A Lost Map on the Tramway in Istanbul

Features — By Avedis Hadjian on December 4, 2012 8:00 am

Mehmet and Fatih Arkan, Muslim Armenians from Diyarbakir. Ten years ago, he would still fear to admit he was Armenian, “but now it’s no longer unsafe in Diyarbakir,” Mehmet says./ © A. Hadjian

“Who are you? This is Turkey. Do you know what Turkey is?” a man asked me, his thick glasses magnifying the fear in his eyes. He belonged to the little-known Armenian Gypsy community, in the Kurtuluş district of Istanbul. I was at a teahouse where Armenian Gypsy men usually gathered, trying to interview them.

And he was right. I didn’t know what Turkey is. But Turkey, and many Armenians themselves, didn’t know who he was either.

In Turkey, there lives a mysterious minority known as the “secret Armenians.” They have been hiding in the open for nearly a century. Outwardly, they are Turks or Kurds, but the secret Armenians are actually descendants of the survivors of the 1915 Genocide, who stayed behind in Eastern Anatolia after forcibly converting to Islam. Some are now devout Muslims, others are Alevis –generally considered an offshoot of Shia Islam, even though that would be an inaccurate description by some accounts–, and a few secretly remain Christian, especially in the area of Sassoun, where still there are mountain villages with secret Armenian populations. Even though Armenian Gypsies wouldn’t strictly qualify as Secret Armenians, they share many traits with the latter, including reluctance or fear to reveal their identity even to fellow Armenians.

via A Lost Map on the Tramway in Istanbul.

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