Gayane Mkrtchyan
“Who were they? Were they actually Armenian? Did they look like us? Were
they different, very different? What an exotic thing – people who are
Muslim, but speak Armenian,” these were the questions and thoughts that
prompted journalist Vahan Ishkhanyan to search for answers in the land
of disputed identity and present it all in his lengthy new commentary
about Hamshen Armenians.
Ishkhanyan’s grandfather was from Hamshen, as the reporter learned when
Hamshen expert Hovan Simonian took a gene sample from Ishkhanyan for his
Armenian gene project.
“It turns out that my genetic group is G1, the same group to which Avik
Topchyan, another Hemshin belongs. While I do not know Mr. Topchyan, it
would appear that we are in fact related and that generations ago our
relatives were brothers.
“I was just a young child when I heard others in the house talk about
how there were still Muslim Hamshens living along the Black Sea coast
and that they spoke the Hamshen dialect. Different numbers were tossed
about as to how many there were – one hundred thousand, one million,”
recalls Ishkhanyan.
Two years ago, Iskhanyan won a Eurasia Partnership Foundation grant and
took a trip to Turkey's eastshore of the Black Sea, where he spent 12
days at the Armenian-speaking Muslim Hemshen settlements and wrote a
story, titled “Who Are They? The Muslim Hamshens Who Speak Armenian.”
Based on Ishkhanyan’s “Muslim Hemshin Armenians” project a trilingual (Armenian, English, Turkish) CD and website (www.hamshesnak.com)
have been created, where besides texts, multimedia aids, such as video
material and photographs, interactive maps, tell the fascinating story
of the Hamshens, their lifestyle, cuisine, perception of their identity,
political outlook, and their dialect.
Historical Hamshen is located in the northeast region of present-day
Turkey. Scholarly research says that the Islamization process of the
Hamshens began in the 1700s. Many scattered to settlements along the
Black Sea Coast – Trabzon, Ordu, etc – to avoid religious conversion.
There are no records preserved from that period as to why and how they
converted to Islam. All such information was recorded some 100-150 years
later.
The Hamshen people today can be divided into three main groups: The
Christian Armenian Hamshens, who live in Abkhazia and Russia’s Krasnodar
District, and speak the Hamshen Armenian dialect; the Sunni Muslim
Armenian-speaking Hamshens, (Hopa-Hamshens) who live in the Hopa and
Borçka regions of the Turkish province of Artvin and call themselves,
Hamshetsi or Homshetsi; and Sunni Muslim Turkish-speaking Hamshens
(Bash-Hamshens) who mostly live in the Turkish province of Rize and call
themselves, Hamshil.
“Hopa-Hamshens have lost the religion and many traditions, they have
taken everything from the Turkish environment, but have preserved their
own language, and it is due to that language that they know about their
Armenian roots, many consider themselves Armenian. This shows that any
community, having lost everything else, but having preserved the
language, will not merge and can always return to its roots,” says
Ishkhanyan.
Ishkhanyan’s guideswere his Turkish colleagues, Cemil Aksu, President of
the BirYaşam (One Life) Cultural and Environmental Organization, and
Harun Aksu.
63 year-old Cemal Vayiç (the father-in-law of Hopa researcher Cemil
Aksu) considers himself Hamshen, says he knew the language since
childhood and wants to preserve it.
“We knew that language as young kids and want to preserve it. We aren’t
renouncing our identity. I will live as a Hamshen till the end. We know
that the Hamshens are descended from Armenians. If Armenians visit and
relate with us more often, we will be able to improve our language
skills.” says Cemal Vayiç.
At his house all present told that before going to school they did not
know Turkish and spoke only Hamshesnak. They learnt Turkish at school.
Aksu says the assimilation policy of Hopa-Hamshens started in the 1980s
and the Hamshen dialect gradually gave in to the Turkish language.
At the revolutionary Hayteh Bar owned by Harun Aksu, Ishkhanyan meets
Mumi Yılmaz. As soon as they step foot into the bar he holds out his
hand in welcome and says – I’m also Armenian. “We know about your cause,
we are of the same blood,” he says.When asked how he knew he was
Armenian without knowing any of thehistory, Yilmaz responds:
“I don’t need to know the history to say that I’m Armenian. My
grandfather is my history. He told me that it’s the truth. Whatever I
know comes from him. My grandfather came down from the mountains to sell
whatever he had, a bit of milk, oil, whatever. They caught him, called
him Armenian, and bashed his head in. They stole his belongings, his
horse, everything.Before, in the mountains, they made our life
miserable. We were hungry. When we came down they beat us constantly.
They singled us out as Armenians. But now we’ve come down and they can’t
persecute us anymore".
A shop owner glows upon learning that the reporter was Armenian and asks
whether people in Armenia know about them. Then he adds “Eh…we sold our
religion. We sold our Christianity and became Muslims.”
Even those Hamshens who avoid calling themselves Armenian and regard
themselves as Turks can’t escape the scorn heaped upon them by the other
peoples of the region, calling them ermeni (“Armenian” in Turkish) in
contempt.
As opposed to Hopa-Hamshens, who accept their Armenian identity,
Turkish-speaking Bash-Hamshens deny their Armenian descent, but
celebrate Vardavar (an Armenian Christian holiday with elements dating
back to pre-Christian era) and bury the deceased in coffins, unlike
Muslims who only use a shroud.
“If you ask a Hamshentsi what he is, he will answer “Hamshen’. If you
then ask what a Hamshen is, he’s at a loss. In this country, not calling
yourself a Turk is an act of courage,” says Bash-Hamshen Selçuk Güney,
who owns the guesthouse in Samsun.
Ishkhanyan writes that on the one hand the Turkish authorities made up
their version of history to cut the Hamshens from their Armenian roots,
while on the other hand the local government and residents of other
Muslim nationalities called Hopa-Hamshens Armenian and oppressed them,
which made them preserve their language and their Armenian descent as a
form of resistance. They had two ways out: resist and remain “the
cursed ones”, adopting the ideology of oppressed masses, i.e. communism,
or become more catholic than the “the Roman Pope, i.e. Turkish
nationalists”.
“Leftists (Marxists) are very courageous, when they learned I was
Armenian, they would come up, talk to me without fear. Others, who are
now facing their Armenian identity issue, were very friendly, but asked
not to record their names as soon as I was about to take notes. They
asked not to cite them, they were scared. I saw that in Turkey people
are afraid because of their Armenian descent, maybe in Istanbul it is
not so, but in Hamshen it was,” says Iskhanyan.
He also speaks about the Hamshesnak (the Hamshen dialect is referred to
as such in most scientific researches) and says if one listens to it
carefully Armenian words can be detected and after some getting-used-to
it becomes clear that it is Armenian.
And it is probably not accidental that Yılmaz Topaloğlu, former mayor of
Hopa, told him: “I feel uncomfortable conversing through a translator.
We can speak that language fairly well, but sadly we’ve been subjected
to assimilation and various pressures. That’s why we have difficulty
understanding each other.”
“The language he refers to is Armenian. Yılmaz wouldn’t say such a thing
to anyone else in the world except for an Armenian who speaks it – ‘I
feel uncomfortable conversing through a translator’,” writes Ishkhanyan.
In the end, Ishkhanyan answers the question: “Who are they?”
“They’ve demolished the Hamshen Kachikar Church so that no traces are
left. You won’t find it. The unknown location of the church symbolizes
the destruction of the Black Sea Armenians. Successive Turkish regimes
have dug down deep to eradicate all Armenian roots so that none ever
grows again. But one stubborn branch, long overlooked, has sprouted
again, trembling with fear. The Armenian words that flutter from the
lips of this 30,000 Muslim community is the last vestige of a past when
Armenians once lived on the Turkish shores of the Black Sea.”
"ArmeniaNow," July 3, 2013
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