The historic religious ceremony held Sept. 19 at an Armenian church in eastern Turkey will have long-lasting effects, according to Armenians who anticipate more churches being restored and more people reclaiming their ethnic identities.
“Families from all corners of Turkey are coming to us in search of the roots of their families. Members of my own family have changed their identity cards to be listed as Christian,” Archbishop Aram Ateşyan, deputy patriarch of the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. “Many people who had ‘Muslim’ written in their identity cards are confessing that they are hidden Armenians.”
Following the killings of Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, many of those remaining in the area changed their names and assumed identities as Kurdish Muslims. According to Ateşyan, the current process of democratization in Turkey is slowly eliminating the fears that led people to take such measures.
That process had perhaps its most dramatic manifestation to date in the rite at the Surp Haç Church on Akdamar Island near the eastern province of Van, the first such service to be held there in 95 years. Though that church has been the subject of intense media focus, it is only one of several Armenian monasteries and churches in the province, where a number of villages are still known by their Armenian names. Local residents say many of the buildings have been demolished, especially since the mid-1990s.
'There is big change,' says local journalistAs hotels in Van struggled to accommodate the thousands who attended the rite at Surp Haç Church observed on Sept. 19, some visitors stayed in the houses of the local residents. The idea of accommodating visitors in local houses belonged to Aziz Aykaç, owner of the two daily local newspapers, one of which is Van Times, published in Turkish, English, Kurdish and Persian. He said more than a thousand families applied to host visitors in their homes. “Well, obviously we expelled them (Armenians), that is why they were welcomed warmly.” “I am a Kurd. But all of my father’s neighbors used to be Armenian,” he told academic Baskın Oran, who wrote his impressions of their interview in daily Radikal. “Here there are many families that have Armenian members. They know, everyone knows, but no-one talks about it. They will only talk about it when the circumstances are right,” he said. Aykaç believes people in the region have a kind of bruise on their subconscious. “We massacred, we expelled. Everyone should know the name of their village by its Armenian name,” he said. Aykaç said there has been a huge change. “There is a transformation (happening at the moment). I don’t know how to describe it,” he said. Aykaç said he has visited the governor of Van with two additional proposals to expand local consciousness of the Armenian cultural heritage of the area: to hold marriage and baptism ceremonies in the church. “He approached it with a positive view,” Aykaç said.
In the village of Nareg, 40 kilometers north of Van, only a few stones remain of the Naregevank Monastery complex, which a man who identified himself only as Mahmet said the village people were ordered to demolish in the 1990s. Homes have been built on the former site in Nareg, a village named for the 10th-century philosopher Krikor Naregatzi, considered the greatest poet of the Armenian nation. Mahmet, 95, who said he is of Kurdish origin, also claimed the governor’s building in the center of Van was built from the stones taken from the Naregevank Monastery.
Varakavank Monastery to be restored
The Varakavank Monastery in the village of Yukarı Bakraçlı, also known as “seven churches,” is little better off than its counterpart in Nareg. Only one floor is left of the once-impressive monastery, built in 1003 by the Armenian King Senekerim. All of the invaluable manuscripts once held in its library have been lost.
The Van Governor’s Office told the Daily News in August that the monastery will soon be restored, as will the Ktuts Monastery on Lake Van’s Çarpanak Island, part of efforts to turn Van into the culture and tourism center of Turkey’s East.
The owner and guardian of the now-defunct Varakavank Monastery is an Armenian who hides his ethnic identity. Kerim avoided revealing his family name and introduced himself as a Kurdish Muslim. Kerim said when his father died he left the monastery’s land to him and said he should protect the church at any cost, in the name of Christ.
“His wish surprised me. We were Muslim and I did not understand why he wanted me to protect the church in the name of Christ,” Kerim said, adding that he only learned upon insistent questioning of older relatives that the family was in fact Armenian.
Kerim said he worked as the village imam for all his life and lived as a pious Muslim. He keeps the monastery locked and maintains strict control over the visitors who are allowed to enter. He cleaned the interior on his own and laid all the stones in a corner, in numerical order, in hopes that it will one day be restored. Because he is influential in the village, no one interferes with his efforts, but Kerim said he has experienced a lot of difficulties in his life.
“It was not that easy to protect this place,” he said.
Fears and hopes of finds
The small steps toward reclaiming Van’s Armenian past have aroused some controversy and speculation. Mehmet Tuncel Ağa, the guide who accompanied the Daily News to the villages in the area, said the lands Armenians left in 1915 are now under the control of his Büriki clan, one of the biggest in eastern and southeastern Anatolia. The son of Fariz Ağa, the head of the clan, Tuncel Ağa said members of the Turkmen tribes who settled in the homes abandoned by the Armenians feared their houses would be reclaimed by Armenians who came to attend the Akdamar rite.
According to Tuncel Ağa, there was considerable uneasiness among them before the ceremony, and many people came to share their fears with the leaders of the tribe. “We said the fears are groundless and that the Armenians were just coming for the ceremony,” he said, adding that he made every effort to host the Armenians from Istanbul who came to Van for the event.
Tuncel Ağa also said Victor Bedoyan, an Armenian-American entrepreneur who tried to set up a business in Van in 2002, was treated unjustly. “He opened a hotel here with the name Vartan, but some did not want to see an Armenian managing a hotel. It was closed by the Culture Ministry. We did not object to it. We made a mistake. We did not foresee the current situation,” Tuncel Ağa said.
If the opportunity to open the hotel had not been taken from Bedoyan, then the region would see more tourists today, he added.
There is also a pervasive belief in some villages that the Armenians must have hidden their valuables before fleeing the region, sparking interest in recent excavations near cemeteries. Arşo Ağa, a villager who is a member of the Büriki clan, said he is working on the excavation in hopes of finding treasure.
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