Thursday, September 5 2013

"Turkey's Kurds are taking responsibility for their role in the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians in 1915." This bleak assessment was pronounced by Sahak Mashalyan, an Armenian Orthodox priest, during a recent Sunday mass at the Asdvadzadzin church in Istanbul, AlMonitor said. 

"As Kurds, we also bear responsibility for the suffering of the Armenians," Abdullah Demirbas, the mayor of the city's ancient Sur district told Al-Monitor over glasses of ruby-red tea. "We are sorry, and we need to prove it." As a first step, Demirbas launched free Armenian-language classes two years ago at the municipality offices. "They were an instant hit," Demirbas said. Many of those who enrolled were thought to be "hidden Armenians" or the descendants of those who converted to Islam to survive.

One such "hidden Armenian," a gnarled octogenarian called Ismail, confided to Al-Monitor that his father's real name was Leon.

"They wiped out his entire family, out in the fields," he said as he awaited an audience with Demirbas. The old man's voice cracked with emotion. "My father was rescued by a Turkish officer and became a Muslim.  But though, praise God, I am a good Muslim too, praying five times a day, I know I am not accepted," he added. "In their minds, I am always the son of the unbeliever." The Kurds' role in the killings has been well documented, increasingly now by the Kurds themselves.  Egged on by their Ottoman rulers, Kurdish tribal chieftains raped, murdered and pillaged their way through the southeast provinces where for centuries they had co-existed, if uneasily, with the Armenians and other non-Muslims.

...Osman Koker, a Turkish historian who has chronicled Armenian life through a rich collection of postcards and photographs predating 1915, reckons more than half of Diyarbakir's population was non- Muslim before the violence began.

"Most of them were Armenians, now there are none," Koker told Al-Monitor in an interview.