In Eastern Turkey, Walking in the Shadow of Genocide

John Lubbock (*)

 

In the week leading up to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, British-Armenian historian Ara Sarafian led a group of students, academics and journalists on a mission to engage with local Kurds and the descendants of Armenians in the Kurdish region of Turkey.

It was in these towns and villages, 100 years ago, that the Armenian population, as well as many Assyrians, were forced from their homes and killed or deported by the state and its deputies. The Ottoman bureaucracy, supposedly fearing non-Turkish populations would revolt and carve off Ottoman lands to create new nation-states, exploited tribal, class and ethnic tensions to encourage local Kurdish leaders to murder their neighbours and steal their lands.

Sarafian has been travelling to this region, and especially the main Eastern city of Diyarbakir, for years, engaging with locals and trying to build bridges with the local community.

Turkey’s Century of Denial About an Armenian Genocide

Tim Arango

CUNGUS (*), Turkey — The crumbling stone monastery, built into the hillside, stands as a forlorn monument to an awful past. So, too, does the decaying church on the other side of this mountain village. Farther out, a crevice is sliced into the earth, so deep that peering into it, one sees only blackness. Haunting for its history, it was there that a century ago, an untold number of Armenians were tossed to their deaths.

“They threw them in that hole, all the men,” said Vahit Sahin, 78, sitting at a cafe in the center of the village, reciting the stories that have passed through generations.

The Hidden Armenians of Western Armenia

Matthew Karanian (*)

 

The village of Chunkush was home to about 10,000 Armenians, and hardly anyone else, until 1915.

That’s when the Armenians were driven out, and were marched for two hours to a ravine known as the Dudan Gorge. Once they arrived at the ravine, they were herded by the force of batons and bayonets into its depths. Here they died, if they hadn’t already perished before entering the abyss.

One young Armenian girl, not more than 10 years of age, stood at the edge of death. She was part of a group that had been marched to the ravine on one of the killing days—the day on which her Chunkush neighborhood had been selected for this “deportation.”

In a Turkish Town That Had 10,000 Armenians, Now There Is Only One

Chris Bohjalian

 

A woman I met last month in southwestern Turkey is going to die, probably sometime soon. Asiya’s death will not be covered by any news service, and for all but a few people in her small village of Chunkush, she will not be missed. Even the relatives who love her will probably think to themselves, well, she was 98 years old. Or 99. Or, if she survives until 2015, somewhere in the neighborhood of a century. She will have lived a long life.