IN MY SHOES: A Turk Learns She Is Also Armenian
The New York Times profiles Fethiye Cetin, a Turkish lawyer whose “identity shattered” when her maternal grandmother, Seher - who had raised her - revealed that she was born a Christian Armenian, that her real name was Heranus and that her mother, Isguhi, and father, Hovannes, had survived the Armenian Genocide and ended up in NYC:
Heranus, Ms. Cetin learned, was just one of thousands of Armenian children who were kidnapped and adopted by Turkish families during the genocide of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1918. These survivors were sometimes called “the leftovers of the sword.”
“I was in a state of shock for a long time - I suddenly saw the world through different eyes,” said Ms. Cetin, now 60. “I had grown up thinking of myself as a Turkish Muslim, not an Armenian. There had been nothing in the history books about the massacre of a people which had been erased from Turkey’s collective memory. Like my grandmother, many had buried their identity - and the horrors they had seen - deep inside of them.” …
“Most people in Turkish society have no idea what happened in 1915 and the Armenians they meet are introduced as monsters or villains or enemies in their history books,” she said. …
Ms. Cetin … said her newfound Armenian identity inspired her to become a human rights lawyer. When Hrant Dink, editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, was prosecuted in 2006 for insulting Turkishness by referring to the genocide, she became his lawyer. [Contextual link added by The Stiletto.] On January 19, 2007, Mr. Dink was assassinated outside his office by a young ultranationalist.
Editorial Note: On Sunday the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan presented a panel discussion, “Imagination and Catastrophe: Art and the Aftermath of Genocide,” that included filmmaker Atom Egoyan, (“Ararat”), poet and memoirist Peter Balakian (“Black Dog of Fate”) and novelist Marcie Hershman (“Tales of the Master Race”), followed by a selection of songs from Hugo Weisgall’s "The Golden Peacock" sung by soprano Emily Duncan-Brown accompanied by pianist Laura Leon.
The various works by the artists dealt with trying to come to terms with the monstrous crime of Genocide - victims and perpetrators alike - by denying it, by ignoring it, by repressing it and by confronting it. In audience were Genocide and Holocaust survivors who had first-hand experience with all of these coping mechanisms – in one case, the deniers were Jews in Montreal who scolded a young refugee to stop scaring her schoolmates with her “made-up stories.” An audience member, who identified himself as being “half Turkish” asked Egoyan whether Armenians would “stop hating Turks” if they admitted the Genocide. Egoyan mumbled something, and changed the subject. If they admit the Genocide, Egoyan may have an answer for him.
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