Posted on 08/02/2005 7:26:32 AM PDT by Serpentor
Monday, 1 August 2005, 16:00 GMT 17:00 UK
Armenian quest for lost orphans
By Dorian Jones
Producer, Masterpiece, BBC World Service
Ninety years ago, hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in mass killings that still resonate through Turkey's social and political life.
Armenians say that up to 1.5m of their people were deported and died at the hands of the then Ottoman rulers of Turkey.
But it is believed that thousands of orphaned Armenian children were saved secretly by Turkish families.
Until now, the very existence of the children has remained largely an untold story, buried along with those who died between 1915 and 1916.
But the stories of those Armenian orphans are slowly being uncovered by their descendants. Turkish documentary maker Berke Bas is one of those people.
Family member Nahide Kaptan was saved in 1915 when she was nine years old. But uncovering the truth still remains a difficult and contentious issue.
What happened in 1915 still remains a hotly disputed subject. Armenia, along with the Armenian Diaspora, accuses the then Ottoman rulers of carrying out a "genocide". But Turkey disputes the charge, saying that a few hundred thousand died and that the deaths occurred in a civil war in which many Turks were also killed.
Kitchen hideout
Selim Deringil, a historian of the late Ottoman period at Istanbul's Bosphorus University, says "what you have is people talking at cross purposes and not really interested in what happened."
Professor Deringil himself fell victim to the controversy, being forced to postpone a conference on the subject earlier this year after intense government pressure.
The ongoing controversy can pose problems for those delving into the past.
Berke Bas, on returning to her birthplace - the Black Sea city of Ordu - admitted she had concerns.
"I am sure there will be people who will approach this with disdain, saying 'Why am I digging up this history?' So many families deny the fact they had Armenian family members."
According to Professor Deringil, such stories are not unusual. He says thousands of Armenian children were saved by Turkish families.
"We do know that it was on such a scale that the then rulers of the Ottoman Empire issued secret orders to punish families who saved Armenian children."
The first memory of Nahide for Berke was being told how she was hidden under the kitchen sink, when she first came to the family.
After speaking with relatives, Berke discovered that at least five Armenian children were taken in by both sides of her family.
But acknowledging Armenian ancestors within Turkish families still remains a taboo for many, according to the editor of the local newspaper.
"These children were brought up in Muslim families. This is the biggest issue, Christians becoming Muslims," he said.
"They don't see themselves as outsiders but they remain silent about their past, afraid. Now, as a Turk, a Muslim you say that your ancestors were Armenian then you are called a 'Gavur', you are without belief, without a soul, and you are an outcast."
'Stunning stories'
But despite the reluctance of many to talk about their Armenian ancestry, Berke discovered that Nahide had a brother who survived 1915 and eventually ended up in Istanbul. Although he has since died, it is believed his daughter is still alive.
Berke returned to Istanbul to try to find her. She visited Agos, a weekly Armenian newspaper.
Printing both in Turkish and Armenian, the paper seeks to be a bridge between the 60,000 Istanbul Armenians living in the city and wider Turkish society.
Agos editor Hrant Dink says he is inundated by requests from both Turkey and abroad to find Armenian relatives.
"The mails I receive, the e-mails, the phone enquiries! The people who knock on my door, they contact me every day," he said.
"There are so many people from here and from abroad. They learn that they have a past. They're looking for information, wanting history and references, looking for relatives. I am involved in it personally everyday. There are stunning examples, so many stories reaching me."
Masterpiece: The Little Girl Who Came In From The Cold can first be heard on BBC World Service at 0805GMT/0905BST on Tuesday 2 August 2005 or online at the Masterpiece website for the following 7 days.
The BBC is putting the best spin on it - the stories I have read is that the Turks practiced kidnapping of Christian children - see the historical account of the Janissaries.
It is a practice (Turkish or Islamic or both) that continues till this day when the Turks invaded Cyrpus. There are reports that children were taken and raised as Turks.
Thank you so much for this post.
From some accounts I have read from the Greek Pontian genocide that happened around the same time as the Armenian one - Cherkessian Muslims (spelling?) - themselves recent converts to Islam as a population - saved many Christian lives. Cherkessian tribesmen lived side by side with Greeks and Armenians for hundreds of years so there was not the hostility and insecurity of being thrown out of their stolen land that the Turk - a recent invader - had.
Wonderful post. Thank you.
cicassian, i think.
Whatever the spelling - they are a fair Caucasian peoples much prized for their beuty by Muslim slavers in years past. I learned of them as a people when in the movie 'Lawrence of Arabia' Lawrence passed for a Circassian when he was selected from a line up to be sodomized by the Turkish pasha.
Circassian - a member of a Caucasian people living in the Caucasus but not speaking an Indo-European language.
I first learned about these people from a Muslim in Jordan, and he told me that his grandfather, how was a Muslim, and was forced to leave the Caucasus region in 1890 in a railroad car, and they were deported to Jordan. He told me that the girls were very fair and prettty and that they got too much attention from the Jordanian men.
Ping!
From Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, Chapter 24 (an account of the Armenian genocide):
"When the victims had travelled a few hours from their starting place, the Kurds would sweep down from their mountain homes. Rushing up to the young girls, they would lift their veils and carry the pretty ones off to the hills. They would steal such children as pleased their fancy and mercilessly rob all the rest of the throng. If the exiles had started with any money or food, their assailants would appropriate it, thus leaving them a hopeless prey to starvation. They would steal their clothing, and sometimes even leave both men and women in a state of complete nudity. All the time that they were committing these depradations the Kurds would freely massacre, and the screams of women and old men would add to the general horror. Such as escaped these attacks in the open would find new terrors awaiting them in the Moslem villages. ..."
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