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“I Feel Removed, Distant, Shattered, in Two Halves”

The Complexity of Returning to “Western Armenia” in Anna Davtʻyan’s “Diarbekʻir: kʻur”
La complexité du retour en “Arménie occidentale” dans le récit d’Anna Davtyan “Diarbekʻir : kʻur”
Arakel Ghazaros Minassian
p. 131-156

Résumés

À partir d’une relecture du court récit de voyage de l’auteure arménienne Anna Davtyan dans l’est de la Turquie, à Dyarbakır, cet article problématise la notion d’un retour en « Arménie occidentale ». Les affinités et les clivages de genre et de classe qui traversent le récit de Davtyan, nuancent et perturbent l’opposition simplificatrice entre descendants des victimes et des bourreaux.

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Texte intégral

1“I remember and demand”. This slogan figured prominently during the centennial commemorations of the Armenian Genocide in 2015 and has since become an important phrase used by Armenian communities in relation to the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians and their expulsion from large portions of their historic homeland in 1915. The demands have taken on multiple dimensions – recognition by Turkey and the world powers, and justice in the forms of monetary recompense and return of lands populated by Armenians before the genocide. Central to such a program is public apology by Turkey followed by a subsequent discussion of legal ramifications.

2Public apologies can be extremely important tools in moving beyond past atrocities. They can help change the dynamics and terms of citizenship and help close the door on traumatic pasts left undealt with. However, they can also signal clear and unified divisions of perpetrator and victim that may not always be indicative of lived realities and the nuances present within these two demarcations.

  • 1 * I would like to thank David Leupold, Michael Pifer, Sara Ruiz, and Karen Jallatyan for their comm (...)

3Anna Davtʻyan, in her piece of creative nonfiction “Diarbekʻir: kʻur” (“Diyarbakir: Sister”)1 challenges a clear-cut division between victim and perpetrator in the Armenian and Kurdish context. The piece depicts the author and her friend, Armenians from post-Soviet Armenia, on a trip to Diyarbakir, a city in Anatolia where Armenians formed a sizeable portion of the population prior to the genocide. During her time in Diyarbakir, Davtʻyan specifically does not see herself as the addressee of an apology, and rather forms associations with Kurdish locals on bases that transcend victim and perpetrator divisions. The result is complicated; although these distinctions become more porous and new identifications are created between Davtʻyan and the Kurdish locals, some barriers are maintained, and these identifications exist for the author alongside a conflicted and nuanced connection with this place as Armenian. Davtʻyan’s experiences thus come to reflect the complexity of imagined ideals of a return to “Western Armenia”.

Background and Theoretical Discussion

Apology, Return, and Mourning in the Armenian Context

  • 2 T. Chahinian, 2008, p. 7.
  • 3 Ibid., p. 8.
  • 4 Ibid., pp. 8-12. For an example of the call to return lands in eastern Anatolia as a site for a fut (...)

4Recognition and justice have become important components of Armenian remembrance and commemoration of the genocide, especially among the diaspora. The demand for justice stems from the collective memory of the victims, now passed on to second and third generations. In what Talar Chahinian has termed the “cultural narrative”, oral histories of survivors become the basis for trans-generational collective memory of the Armenian Genocide.2 Whereas historical narratives rely on material proofs and facts in constructing a story that elucidates the nuanced socio-political circumstances behind genocide, the cultural narrative is that story which exists in Armenians’ collective imaginaries and memories. This narrative usually begins by situating the Armenians in eastern Anatolia and recounts the following centuries of oppression at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Differences and divisions between Turk and Armenian, Muslim and Christian, are emphasized as the bases for extermination in the face of the inexplicable. Similar experiences of rape, deportation, and murder underpin a shared identification as victim.3 Over time, stories of these experiences are passed on to subsequent generations. Within the frameworks of international human rights and condemnation of genocide by the United Nations in 1948, calls for recognition and restitution became the primary identifications and cultural markers of Armenians in the diaspora. This narrative has further come to encompass a notion of return to lands lost, an idealized “united Armenia” that encompasses both post-Soviet Armenia and portions of Anatolia.4

  • 5 M. Nobles, 2008, pp. 2-3.
  • 6 R. Nytagodien and A. Neal, 2004, pp. 471-474.

5Official apology, restitution, and restoration of land can be very positive tools in the face of unspeakable horrors. Official apologies have the power to change the meaning of national membership5 and can further be cathartic for both victims and perpetrators: confronting the past – telling and re-telling stories of the atrocities – is imperative for the nation’s healing process and for moving beyond victimized identities.6 In the Armenian case, however, the push for public apology and recognition of the Armenian Genocide has largely been met with silence and diversion by much of the international community, and by outright denial by the Republic of Turkey.

  • 7 B. Gürsel, 2015, pp. 791-795.
  • 8 A. Erbal, 2012, p. 53.
  • 9 Ibid., p. 88.

6Much has been written recently about apology in the Armenian context and the shortcomings of apology campaigns even undertaken by circles of contemporary Turkish intellectuals. Burcu Gürsel has written of the performative nature of some Turkish intellectuals’ approaches to recognition and discussion with Armenian counterparts, stating that these “apologies” serve the purpose of the thinker’s own mythologization as a “first”. At the same time, the substance and direction of the discussions is co-opted by these intellectuals, perpetuating domination in novel forms.7 Ayda Erbal makes a similar argument with particular focus on the 2008 “I apologize” campaign initiated by four Turkish scholars and “endorsed by over thirty thousand Turkish citizens”.8 Erbal focuses on the wording of and responses to the campaign to argue that, although it was a step in the right direction, the campaign fell short because it was top-down (involving a statement written only by these four scholars), lacked public discourse or the space for the public to learn about the events of 1915, and further lacked any dialogue with Armenians. Instead, Erbal argues with careful attention to the wording of the apology, that these scholars in fact perpetuated denial and long-lasting hierarchies and inequalities between Turks and Armenians by refusing to use the word “genocide” and instead co-opting an Armenian term for the events, Medz Egheṛn (and in fact mistranslating it into Turkish), for their own purposes.9 Erbal further argues that the apology campaign lacked any sense of responsibility for the events and for denial in the present and thus did not create the pre-conditions for policy or societal change.

7One of the most important contributions to the discussion of recognition campaigns in the Armenian context has been the work of Marc Nichanian. Nichanian in fact does not use the word “genocide” because of the effect a consistent campaign to prove the event as “genocide” has had on Armenian capacity to mourn the event. Nichanian rather chooses to use the word Aghēd [Catastrophe], the word used by Armenian author Zabēl Esayean to describe the 1909 pogrom of Armenians in Adana and the word subsequently used by writer Hagop Ōshagan as a proper name for the events of 1915 in his works. Nichanian argues that the necessity to prove that the Catastrophe falls within the parameters of the general term “genocide” prevents and delays mourning of the event, since the necessity to fit the Catastrophe within a codified law requires an incessant burden of proof. Nichanian writes,

  • 10 D. Kazanjian and M. Nichanian, 2003, p. 127.

By using the word Genocide, we survivors are only repeating again and again the denial of the loss… We are doing what the executioner wanted us to do, from the beginning on. We claim all over the world that we have been genocided; we relentlessly need to prove our own death. We are still in the claws of the executioner, through and through.10

  • 11 Ibid., p. 130.

8In his exchange with Marc Nichanian from which the above quotation is taken, David Kazanjian develops this argument further, writing, “The pursuit of such a verdict enacts its own interdict when it forgets its own tactical and limited character and generalizes itself as the only authoritative, authentic remembrance of the Catastrophe”.11 Thus, the push for recognition and retribution within a juridical framework limits, hinders mourning of the Catastrophe when it becomes the only way in which to speak about the event.

The Current Majority in Eastern Anatolia: The Kurds

  • 12 B. Ayata, 2015, p. 807.
  • 13 Ibid.

9The question of apology and restitution is further complicated and has been strongly influenced by the ongoing Kurdish conflict. As interactions with local Kurds are important in Davt‘yan’s story analyzed below, it is worth delving into the background to the Kurdish conflict and the complicated history of Kurds and Armenians in eastern Anatolia, which is reflected in an equally complicated and contradictory manner in Davt‘yan’s writing. While Kurds participated in the massacres of Armenians in 1915 and the various pogroms of Armenians before then, in the Turkish republican period (1923-present), Kurds themselves became the victims of state repression as a result of Turkish nationalist policies. Bilgin Ayata writes that “Until 1991, the very existence of a Kurdish identity was officially denied and the use of the Kurdish language was banned”.12 The Turkish government in fact used similar practices associated with the genocide in its repression of the Kurds, including displacement, disposession, and forced assimilation. The formation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 1978 and its armed struggle against Turkish oppression had a profound impact on Turkish politics, and although repression has intensified since then, the Kurdish armed struggle succeeded in “crack[ing]” the myth of the homogenous Turkish nation state.13

  • 14 D. Leupold, 2019, p. 392.
  • 15 A. Çelik and E. Öpengin, 2020, p. 5.
  • 16 Boti is a Kurdish writer from Siirt who spent eleven years as a political prisoner.
  • 17 B. Ayata, 2015, p. 809.
  • 18 Ibid. The sad reality on the ground is that Surp Giragos was again badly damaged during clashes bet (...)

10In light of their current positions as victims of state repression, it is perhaps unsurprising that many Kurdish groups and individuals have re-examined the past of the Armenian Genocide and their ancestors’ involvement. As a common regional saying goes among Kurds, “They had them (the Armenians) for breakfast and us for lunch”.14 This continuity in victimhood is also expressed as a dominant theme in various works of contemporary Kurdish literature, especially among a younger generation of writers who were politicized beginning in the 1990s. Two other dominant themes expressed in these works include the Armenian children who were forced to convert to Islam and survived living among the Kurds and the emphasis on co-habitation between Kurds and Armenians before 1915.15 Attempts at reconciliation and apology among the Kurds have also generally been far more complete and involved tangible change such as a form of reparations or change in policy. Whereas attempts at apology originating in Turkish society have tended to avoid dialogue with Armenians or admission of complicity in the present, corresponding attempts by various Kurdish individuals or groups have been much more proactive. For example, in May 2009, Kurdish intellectual Berzan Boti16 handed over the land owned by his family to an Assyrian organization after learning it had been confiscated from Assyrians during the genocide.17 Since the piece by Davt‘yan discussed below sees the author travel to Diyarbakir, it is further worth noting that the 2009 restoration of the Surp Giragos (Saint Giragos) Armenian Church in Diyarbakir was carried out jointly by Diyarbakir’s Kurdish municipality and the Armenian Patriarchate. During that process, the deeds of the church and any other Armenian properties discovered during the renovation were handed over to the patriarchate. This accompanied several changes in Diyarbakir and Sur, the district that makes up the old city of Diyarbakir, which offered translations of street signs into Armenian.18

  • 19 D. Leupold, 2019, p. 393.
  • 20 Ibid., p. 399.
  • 21 A. Çelik and E. Öpengin, 2020, p. 12.
  • 22 R. Maraşlı, 2016, quoted in D. Leupold, 2019, p. 403.

11Nonetheless, the Kurdish position is far more complicated and nuanced in actuality. First, the very ability of the Kurds to push for a Kurdish homeland in eastern Anatolia is based in the 1915 genocide, as it was only after the genocide that Kurds made up a crushing majority in the region.19 Second, although there have been significant efforts at recognizing Armenians’ place in Anatolia, including the inclusive and significant efforts of Berzan Boti and the Diyarbakir municipality, the issue of taking responsibility for Kurdish complicity in 1915 has to a certain extent been sidestepped. For example, while he accepts Kurdish complicity in the genocide, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan explains that the real responsibility lies in capitalist modernity, which pitted the Armenians and Kurds against each other.20 Similarly, in the contemporary Kurdish literary works mentioned above, questions of responsibility and guilt are set aside or spoken of in general terms in favour of emphasizing the continuities in victimhood between Armenians and Kurds.21 Third and finally, the Kurdish position is further complicated by the fact that many Kurds are themselves descendents of both victims and perpetrators, as many women survived the genocide by being taken in by Kurdish families and raised as Kurds “[…] deprived of language and voice”.22 At the time Davt‘yan writes the piece discussed below (2015), many descendents of Armenians had begun speaking more openly about their Armenian heritage, and we see this theme in Davt‘yan’s writing.

  • 23 J. Olick, 2007, pp. 92-97.

12Given these nuances, it is useful to look at collective memory and the notion of apology outside of confined distinctions between victim and perpetrator, as there are many shifts and different positionalities that exist within these demarcations, and it is further how I examine Davt‘yan’s interactions with local Kurds in Diyarbakir and how I read her own experience navigating varying positionalities in the analysis that follows. Sociologist Jeffrey Olick provides a helpful framework for navigating these complexities, as he conceptualizes collective memory in a way that breaks out of unitary victim-perpetrator divisions. Olick writes against unity, a postulate of collective memory which emphasizes that it is one and unified, rather than diverse and fragmented. In contrast to this postulate, Olick proposes a “field” approach to collective memory. Olick contends that collective memory does not necessarily operate above social divisions, implying that different individuals or groups within a society may relate to past events in different ways than the overall collective narrative. The notion of “field” thus complicates united collective memories and rather emphasizes variations in memory and identification among different sectors of society.23

Davtʻyan’s “Diarbekʻir: kʻur”

13Anna Davtʻyan’s “Diarbekʻir: kʻur” similarly challenges totalizing notions of us vs. them in the context of the Armenian Genocide and contemporary “Western Armenia”. The piece is a travelogue about Davtʻyan and her friend Sona’s trip to Diyarbakir. The city, historically called Tigranakert by the Armenians (after the Armenian king Tigran the Great) plays an important role in Armenian history and in contemporary national imaginations about “Western Armenia”. Diyarbakir is also a consistent stop on tours of “Western Armenia” originating in Armenia and the diaspora, and whereas Davt‘yan and Sona are Armenians from the Republic of Armenia, they do not travel with one of these groups and instead go alone to Diyarbakir directly from Istanbul.

14The circumstances behind their trip and what they seek to do in Diyarbakir are ambiguous from the start, and it is clear that the two women are anxious of what awaits them when they land. The piece begins,

  • 24 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 1. I use my own translations, but have relied heavily on Anna Davt‘yan’s o (...)

[…] flying at night, we didn’t know whether we were after adventure or not. Of all the preparations, Sona had only seen to one: she had confirmed the address of an Armenian house, which now served as an otel that we could afford. But in the airport’s waiting room a number of concerns began nagging at us, and Sona and I looked at each other with the wordless expressions of an old friendship that had used up all words.24

  • 25 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 2.

15Davtʻyan and Sona’s anxieties grow as they land and try to make their way from the airport. Davtʻyan writes that they were left alone with the taxi drivers who “[…] debated amongst themselves: in which dark corner could this Armenian house be found, to which these two women, who had presented themselves as Georgians, wanted to go?”25 Davtʻyan’s writing elucidates her fears about her background. Her use of “dark corner” connotes perceived secret, negative intentions on the parts of the locals, and the two women’s unwillingness to reveal their background suggests that they are fearful of disclosing their identity. They are aware of the baggage their trip implies, aware of the genocidal history, and afraid of how they will be received. The Armenian Genocide and the anxieties and fears it naturally implies are thus with them as they travel to Anatolia.

Family

16When the taxi drivers at the Diyarbakir airport cannot find the hotel to which the two visitors want to go, Hemdie, a woman waiting for her father at the airport, invites the two girls to come along with them to their home. When they arrive, Davtʻyan and Sona discover that the family is Kurdish, while the family discovers that they are Armenian:

  • 26 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 3.

The family is Kurdish, we discover, when he explains to Sona that years ago, they would only listen to Erivan, and that tie to the greater world was secured for them by Karapet Khachʻo, and we decide that Karapet Khachʻo, therefore, must have been the host of the Kurdish radio program […].26

  • 27 D. Leupold, 2019, pp. 395-398.

17Davtʻyan, Sona, and the family discover a tie to one another already in place before their arrival in Diyarbakir. The Kurdish grandfather’s reference is to the weekly programs in Kurdish aired on Erevan’s public radio during the Soviet period in Armenia, and which Kurds in Turkey listened to at a time of suppression in their own country. In fact, David Leupold argues that this radio program and additional Kurdish-language initiatives in Soviet Armenia (including newspapers and films) helped solidify a Kurdish sense of nationhood and further provided the ideological backbone of the PKK, which would be established in 1978.27 This connection is significant, because it suggests one of the many ways in which the victim/perpetrator division between Armenians and Kurds is extremely complex. While Armenians were victims of genocide, perpetrated in part by Kurds, in 1915, when the Kurds became the victims of Turkish state repression in the 20th century, Soviet Armenia helped prop up a sense of Kurdish nationhood. This is just one of the nuanced factors at work in this relationship, and which Davt‘yan will address in her text.

  • 28 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 5.
  • 29 Ibid., para. 9.
  • 30 A. Davtian, 2018, para. 9.

18As the evening and the following day progress, the family and the two Armenian women become more comfortable with one another. After discussion and dinner, Hemdie’s father “[…] declared us his daughters, Hemdie our sister, Mehmed our brother, and said, not a single hotel, you will stay at our house”.28 Yet Davtʻyan and Sona are not quite equal members of the family, as their positionalities as guests and outsiders render them liberties that the other women in the family are not allowed due to traditional values. Merjan, Mehmed’s wife, for example, faces considerable restrictions in her ability to act or voice discontent in the family. Davtʻyan writes, “She was not unfortunate, demanded what was due her, as much as tradition allowed: tradition allowed little”.29 One day, when Merjan becomes frustrated that she and her children must wait until late at night for her father-in-law to feel ready to take them home, she pushes back, and an argument ensues: “The father-in-law and Hemdie-the-sister battled back, while Mehmed remained quiet. Then he slammed the door and left, leaving his wife behind”.30 Tradition in these cases dictates a specific role for Merjan. She is not allowed to set the rules of the household or decide when she would like to take her children home. On the other hand, Davtʻyan and Sona are welcomed as respected guests and enjoy greater freedoms than Merjan.

19Although Davtʻyan and Sona ostensibly become part of the family, they feel a particular attachment to Merjan and identify with her along gender lines, defending her and pushing for her rights. Davtʻyan writes,

  • 31 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 13.

Merjan and Mehmed had fought. The previous day, Merjan took the liberty to call Mehmed to say Ahmed’s tooth hurts, he needs to be taken to the doctor, Yusuf’s temperature is high, and Mehmed did not go – he was with us. We gave Merjan our numbers and said, call us, and we won’t take your man with us, as a punishment to him. And we did not take him.31

20Davtʻyan and Sona here identify with Merjan along gender lines. They actively involve themselves in the family’s affairs, using their privileged status as guests to help Merjan by refusing to take Mehmed along with them as they tour the city. They thus build a tie with Merjan that goes beyond shared history and division between victim and perpetrator, rather choosing to identify with her based on underlying social concerns – in this case, on feminist lines. Their identification with Merjan is further emphasized towards the end of the piece, when Davtʻyan writes,

  • 32 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 22.

Besides that, Merjan was a first-rate specialist in non-verbal communication, and her talent hit even until sign language, but besides the aiding use of her eyes and hands, she knew how to order and sound her cries so well that the issue of dictionary and grammar was solved. We have had long conversations with Merjan that way about the world’s small and great problems: from feminism to Mehmed’s internet café […].32

21In this passage, Davtʻyan emphasizes their ability to identify with Merjan despite even language barriers. Merjan’s body and sounds become the carriers of language, such that shared vocabulary and grammar become unnecessary. This passage thus again emphasizes Davtʻyan and Sona’s abilities to empathize and identify with Merjan, and in doing so, break down the boundaries that separate them. The characters find a new language with which to speak and can do so successfully.

22However, Davtʻyan and Sona’s position as guests, with greater liberties than Merjan, emphasize that this boundary, although rendered more porous, is not completely eradicated. As we have already seen, the two protagonists can demand certain rights from the family which Merjan simply cannot. When Merjan pushes back against tradition, an argument ensues, whereas Davtʻyan and Sona can leave Mehmed behind and punish him if they feel he has done wrong. This division is further emphasized towards the end of the text, as Merjan tries to attend a concert with Davtʻyan and Sona. Ultimately, Mehmed refuses, despite having promised Merjan that she could go in advance. Davtʻyan writes,

  • 33 Ibid.

From morning until evening, she grumbled with Mehmed over the concert, was not asking, but demanding her right, like one who has accepted in advance they do not have that right. They closed Merjan’s mouth with the word çocuk […]. For her, the most inconceivable and implausible thing was that I am in Turkey, my husband in America, and I have been wandering around Diyarbakir on foot with her husband.33

23This passage highlights the divisions that continue to exist between Davtʻyan, Sona, and the family, despite the identifications previously created on gender and familial lines. Our protagonists have the ability to go to this concert, whereas Merjan does not have the right. She pushes to go, having already recognized that she is not allowed because of the restrictions imposed on her by tradition. Although our protagonists have been made part of the family and identify with Merjan on a level beyond words and ethnic boundaries, outside the context of the Armenian Genocide, and outside a strict dichotomy between historic victim and perpetrator, there is thus also a certain level on which Davtʻyan and Sona cannot identify with the family, a level on which these boundaries cannot be bridged, emphasizing the protagonists’ positionalities as foreigners in Diyarbakir and among Hemdie’s family in particular.

“I feel removed, distant, shattered, in two halves”

24Thus far, we have seen the complicated and varied ways in which Davt‘yan interacts with this Kurdish family outside of the victim/perpetrator binary. As the story progresses from the first interactions between Davt‘yan and the family, however, we see many more instances in which Davt‘yan interacts with Diyarbakir as an old Armenian city and with the Armenian Genocide in mind. Like her interactions with the family, the way Davt‘yan interacts with Diyarbakir also has a complicated quality, representing the diverse and fragmented relationship the author has with the city as a whole in this text.

  • 34 A. Davtian, 2018, para. 7.

25On their first day in Diyarbakir, Mehmed takes Davt‘yan and Sona to the fortress of the old city, and this is the first moment where Davt‘yan explicitly engages with her Armenian background in this text. We learn early on that Mehmed has just been released from prison and that he had been injured in a fight. His kneecap had been stabbed, and he limps around with the two Armenians. We get the sense from Davt‘yan’s writing that she is beginning to care for Mehmed and worry about him. When Mehmed takes Sona and Davt‘yan to the fortress walls, Davt‘yan writes, “[…] but no matter how many times I told him do not climb this wall, he would not listen”.34 They all climb the wall, and Davt‘yan continues,

  • 35 A. Davt‘yan, 2015, para. 7.

Wikipedia says the Assyrians had built it. We walk, considering it Armenian deep down, and that consideration is admitted only by our feet, which confidently lean on the stairs and push forward. It is similar to Khor Virap; the narrow windows in the watchtower look out onto the open field in the same way, and from the other side, onto the wall’s own long tail, that explodes black through the green.35

26Davt‘yan’s knowledge of Diyarbakir here is divorced from the need for factual documentation and proof. The fortress is, in fact, not originally Armenian, but here stands in metaphorically for the Armenian character of Diyarbakir and for the former Armenian presence in that city – it reminds Davt‘yan of Khor Virap, the monastery in Armenia which stands on the spot where St. Gregory the Illuminator was held in captivity before converting the Armenian king Trdat to Christianity. By sidestepping the issue of proving the fortress’ Armenian character, Davt‘yan moves out of the positionality of a victim trying “to prove her own death,” in Marc Nichanian’s words. She does not need to prove that the fortress is Armenian because it does not matter if this fortress specifically was Armenian. What is more important is that she knows the fact of Diyarbakir’s former Armenian character. This knowledge, moreover, is, she says, “admitted only by our feet”, implying that her knowledge of Diyarbakir as Armenian is an embodied experience, beyond the necessity to prove, but rather felt deep down and lived.

27In the next sentence, Davt‘yan goes on to reject an impulse to document this moment, but rather bears witness to who is left behind in Diyarbakir.

  • 36 Ibid.

My senses fly from clarity, come and go between the frames of interest and exhaustion, my consciousness wandering, unwilling to focus as the issue of wanting in general vanishes, and my mind begins lingering on the mandatory procedure of photography, which I also do not want to undertake. All in all, I took only one picture, one general landscape of the field and a portion of the wall, and my mind remained occupied only with the pain in Mehmed’s knee, which he resisted as his taught body dragged his leg forward, my camera squeezed in his palms like a load. There were many tourists, and a whole herd of photographs rushed to join the never-ending whirlpool of photos where things are deprived of meaning and nameless.36

28Why can Davt‘yan not focus in this passage? Is it just that she is “exhaust[ed]”, or is there some other reason? She does not want to take a photograph, but she does so regardless. Why? Because it is a “mandatory procedure”, because she feels she must record something of her trip, her experience of this place, this Armenian place (as the fortress is, at least in her body, an Armenian place). But she remains unfocused, uninterested, and in the end, what she can focus on is simply what is there – Mehmed limping over the fortress wall – what and who are left behind in Diyarbakir, these are what bear meaning for her in this moment, what draw her attention. What does this tell us in the context of the Armenian Genocide? First, that representing an Armenian ruined past is meaningless and impossible for Davt‘yan, as the last sentence says, “the herd of photographs rushed to join the never-ending whirlpool of photos where things are deprived of meaning and nameless”. The knowledge of the Armenian character of Diyarbakir cannot be represented in a photograph, because for Davt‘yan it is the embodied experience of returning which we saw before, something “admitted only by our feet”. Davt‘yan pushes back against a tendency she finds even in herself to see, mark this place out as Armenian, and capture the proof, but that is something that cannot exist in proof for her – the knowledge of Diyarbakir as Armenian is an embodied feeling, an experience of revisiting. Second, what Davt‘yan can focus on in the end is who and what remains, what captures her attention is Mehmed limping over the fortress, the experience of knowing what was lost and who is left. This is not figured in a negative light, as in anger that Mehmed is here. On the contrary, there is caring here, as Davt‘yan is occupied with Mehmed’s injury, suggesting that Davt‘yan is beginning to become close with Mehmed’s family, to empathize with them.

29Davt‘yan and Sona’s relationship with Diyarbakir’s Armenian history and their own experience of revisiting is further developed in their interview with Frederique, a Dutch journalist living in Diyarbakir. They meet Frederique in a bookstore which had formerly been an Armenian guesthouse, implying the backdrop of the Armenian experience discussed in the interview that follows. Frederique pushes Davtʻyan and Sona on their feelings about Diyarbakir and the history of the Armenian Genocide. Davt‘yan writes,

  • 37 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 13.

Frederique asked me, and I said, I don’t feel anything, I am empty, I am not tied to the place; I love Mehmed’s family, yes, I know, that these are Armenian buildings, Sona and I sometimes put our palms on the walls, it is beautiful black rock, but I feel removed, distant, shattered, in two halves.37

30It is surprising, especially as an Armenian, to read Davt‘yan say she does not feel anything, that she is not tied to the place, and it is a statement that invites closer reading. Does she really feel nothing, no connection? Or what does she feel? She feels love for Mehmed’s family, for people who have come to care for her, but she also feels “removed, distant, shattered, in two halves”. If she is broken in this way and in two halves, then she is feeling two different things, but what are they? Davt‘yan says this immediately after she talks about the “beautiful black rock”, the Armenian buildings, so there is something here, something she does feel, but then why does she say she feels nothing too? Maybe she feels nothing, no connection to it as hers personally, though she has this knowledge, this feeling that it is Armenian, both in her body and in a sense of feeling she “has to” feel some sort of attachment, as we saw her before feeling it was “mandatory” for her to take a picture of the Diyarbakir fortress. Thus, what this best illustrates is how multivariate, complex, and nuanced a return to “Western Armenia” is: it is and is not an Armenian’s place, one feels and does not feel connected, at the same time as one feels one should feel connected, the impulse to need to be connected to this place, this land that Armenians have lost. An interesting wordplay Davt‘yan further employs here is the use of the Armenian word jartvats, which I have translated here as “shattered”. The word’s corresponding noun, jart, is however also a word used by Armenians for the genocide. This illustrates a connection between this broken feeling she is experiencing and the original break in 1915: she is broken and does not know how to feel, feels conflicted because something in the past has broken, and that break survives even in her and her relationship with this place.

31These complicated and conflicting feelings with regards to Diyarbakir and its Armenian history are further expressed in the sentence that follows the one quoted above, when Frederique asks the two women if they see themselves as the addressees of Kurdish apologies. Davtyan writes,

  • 38 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 13. Davt‘yan and Seferian here translate the phrase Vor neroghut‘yun khndr (...)

She was a bit surprised, and more surprised when she discovered that we do not feel ourselves to be the addressees of Kurdish apologies; if they had truly reached that place from which the whisper of apology is released, good for the comfort of their souls. If I were the one to ask forgiveness, I would not ask, I would not be able to, I would want the ground to open up and to jump in it.38

  • 39 In fact, this word is also the Armenian word for “God” and “master.”

32Not only does Davtʻyan not see herself as the addressee of apology, but the very idea of being the one to ask forgiveness makes her want to jump into the ground. In an interesting shift from the consistent push for apology, Davtʻyan moves out of her own positionality as generational victim and empathizes rather with the local Kurds – if she were the one to ask forgiveness, she would not ask. Davt‘yan’s wording here is interesting and bears closer reading. She says, “k‘rderi neroghut‘yan terě ch‘enk‘ zgum mez”, which literally would translate as “we do not feel ourselves to be the owners of Kurdish apology”, although there is much more nuance here. Ter, the Armenian word I have literally translated as “owner” is also short for the Armenian word hasts‘eater,39 which would be “addressee”, or the person to whom a letter or package is addressed (and this is how Davt‘yan and Seferian translate the word, which I have also used here), but ter also naturally plays on this idea of ownership, of owning this apology. It is not that Davt‘yan simply rejects an apology (which in reality remains theoretical and is not given), but she feels she is not the one to be told, she feels removed from that process, as we have seen her feel removed before. If the Kurds here can apologize, she says, good for them, “their souls” will be “comfort[ed]”, calm, serene. Because “If I were the one to ask forgiveness, I would not ask”, I would find that very difficult, “I would not be able to”. But again, Davt‘yan does not seem to feel that she needs that apology, which also depicts a way of relating to the genocide beyond the push for recognition, beyond the necessity to prove and receive restitution, because she finds other ways to mourn what was and bear witness to what is left.

  • 40 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 16.

33Davt‘yan’s sense of brokenness, of a conflicted return is most aptly expressed when she dances on the Ten-Eyed Bridge in Diyarbakir. After deciding not to take Mehmed along with them anymore, Davtʻyan and Sona begin walking around Diyarbakir on their own. Davtʻyan writes that they followed their “internal GPS”, following smells and sounds which led them to places even Mehmed would not have known,40 again describing a feeling of internal, sensory familiarity with this city which once housed many Armenians. Davtʻyan then remembers how she danced the delilo the previous day. She writes,

  • 41 Ibid.

Delilo is the Kurds’ most famous dance, which I had danced on the bridge the previous day, the Ten-Eyed bridge (On gözlu köpru), beneath which flowed the Tigris, which already had a different name: Dijle, and as I danced, one thought kept creeping up to me, that I am re-establishing or certifying something with my dance, but which was then broken and, piece by piece, disappeared in the murkey-yellow light of the calm river.41

34What is Davt‘yan re-establishing in this passage? Could it be anything other than the Armenian character of this city, which time and again is described as her embodied feeling, her experience of returning? But even this is fractured, “…piece by piece, disappeared in the murky-yellow light of the calm river”. This suggests two things: first, it again depicts the Armenian character of Diyarbakir as an embodied experience of return, one that is temporary in nature, which cannot last. Second, it also emphasizes Davt‘yan’s own fractured relationship with the city: throughout this piece, Davtʻyan has depicted herself interacting with Diyarbakir through different personas and positionalities – at times the feminist hero, at times the guest looking lovingly to and respecting her hosts; at times the one who is removed from the need for apology, and at times the person cautious to admit her own background for fear of how she will be treated in eastern Anatolia; at times the person dissociated from the landscape known as “Western Armenia”, yet at the same time the person deeply connected to it as Armenian, to the black rock and the ruins through her senses and emotions. The picture Davtʻyan presents is of someone shattered as it were, in pieces, each piece a different way to relate to this place and the people who now inhabit it.

Kurdish Positionalities

35Just as Davt‘yan has her own fractured relationship with Diyarbakir, the picture she presents of the local Kurds is also nuanced. In the first portion of this essay, I have shown Davt‘yan interacting with Mehmed and Hemdie’s family especially through the prism of traditional family values, but Davt‘yan’s relationship with Mehmed is also complicated by his position as a hunter of buried Armenian gold left in Anatolia during the genocide. As Davt‘yan’s piece progresses, moreover, the two main characters encounter many different Kurdish locals with complex subject positions with regards to the Armenian Genocide. Thus, just as Davt‘yan seems to relate to Diyarbakir in different ways, so too do we see the “perpetrator” side’s manifold positionalities beyond a simple identification as “perpetrator”.

36After the scene where Davt‘yan, Sona, and Mehmed walk along the fortress wall, and in the paragraph that directly precedes Davt‘yan’s interview with Frederique, there is a moment when Davt‘yan’s interaction with Hemdie and Mehmed elicits an identification as generational victim for Davt‘yan. As mentioned previously, Davt‘yan learns early on that Mehmed has just been released from prison prior to their visit, that he had been stabbed in the knee in a fight and then taken directly from the hospital to prison. Hemdie’s house, we learn, is a refuge for people on the run from the police, and Mehmed stays there along with Hakan, the son of their elder sister. Another sister, we also learn, has been convicted of theft in Istanbul. When Mehmed says this, Davt‘yan discusses why that sister had been convicted, writing,

  • 42 A. Davt‘yan, 2015, para. 11.

Mehmed was agitated and used his long arms to explain: she had stolen a kilo of gold, while I had dug for two months straight to find Armenian buried gold, and I need to eat, I need to drink… I worked so hard and couldn’t find a single dirty coin. All I could find was a jug full of bones and teeth, and who needs that? he says to us. Mehmed says, to us. 42

  • 43 See, e.g., Gary Goldstein, “Review: Documentary ‘Intent to Destroy’ Examines Armenian Genocide”, Lo (...)

37This passage illustrates just one of the many Kurdish subject positions in Davtyan’s text – that of someone searching for buried Armenian treasure. Of course, Davtʻyan does not know, and there is really no way of knowing for certain, that the bones in this passage are Armenian, but the implication is very much that they are. Bones play an important role in remembrance of the Armenian Genocide, both in Armenia and the diaspora, as in the image that appears often in news articles and films of two archaeologists digging up bones of the dead, or in countless stories of Armenians travelling to Deir ez-Zor in Syria to dig up Armenian bones, as my own grandparents have done.43 Such images and stories would have been in Davtʻyan’s mind as Mehmed discussed first searching for buried Armenian treasure, then finding bones. And the evocation of the genocide is clear in the final sentence of this passage. When Mehmed says that these bones are worthless, Davtʻyan pauses and repeats “[…] he says to us. Mehmed says, to us.” There is shock, disbelief, and anger in this pause. These bones are clearly not worthless for Davtʻyan and Sona as the Armenian Genocide very much comes to the fore here in Davtʻyan’s mind.

  • 44 A. Suni, 2019.

38At the same time, there is considerable nuance in the very practice of treasure-hunting among the Kurds and in Davt‘yan’s perception of this moment. First, although there is rage and anger in this passage, we know that Davt‘yan has come to care for this family nonetheless. The passage quoted above directly precedes Davt‘yan’s interview with Frederique, in which she says, in response to the question of whether or not she feels anything in the city, that “I love Mehmed’s family”, and it is also soon after the episode on the Diyarbakir fortress wall, when she cannot focus on documenting the fortress as Armenian but instead moves her attention to Mehmed, whom she had told not to climb the wall because of his injured leg. Like much of the text, the identification as victim in this moment exists alongside other identifications with Mehmed and his family. Second, although Davt‘yan does not mention this, the very act of treasure-hunting among the Kurds is a documented trend and one that does not lend itself easily to an analysis as a continued act of dispossession by perpetrating Kurds. Anthropological work done by Anoush Suni in the Van lake region, for example, has shown the various and complex reasons behind, and the nuanced stories that illuminate, Kurds as they hunt for buried Armenian treasure. Examining instances of treasure-hunting and the stories that surround them, Suni argues that these moments can neither be reduced to a continued act of dispossession of Armenians in the present nor to the desperate need for these treasures given the continued place Kurds hold as marginal in contemporary Turkey. Rather, these instances often include elements of both these explanations and more, based on the myths attributed to these treasures and the desires of their former Armenian owners.44 And Davt‘yan does seem to be aware at least of the second interpretation, that Kurds who hunt for buried Armenian treasure do so because of their marginalized place in Turkish society, as she is clearly aware of Mehmed and his family members’ times in prison. Nonetheless, there is still rage there for Davt‘yan, and understandably so, on hearing about Kurds digging for Armenian treasure but finding Armenian bones, but this rage exists alongside all the other identifications Davt‘yan has already made with Diyarbakir and Mehmed’s family.

39Nonetheless, Mehmed’s family and Mehmed’s own position as a treasure-hunter represent only one of the many Kurdish subject positions we see throughout Davt‘yan’s text. On the day following Davt‘yan and Sona’s interview with Frederique, the two characters begin walking around Diyarbakir without Mehmed, and just prior to Davt‘yan’s recollection of her dance on the Ten-Eyed Bridge, she recounts her and Sona’s experience of stumbling upon the gathering place of the Kurdish intelligentsia. She writes,

  • 45 A. Davt‘yan, 2015, para. 15.

The men’s meeting place, called the “Culture House”, whose door I opened spurred by curiosity, and we fell upon the meeting-space of the Kurdish intellectuals (doctors, lecturers, artists, and artisans), who were sitting in a circle in the courtyard in a tea-coloured mosaic of countless glasses: also an Armenian’s home. One of the men there had had a grandfather named Arshaluys, and another, a grandmother. The one whose grandmother had been Arshaluys asked us to write her name down in Armenian, and after looking for a long time at the small piece of paper Sona handed him, he folded it carefully and put it in his breast pocket.45

40In this passage, Davt‘yan begins to talk about Islamized Armenians in Diyarbakir, a theme that remains important as her trip continues, and which further points to the multifaceted and complex positionalities among locals in Diyarbakir. First, we see a meeting between Kurdish intellectuals going on in an old Armenian home, an older space of loss here converted into a space for intellectual growth and discussion. It is another instance in which Davt‘yan bears witness to both what was lost and what remains in Diyarbakir, what continues to live on. Second, it is further interesting that two of these men have Armenian ancestors, and this is a theme which has gained more and more attention in recent years, the “hidden Armenians” whose families survived the genocide by being taken into Muslim families and raised as Muslims. At the time Davt‘yan wrote this piece in 2015, a more tolerant attitude had been growing in Turkey, and many Armenians had begun to speak about their ancestry more openly. Davt‘yan here shows the distinct and different positionalities among Kurds, who are not a one and unified group of historical perpetrator in Davtyan’s portrait, but are rather made up of a number of different individuals with different stories and subjectivities. The portrait Davt‘yan paints of the man whose grandmother was named Arshaluys is especially touching. In truth, there is not much Davt‘yan gives us here, but there is a profound sadness in the way he looks “[…] for a long time at the small piece of paper” on which Sona has written “Arshaluys” in Armenian before putting it in his breast pocket. Davt‘yan does not describe his facial expression, does not show him crying, but just looking for a long time at these letters he does not know but would have known, at this name of his grandmother’s. Then he puts the name in his breast pocket, close to his heart. There is a very deep yet subtle sense of loss here for this individual, this Armenian and Kurd, who has remained in Anatolia.

41What happens in the next few moments as these two women continue sitting and drinking tea with the Kurdish intellectuals is additionally interesting, as these two Armenian women suddenly become aware that they are the only women in the courtyard. Davt‘yan writes,

  • 46 A. Davt‘yan, 2015, para. 15. I only made very slight changes to Davt‘yan’s translation of this pass (...)

We were drinking tea in the courtyard of the Armenian house, and there was a kind of silent, humble reticence in these people, whose completely male space, where there were never any women, had now been entered by two women, whom they suddenly afforded more rights than they did themselves. And we availed of that right – a share for others – by asking them to invite their wives or female intellectual friends there from time to time. The intellectual men smiled sadly at the two young women who had come from a country unbearably far, the presence of which they felt and did not feel beneath their feet.46

42Here, Davt‘yan and Sona relate to this Armenian space in a forward-looking manner based not in a necessity to prove their right, but with a knowledge that it is theirs, and with that right being allowed them. They are recognized by these Kurds as having a share of ownership of this place, and Davt‘yan and Sona do not use that right to look backwards, but rather find some way to move forward by using their claim to ask the men here to invite more women into their circle. This shows again how Davt‘yan and Sona relate to Diyarbakir in a multiplicity of ways. Yes, they see and feel it as Armenian, but returning to that sense of brokenness Davt‘yan mentions earlier, we can also see how she does not need to relate to it only as Armenian. In this sense, her Armenian identity is not static – she cares about the Armenian character of Diyarbakir at the same time as she relates to it on feminist lines. Nor is her Armenian identity here static in time, stuck in Diyarbakir’s Armenian past, but it acts in the present, and because these local Kurds invite her to do so. At the same time, there is something problematic in this passage – Davt‘yan and Sona walking into this meeting and telling the intellectuals to break with tradition, and this adds to the complexity of return to Diyarbakir. How can an Armenian act in this space? What are they allowed to do? If they are given a voice in this space, what can and should they push for?

43In the passage above, we further see a similar sense of brokenness and loss in the way the Kurdish intellectuals respond to Davt‘yan. When Davt‘yan and Sona ask the men to invite women into this space, they “smiled sadly at the two young women who had come from a country unbearably far, the presence of which they felt and did not feel beneath their feet”. There is considerable contradiction in this sentence. They smiled, but they smiled sadly, and they both feel and do not feel the presence of Armenia beneath their feet. This contradiction suggests a kind of brokenness among these Kurdish intellectuals as well as that which Davt‘yan discusses earlier in herself – an understanding of their own place in Diyarbakir but also the strange place these two women hold, who own and do not own this place. In the same sense, there is a feeling that these intellectuals also own and do not own this place, or at least that they feel that brokenness, that sadness which has lingered over their city. Thus, we again see complex and divided subjectivities even among the local Kurds.

  • 47 A. Davtian, 2018, para. 17.

44Shortly after their experience with the Kurdish intellectuals, Davt‘yan and Sona visit Surp Giragos Armenian Church. There, they meet Aram Khach‘ikyan, the church’s bell-ringer, who is also an Islamized Armenian. Davt‘yan discusses how Khach‘ikyan does not know any Armenian, that he greets everyone in Turkish but for the Armenian word k‘uyrik [sister]. After speaking briefly about Khach‘ikyan’s daughter, Davt‘yan writes, “Her father puts his tongue bound by the lack of knowledge of Armenian into the mouth of the church bells and rings them out twice a day – ku-rik, ku-rik, ku-rik, ku-rik”.47 In this passage, there is once more a picture of who remains in Diyarbakir – here, another Armenian whose Armenian identity had been hidden and who knows only some Armenian. There is loss here, but at the same time an embodied experience of being Armenian in this space similar to what Davt‘yan discusses in herself. Khach‘ikyan does not know Armenian, but he “…puts his tongue bound by the lack of knowledge of Armenian into the mouth of the church bells…”. The bells become Khach‘ikyan’s Armenian voice. There is a sense here and in the other passages where Davt‘yan describes an embodied Armenian experience with Diyarbakir, of a kind of Armenian spirit living on in the structures or through the structures, that she and other Armenians such as Khach‘ikyan interact with, a hidden character that is present in subtle ways, which informs the local Kurds who grant her and Sona a right to this place, and which also lives on through Islamized Armenians like Khach‘ikyan.

Discussion and Conclusions

45Denial of the Armenian Genocide has naturally drawn increasing importance among Armenian communities to the demand for recognition. In so doing, it has also engendered closed-off boundaries of victim and perpetrator at the same time as it has promoted notions of a simple return to “Western Armenia”. Anna Davtʻyan breaks out of this binary and complicates ideas of return in “Diarbekʻir: kʻur”. Instead, she fosters relations with Kurdish locals on the bases of friendship, gender equality, and the right Kurds afford her as a participant in Diyarbakir.

46Davt‘yan sees herself as removed from the need for apology, the need to prove what happened or that she is connected to Diyarbakir. Rather, she recognizes that there are ways in which she in fact is not connected to the city at the same time as she has an embodied relationship with it, an experience of returning without collecting proof. In this sense, she describes herself repeatedly as broken and in pieces. Davt‘yan’s relationship with Mehmed’s family is also in pieces, as she simultaneously grows close to them and is seen as separate.

47Moreover, just as Davt‘yan is herself broken and relates to Diyarbakir in different ways, her piece further depicts the many subject positions among local Kurds, refusing to collect them all in a single unitary image of the perpetrator. Rather, there are Kurds who search for buried Armenian gold, Kurds who are part Armenian themselves, and other Kurds who afford her a right to this city as hers. These different subject positions mirror a nuanced picture on the ground in eastern Anatolia.

48The idea of being broken plays a major part in this piece, yet is not figured in a negative light. Davtʻyan seems comfortable with these pieces of relation with Diyarbakir – the many ways in which she both feels this place to be Armenian and at the same time recognizes it as distinct, home to a group of people with whom she relates in different ways and who continue to live and struggle on the land that Armenians also once called home. In fact, Davtʻyan neither demonizes nor reifies perceptions of Diyarbakir’s Armenian character. Rather, her piece is cognizant that this narrative exists alongside many other modes of relating to Diyarbakir and the people who now inhabit it.

49Finally, Davtʻyan’s very positionality as an Armenian from the Republic of Armenia adds a complicating layer to this story of a journey to “Western Armenia”. Davtʻyan has known an Armenian homeland her entire life and has not grown up within the generations of Western Armenian diaspora members who feel the lack of homeland so poignantly. In fact, most narratives of return to an Armenian homeland, especially in English, have come out of the Western Armenian diaspora, such as Michael Arlen’s Passage to Ararat, in which the author travels to Soviet Armenia and there comes to terms with the memory of his father and his Armenian identity, coming to feel a brotherhood with local Armenians. Davtʻyan’s story and her subjectivity as non-diasporan rather emphasize how fractured and multifaceted Armenian relations to homeland really are in the wake of the Armenian Genocide. Her narrative further emphasizes that the Armenian reality is made up of a diversity of ways of relating to “homeland” and “Western Armenia”, all of which can co-exist and thus do not necessarily imply totalizing ideas of return, nor a stark distinction between Armenians and Kurds through the closed-off prisms of victim and perpetrator.

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Bibliographie

Arlen Michael J., Passage to Ararat, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1975.

Ayata Bilgin, “The Kurds in the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Process: Double-Bind or Double-Blind?”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 47 (4), 2015, pp. 807-812.

Çelik Adnan and Ergin Öpengin, “The Armenian Genocide in the Kurdish Novel: Restructuring Identity through Collective Memory”, European Journal of Turkish Studies [online], 2016, online since July 8, 2016, accessed October 3, 2020, https://doi.org/10.4000/ejts.5291.

Chahinian Talar, “The Paris Attempt: Rearticulation of (National) Belonging and the Inscription of Aftermath Experience in French Armenian Literature Between the Wars,” PhD diss., Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, 2008.

Davtian Anna, “Diyarbakir: Sister”, translated by Anna Davtyan and Nazareth Seferian, Inknagir Literary Magazine, July 14, 2018: https://inknagir.org/?p=8563&lang=en

Davtʻyan Anna, “Diarbekʻir: kʻur” “[Diyarbakir – Sister]”, Inkʻnagir Grakan Handes [Inknagir Literary Review], September 5, 2015: https://inknagir.org/?p=5055.

Goldstein Gary, “Review: Documentary ‘Intent to Destroy’ Examines Armenian Genocide,” Los Angeles Times, 2017: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-capsule-intent-to-destroy-review-20171109-story.html.

Gürsel Burcu, “The Mythical Interface of Turkish Intellectuals’ Orientation toward the Armenian Genocide,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 47 (4), 2015, pp. 791-795.

Kazanjian David and Marc Nichanian, “Between Genocide and Catastrophe,” in David L. Eng and David Kazanjian (eds.), Loss: The Politics of Mourning, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 125-147.

Leupold David, “‘Fatally Tied Together’: The Intertwined History of Kurds and Armenians in the 20th Century”, Iran and the Caucasus, vol. 23 (4), 2019, pp. 390-406.

Nobles Melissa, Politics of Official Apologies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Nytagodien Ridwan L. and Arthur G. Neal, “Collective Trauma, Apologies, and the Politics of Memory”, Journal of Human Rights, vol. 3 (4), 2004, pp. 465-475.

Olick Jeffrey K, “Figurations of Memory: A Process-Relational Methodology, Illustrated on the German Case”, in The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility, New York: Routledge, 2007, pp. 85-118.

Suni Anoush Tamar, “Palimpsests of Violence: Ruination and the Politics of Memory in Anatolia,” PhD diss., Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, 2019.

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Note de fin

1 * I would like to thank David Leupold, Michael Pifer, Sara Ruiz, and Karen Jallatyan for their comments on the first stages of this article. Thank you also to the participants at the 2020 "Afterlives of Catastrophe" Workshop at the University of Michigan for their invaluable  suggestions. The guest editors of this special issue and the reviewers at Études arméniennes contemporaines provided further support and thought-provoking suggestions, for which I am grateful.

A. Davtʻyan, 2015. I have used the Library of Congress transliteration system for Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian (where applicable). The only exception is when a transcribed word is used directly in a quotation. In these instances, I have left the word as the author has written it.

2 T. Chahinian, 2008, p. 7.

3 Ibid., p. 8.

4 Ibid., pp. 8-12. For an example of the call to return lands in eastern Anatolia as a site for a future Armenian homeland, see the programme of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), one of the most prominent Armenian political groups in the diaspora, Hay Heghapʻokhakan Dashnaktsʻutʻyun [Armenian Revolutionary Federation], 1998, on https://www.arfd.am/program/

5 M. Nobles, 2008, pp. 2-3.

6 R. Nytagodien and A. Neal, 2004, pp. 471-474.

7 B. Gürsel, 2015, pp. 791-795.

8 A. Erbal, 2012, p. 53.

9 Ibid., p. 88.

10 D. Kazanjian and M. Nichanian, 2003, p. 127.

11 Ibid., p. 130.

12 B. Ayata, 2015, p. 807.

13 Ibid.

14 D. Leupold, 2019, p. 392.

15 A. Çelik and E. Öpengin, 2020, p. 5.

16 Boti is a Kurdish writer from Siirt who spent eleven years as a political prisoner.

17 B. Ayata, 2015, p. 809.

18 Ibid. The sad reality on the ground is that Surp Giragos was again badly damaged during clashes between the Turkish government and the PKK, and was seized by the Turkish government in 2016.

19 D. Leupold, 2019, p. 393.

20 Ibid., p. 399.

21 A. Çelik and E. Öpengin, 2020, p. 12.

22 R. Maraşlı, 2016, quoted in D. Leupold, 2019, p. 403.

23 J. Olick, 2007, pp. 92-97.

24 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 1. I use my own translations, but have relied heavily on Anna Davt‘yan’s own translation, co-written with Nazareth Seferian (A. Davtian, 2018). I have noted where the translation is entirely theirs, and where relevant to the analysis of the text, I have discussed my changes.

25 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 2.

26 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 3.

27 D. Leupold, 2019, pp. 395-398.

28 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 5.

29 Ibid., para. 9.

30 A. Davtian, 2018, para. 9.

31 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 13.

32 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 22.

33 Ibid.

34 A. Davtian, 2018, para. 7.

35 A. Davt‘yan, 2015, para. 7.

36 Ibid.

37 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 13.

38 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 13. Davt‘yan and Seferian here translate the phrase Vor neroghut‘yun khndroghě es linei… as “If I were the one to ask for an apology […]” (A. Davtian, 2018, para. 13). I have decided to translate neroghut‘yun khndroghě as “[…] the one to ask forgiveness […]”, because it is truer to the original and has a significant effect on the analysis below.

39 In fact, this word is also the Armenian word for “God” and “master.”

40 A. Davtʻyan, 2015, para. 16.

41 Ibid.

42 A. Davt‘yan, 2015, para. 11.

43 See, e.g., Gary Goldstein, “Review: Documentary ‘Intent to Destroy’ Examines Armenian Genocide”, Los Angeles Times, 2017: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-capsule-intent-to-destroy-review-20171109-story.html

2017 (Los Angeles Times article) for the famous picture of two archaeologists digging for bones, or P. Balakian, 2016, as an example of poetry concerning the excavation of bones of Genocide victims in Syria.

44 A. Suni, 2019.

45 A. Davt‘yan, 2015, para. 15.

46 A. Davt‘yan, 2015, para. 15. I only made very slight changes to Davt‘yan’s translation of this passage.

47 A. Davtian, 2018, para. 17.

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Arakel Ghazaros Minassian, « “I Feel Removed, Distant, Shattered, in Two Halves” »Études arméniennes contemporaines, 13 | 2021, 131-156.

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Arakel Ghazaros Minassian, « “I Feel Removed, Distant, Shattered, in Two Halves” »Études arméniennes contemporaines [En ligne], 13 | 2021, mis en ligne le 01 septembre 2021, consulté le 15 novembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/eac/2544 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/eac.2544

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Arakel Ghazaros Minassian

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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