<div dir="ltr">Forwarded from Eurasianet.org<br><br><br clear="all"><div><div id="content-header">
<h1 class="">Turkey: Armenian Church Catalyst for Change in Kurdish Region</h1>
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<span class="">December 17, 2013 - 11:55am</span>, by <span class=""><a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/taxonomy/term/2839">Dorian Jones</a></span> </div>
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<a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_fullscreen/121713_0.jpg" rel="lightbox[field_image][Surp Giragos, after reopening two years ago, has become a focal point for ethnic Armenians rediscovering their identity. (Photo: Dorian Jones)]" class=""><img src="http://www.eurasianet.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/story/121713_0.jpg" alt="Surp Giragos, after reopening two years ago, has become a focal point for ethnic Armenians rediscovering their identity. (Photo: Dorian Jones)" title="Surp Giragos, after reopening two years ago, has become a focal point for ethnic Armenians rediscovering their identity. (Photo: Dorian Jones)" height="140" width="210"></a> </div>
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<a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_fullscreen/121713-a.jpg" rel="lightbox[field_image][Visitors to Surp Giragos are not only ethnic Armenians, some Kurds visit to express their regret at the role their ancestors played in destruction of the Armenian community in 1915. (Photo: Dorian Jones)]" class=""><img src="http://www.eurasianet.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/story/121713-a.jpg" alt="Visitors to Surp Giragos are not only ethnic Armenians, some Kurds visit to express their regret at the role their ancestors played in destruction of the Armenian community in 1915. (Photo: Dorian Jones)" title="Visitors to Surp Giragos are not only ethnic Armenians, some Kurds visit to express their regret at the role their ancestors played in destruction of the Armenian community in 1915. (Photo: Dorian Jones)" height="140" width="210"></a> </div>
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Surp Giragos, after reopening two years ago, has
become a focal point for ethnic Armenians rediscovering their identity
in southeast Turkey. (Photo: Dorian Jones) </div>
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<p>A recently restored 13th-century church has become a focal point for
ethnic Armenians seeking to rediscover their cultural identity in
Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast. </p>
<p>St. Giragos Armenian Apostolic church is located in the back streets
of the Sur quarter in Diyarbakır, one of southeastern Turkey’s largest
cities. It was derelict and abandoned until restored to its full
splendor two years ago, and now serves as a testament to the once large
and wealthy ethnic Armenian community that for centuries lived in the
city. </p>
<p>“It means everything to me. It is our history, it is our culture and
it is our legacy,” proudly declared 60-year-old church caretaker Armen
Demircian. “It’s the gift of our ancestors to us. As an Armenian, I can
see myself here.”</p>
<p>Demircian’s story is typical for the region’s ethnic Armenians. His
grandparents and great-uncles died amid Ottoman Turkey’s 1915 slaughter
and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians. Officials in
Armenia are <a title="" href="http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/news/articles/eav031210c.shtml" target="">pushing for international recognition</a> of the events as genocide; the <a title="" href="http://www.eurasianet.org/node/67868" target="">Turkish government </a>links the events to World War I, rather than to a genocide policy. </p>
<p>During the bloodshed, a family friend hid Demircian’s father, then
five, in a barn. A local Kurdish family brought the boy up; he later
married one of the daughters.</p>
<p>Demircian describes his own upbringing as entirely Kurdish. “I was
raised as a Kurd, with Kurdish songs, Kurdish traditions,” he recounted.
“I knew nothing of my Armenian identity, until an elder in the town
explained to me that my father was Armenian and I was Armenian. It was a
big shock and I was very confused.”</p>
<p>St. Giragos remained closed for much of the last century, but now is a
symbol of the growing self-awareness and confidence among Turkey’s
remaining handful of ethnic Armenians. “Before, no one would say it,”
Demircian said of the ethnicity of local Armenians, most of whom
converted to Islam. “Now, since the church re-opened, many people come
here and say; ‘My grandmother or my grandfather was Armenian.’” </p>
<p>City government worker Melike Günal is among them. “My closest family
always knew about our Armenian identity, but it was something kept
within the family,” she recalled after lighting a candle and saying a
prayer. </p>
<p>Melike’s father died during the Turkish government’s war against<a title="" href="http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66751" target=""> Kurdish militant separatists </a>in the 1990s; a brutal campaign that also took the lives of many civilians. </p>
<p>The Kurds’ struggle for greater minority rights gave an opportunity
to ethnic Armenians. “It all came out with the Kurdish struggle for
their identity; that opened the door to us,” said one 25-year-old
schoolteacher, who, fearing potential retribution because she is a state
employee, declined to give her name. “Kurds can’t deny the same rights
for us.” </p>
<p>The Turkish government recently began tentatively<a title="" href="http://www.eurasianet.org/node/67639" target=""> expanding cultural rights</a>
for ethnic Kurds. It also has introduced reforms to ease restrictions
on Christian minorities, including returning properties seized by the
state, and restoring individual churches, such as nearby Van’s Armenian
Holy Cross Church, which are allowed <a title="" href="http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61965" target="">occasional religious services</a>. </p>
<p>The teacher, however, claims greater freedom to express her identity
also creates new problems. “When we say we are Armenians, we are not
actually Armenians because we don't know anything about the Armenian
language, and Armenians single us out” as outsiders, she asserted.</p>
<p>“Are we Kurds? We live as Kurds, but Kurds discriminate against us,”
the teacher said. “When we show genuine interest in Islam, we cannot
fully integrate and we are discriminated by them as well. Whatever we
do, we are always discriminated against.”</p>
<p>The district city council, controlled by the pro-Kurdish Peace and
Democracy Party, believes it has a role to play in correcting that
trend. It donated 1 million Turkish lira (about $490,557) to finance the
re-opening of St. Giragos, a project overseen by the local Surp Giragos
Foundation, and has extended similar support to a local Assyrian church
and to a synagogue. </p>
<p>“Throughout the years, the Turkish state wanted to turn this region,
this area, into a single identity, by not only suppressing Kurds, but
all these communities, all these religions and languages,” declared
Mayor Abdullah Demirbaş, whose municipality has installed city signs in
Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian, as well as published literature in
Armenian and provided language courses. “We want to show this diversity
can live together.”</p>
<p>For Kurds who also have suffered from repression and restrictions on
expressions of their cultural identity, what happened to ethnic
Armenians almost a century ago raises uncomfortable questions. Kurds
carried out many of the massacres of ethnic Armenians, including in
Diyarbakır. </p>
<p>At an opening ceremony this October for a memorial to victims of the
region’s ethnic killings, Mayor Demirbaş, “in the name of our
ancestors,” apologized on behalf of local Kurds for the killings. St.
Giragos caretaker Demircian claims that Kurds now come to the church and
apologize to him as well for the bloodshed. </p>
<p>Viewing a small photo exhibit that shows members of Diyarbakır’s
former ethnic Armenian community drinking wine and smoking water pipes, a
group of teenage boys feels the same. One, Baran Doğan, acknowledges
his awareness of “what happened to the Armenians by Kurds under the
order of the state.” A close friend’s recent avowal of his Armenian
heritage has brought it closer still, he continued. </p>
<p> “When I come to this church with him, I feel it as a small apology
although it never can compensate for what they’ve been through,” Doğan
said. <br></p><p><a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/node/67879?utm_source=Weekly+Digest&utm_campaign=82a115cc39-my_google_analytics_key&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d6d0d0e55f-82a115cc39-205692161">http://www.eurasianet.org/node/67879?utm_source=Weekly+Digest&utm_campaign=82a115cc39-my_google_analytics_key&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d6d0d0e55f-82a115cc39-205692161</a><br>
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