baghdoyan does not believe that Sirun was the type to renounce her religion. Did she? Did she live all her life as a concubine or a mistress? Did she bear children? A young woman from Kharbert was one of those converted to Islam, married to an Arab in Tel-Afar. During five years of marriage, she had given birth to three sons. How could she leave them and escape to freedom? ‘I love them more than my own life,’ in tears, she had confessed to a group of refugees passing their town after the war and offering her to escape with them. Seher/Heranoush, Fethiye իetin’s grandmother, had the opportunity to join the remnants of her family in the United States, but she did not. She chose to stay and faithfully ‘serve’ her Turkish husband and children. However, neither she nor her children were fully accepted in Turkish society. She was a muhtedi (someone who converted to Islam later in life, not born Muslim). Her children had Armenian blood. Success in the society was blocked for them and for all those in the predicament.
Many were those women who had the chance to escape but did not. Was it motherly love and dedication? Was it fear of yet another uncertain fate awaiting them in the outside world? Or, maybe they had other concerns. The Armenians outside Turkey had forgotten them. They were dead for the surviving remnants of their families. No one knew about their life story of rape, forced conversion, their forced or voluntary conjugal life with the Muslim man. If they fled, the secret and all the degradation and humiliation would come out in the open. Wouldn’t it be better to suffer alone and take that shame to the grave?
These victims of the Armenian Genocide had been subjected to humiliation, degradation, and dehumanization. We now know all about that clever Young Turk strategy to stripping their victims of all human attributes, debasing them to lowly creatures, so that subjugating or killing them would become easier. The innate instincts of the masses to torture, rape, destroy, and kill followed to complete the job. Dehumanization was the most fearful and challenging state of mind for these women to overcome in order to be able to return to human society and survive as a human being.
Evidences show that sexual assaults against Armenian women and girls, kidnapping, raping, forcing them into conjugal life was rampant during the Genocide. It wasn’t just because the turmoil had given the Turk or the Kurd the freedom, the green light to enjoy all their sexual fantasies over much coveted, unreachable, forbidden fruit, the sophisticated Armenian woman. Of course, there was also another reason why the Muslims took young Armenian women and girls as brides. They were free or cost a few ghurushes in the slave market. They did not have to pay huge amounts of money to the bride’s family as was and still is customary in Turkey or other Muslim societies. But there was a more complex motivation, and Henry Morgenthau attests to that: ‘These Armenian girls represent a high type of womanhood and the young Turks, in their crude, intuitive way, recognized that the mingling of their blood with the Turkish population would exert a eugenic influence upon the whole.’ Osman KՓker presents documents showing that giving Armenian women and children to Muslims was not an offshoot of the events of 1915 but rather a state policy ordered from above. This was during the Genocide when racial purity was not on the agenda. On the contrary, improving the race was the issue. Racial purity became a concern for the Turkish families after late1930s and still continues. As a consequence of imitating the Nazi ideology, I would say, the so called, pure-blooded Turkish families, if there is ever a pure-blooded Turk, refuse taking a bride from or marry off a girl into a family with Armenian ancestry. Fethiye Cetin attests to that in her book Anneannem (My maternal grandmother).
Assimilating Armenians into the Turkish society and absorbing them into the genetic treasury of the nation was soon turned into ostracization and isolation, thus adding an extra burden upon the generation of Turks with Armenian ancestry. Ethnic origin is still a big issue in Turkey, and it is highly politicized. A big offense against a high ranking official or a public figure is to accuse him of having an Armenian origin.
Turkish historiography, literature, and media have long kept silent. There were no testimonies or oral history recording the life story and the fate of Armenian women in Turkish or Kurdish households. Things have changed. Thanks to Hrant Dink’s campaign, ‘Looking for my relative,’ encouraging young Turks to dig into their own family history, these stories are out in the open. Hrant Dink searched for Turks, Kurds, and Alevis with Armenian blood running in their veins. He clearly saw the collapse of the concept of Turkishness and the crisis of identity in Turkey. ‘It is the spirit of the time,’ he wrote. ‘Many today in Turkey wander in the labyrinth of their identity.’
There are many Turkish intellectuals, free thinkers, who are in search of the truth in the history of their nation that was long denied to them. They are digging into the stories of the Armenian survivors of 1915, not for the sake of the Armenians but for the sake of facing the past in order to build a democratic future. Kemal Yalջin is one of the first one. Then there is Ayջe GՖl Altinay and her new publication, Torunlar (Grandchildren, with Fethiye իetin’s preface and epilogue), a collection of interviews with third generation Turks and Kurds with Armenian ancestry. Many Turks and Kurds today find the courage to come forward and claim their true identity and openly speak of the presence of the Armenian element in their ancestry. Filiz Ճzdem, Irfan Palali, Ahmed Ճnal are to name a few.
This trend of searching for their identity has created a mixed reaction many times in a negative direction. In their haste and enthusiasm to deny their Armenian origin, many turn against Armenians and become archenemies of the Armenian race. Just a short time ago, Dogu Perinջek was indicted in the Swiss court for having publicly denied the Armenian Genocide. He had an Armenian grandmother. LՖtfi Dogun, the former head of the Council for Religious Affairs in Turkey is believed to be Patriarch Shnorh Galustian’s step brother.
Whichever way the reaction tilts, one thing is certain. Turkey is experiencing an identity crisis. The Turkish government can no longer claim homogeneity of the Turkish society. The definition of Turkish citizen being Turkish by ethnicity and Muslim by religion does not hold true. It is a joke compared to the multi-ethnic, multi-religious makeup of Turkish society.
The movement has begun from within. Armenian women, grandmothers of tens of thousands of enlightened Turks today, have played their role. Sometimes silently, sometimes with painful confessions to a trusted offspring, they have transmitted the memory of their horrible experience during the Genocide. The volcano has erupted, and it will flow stronger with the further democratization of Turkey.
These wretched Armenian women, victims of Turkish atrocities, are coming alive shaking the foundation of the concept of Turkishness in Turkey.
Միթէ՞ չի արժում ուսումնասիրութիւններ նուիրել՝ վեր հանելու համար այս դժբախտ կանանց թաքնուած կերպարը։
Միթէ՞ չէր արժում այս կարճ դասախօսութեան ճամբով բացայայտել ցայժմ արգիլուած եւ մեզ անծանօթ մասնիկը հայ կնոջ հաւաքական դիմանկարի։
Եւ սա դեռ սկիզբն է։
Sources used for this presentation:
Rubina Peroomian, And Those Who Continued Living in Turkey after 1915 (2008)
Ruben Melkonian, «Հայերի բռնի իսլամացումը ցեղասպանութեան տարիներին» (2009)
Ungerouhi Roubina, you deserve every accolade for your research and presentations which enlighten the world and remind Armenians of their origins, their hardships, their dignity and their responsibilities. Abris.