Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
Turfanda Asik, 88, was attacked and robbed in
Samatya, the Armenian quarter of Istanbul. “He just beat me, over and
over again,” she said.
Topic: Armenian Genocide
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
Armenian Turks prayed at a church in in Samatya.
“He just beat me, over and over again,” said the woman, Turfanda Asik,
88, who spent two weeks in an intensive care unit. “He hit my back, my
skinny back. What have I done to him? What did he want?”
Ms. Asik was left bruised and blinded in one eye. Her beating is thought
to be the first of a string of attacks in the last few months on
elderly Armenian women in Samatya, Istanbul’s historic Armenian quarter.
Until recently in Samatya, a neighborhood of wooden houses built long
ago and centuries-old churches, residents left their doors unlocked.
As brutally as she was beaten, Ms. Asik was lucky. One victim of the attacks died from her wounds.
Along the crooked streets of Samatya, where a conquering sultan
resettled Armenian Christians after capturing Constantinople in 1453,
and in its teahouses, churches and social clubs, the attacks have
awakened fears — rooted in past episodes of repression that residents
say had waned in recent years as Turkey became more accommodating toward its minorities.
“The community is always living with fear because the Armenian community
has always been under pressure,” said Rober Koptas, the editor of Agos,
an Armenian newspaper here that has devoted several issues to coverage
of the attacks. “We were always regarded as foreigners, as second-class
citizens.”
Armenians and other minorities were once widely discriminated against in
modern Turkey, subject to violent attacks by nationalists and shut out
from prestige professions like the army officer corps. In Samatya,
Armenians were typically artisans and merchants, many toiling in the
maze of stalls at the nearby Grand Bazaar.
But in recent times their lot has improved, thanks to reforms brought on
by Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union, a process that has
lately stalled. Mr. Koptas, the newspaper editor, said younger Armenians
like him — he is 35 — are speaking and writing “side-by-side with our
Turkish compatriots.”
“The fear has decreased,” he said. “But for the older generation, it is always there.”
When the authorities recently arrested a suspect in the attacks who they
said was mentally disturbed and of Armenian origin — not a fanatical
Turk motivated by hatred, as many assumed — it only raised more
suspicions among some residents of Samatya, who said they thought the
police had merely found a convenient scapegoat.
Regardless of the perpetrator, the violence has recalled a tortured past
and, perhaps, hinted at future tensions as Turkey prepares to face the
100th anniversary of the genocide of its Armenian population in the last
years of the Ottoman Empire.
Even though that milestone is two years away, in 2015, the country is
already questioning how the anniversary will be treated: as a chance for
reconciliation and full recognition of the massacres by the Ottoman
Army or an occasion for more tension and hate speech of the sort that
appeared on social networks after the recent attacks.
“Turkey has to face this,” Mr. Koptas said. “Only with this will Turkey become a democracy.”
On a chilly afternoon in January, a few hundred protesters marched down a
narrow street that connects with Samatya’s main square, which is
bordered by cafes and open-air fish shops. “The Armenian people are not
alone!” was one chant. “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism,” was
another.
“This is normal,” said Ayse Demir, a student who participated in the
protest, reflecting the sentiment that Armenians are constantly under
threat. “Armenians can be killed.”
Another student, standing beside Ms. Demir, said, “There are lots of racist people in Turkey.”
Sedat Caliskan, 35, a taxi driver who is Muslim, stood watching the
marchers. “For years, nothing like this has happened,” he said of the
attacks. “I want to believe that these are isolated incidents.”
In simple terms, he spoke of a sense of harmony between Christians and
Muslims in the neighborhood. “On Sundays they go to church, and on
Fridays we go to the mosque,” he said.
Mr. Caliskan lives three doors down from the murdered woman’s home,
which is adorned with red carnations and signs that read: “Don’t touch
our Armenian neighbor” and “Don’t remain silent. Don’t be intimidated.”
As he sipped tea and watched the protesters, one longtime resident, a
Greek man named Yorgi Eskargemis, a retired textile merchant, said that
the neighborhood is still as beautiful as the days it was called “Little
Paris.” But the attacks, he said, are a “stain” on the community.
Overhearing the conversation, a man standing at the cafe door piped up. “We are all brothers here,” he said.
Ms. Asik, whose first name means “fresh fruit” in Turkish, has outlived a
husband and two children. Years ago, she gave up her day job in a
butcher shop but kept her tiny apartment in Samatya. Recently, she lay
on a daybed and wept.
“It really hits me hard in the heart,” she said, recalling what went
through her mind as she was attacked in her building’s vestibule. “How
could you keep hitting me so hard? Don’t you fear God?”
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