In an attempt to find the “treasures” of an Armenian woman who runs a jewelry store at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, four people have dug a 20-meter hole underneath a 4-storey residential building at the city’s Fatih district.
Three months prior to this event, the treasure hunters had rented the basement apartment of the building where, according to them, the Armenian woman’s “treasures” were to have been hidden. Afterwards, they began digging and filling the unearthed soil into bags. No having found anything, however, the hunters vacated the apartment, claiming that living on the basement floor was hazardous for their health. But several days later, on August 29, sounds are again heard from the basement. The police who arrive at the scene come across, in the hole that was dug at the basement, the 4 Turkish treasure hunters whom they immediately arrest, the Turkish Hurriyet daily reports.
Attorney of the building’s residents informed that years ago an Armenian woman had lived in the building, and she had told her neighbors that she had buried a fortune underneath the building. “And this turned into a calamity for the residents. They [the treasure hunters] have dug a hole, but have not considered that there are 8 apartments above and the residents’ lives are put at risk. The residents live in their homes in fear. They had dug such deep hole, yet no noise was heard; they were definitely professionals,” the attorney noted.
via Armenian “treasure” hunters in Istanbul dig 20 meters deep, but find themselves at police precinct | Armenia News – NEWS.am.
September 2, 2011 – 4:16am, by Marianna Grigoryan and Anahit Hayrapetyan
Narrow, winding stairs lead up to 60-year-old housecleaner Ophelia Hakobian’s poorly furnished room on the second floor of an apartment building in the Istanbul district of Kumkapi. The tiny room, barely 1.5 square meters in area, contains hanging laundry, a table and chairs and photographs of Hakobian’s son and grandchildren.
“Is this a real life I’m living? I’m living like a slave here,” grumbled Hakobian, who migrated illegally to Istanbul from Armenia more than a decade ago. Each morning, she starts her work at 7 am; then comes back in the evening to sleep before starting another round of work again.
Nearly two years after signature of the protocols intended to normalize relations between Armenia and Turkey, bitterness between the two neighbors remains strong, but has done little to detract thousands of Armenians from migrating to Turkey in search of the work they cannot find at home.
While Armenia faces an official unemployment rate of 6.6 percent – lower than Turkey’s official rate of 9.4 percent – unofficial unemployment estimates soar into the double digits. The country’s economy is limping along after the 2008 financial crisis, posting a mere 2.6 percent increase in 2010. That number pales next to the Turkish economy’s 2010 expansion of 8.9 percent, the highest in Europe; more moderate growth is expected for this year, however.
For Armenians struggling to make ends meet, that growth rate makes Turkey an attractive option for employment – despite the widespread bitterness over Ottoman Turkey’s World War I-era massacre of ethnic Armenians and ongoing anger over Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Transportation is cheap and low-paying jobs readily available, migrants say. The existence of a local Armenian community in Istanbul – Kumkapi traditionally had a large ethnic Armenian population – provides another incentive.
“This is our life, full of hardships and privation, but we believe at least that we can help our families in Armenia,” said one 62-year-old Armenian woman from Etchmiadzin, just outside Yerevan, who moved to Istanbul several years ago and works as a cleaner and cook for one Turkish family. Cleaners generally earn about $500 to $1,000 per month.
She says she has already mastered Turkish and enjoys “human communication” with her employers. “Our relations are far better than the ones I had while working in an Armenian family” in Istanbul, she added.
But she has kept her relatives in the dark about where she works and what she does. Many Armenians consider it unacceptable for an Armenian to work for a Turk, especially to clean a house. Many condemn even those who visit Turkey, as an ongoing outcry over Armenian travel agencies’ summer tours to Turkey illustrates.
“People have no other option; that’s why they come here,” the Etchmiadzin woman said. “They treat me very well, and we have no disputes on the national topic,” she said in reference to the Ottoman-era bloodshed, viewed by most Armenians as genocide.
Exactly how many Armenians have moved to Turkey to work illegally, however, is open to conjecture. “We have no data on the number of Armenians who live and work in Turkey illegally because we have no diplomatic relations with this country; this is a sphere that needs serious research,” said Irina Davtian, head of the Armenian Migration Agency’s Department on Migration Programs.
The agency hopes to organize a study on migration patterns from Armenia with the help of international donors, she added.
The Turkish government in 2010 told the Istanbul-based Armenian newspaper Agos that “approximately 22,000” Armenians were living illegally in Istanbul, said Agos Editor-in-Chief Aris Nalci. Some estimates put the number at closer to 25,000, he said.
A 2009 study carried out for the Eurasia Partnership Foundation (“Identifying the State of Armenian Migrants in Turkey”) reported that most illegal Armenian migrants in an interview pool of 150 people had traveled to Istanbul from the northwestern Armenian region of Shirak, site of a devastating 1988 earthquake, where unemployment runs high. Ninety-four percent of the respondents were women employed in domestic services jobs.
By contrast, the nine men who had accompanied these women mostly did not work. “They come to Turkey to stay with their wives and keep them safe,” the study reported. The migrants entered Turkey via a multi-entry, 30-day tourist visa, available for $15 at border crossings and airports.
Last year, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdoğan threatened to expel illegal Armenian migrants, whom he claimed number close to 100,000. The comment was seen as linked to Armenia’s push for recognition of Ottoman Turkey’s massacre of ethnic Armenians as genocide, but a sign of a thaw has emerged. This year, the children of illegal migrants will be allowed to study in Istanbul’s Armenian-language schools, Hürriyet Daily News reported.
As with illegal migrants worldwide, these migrants’ plans to return home often depend on their economic condition. One Armenian woman, who has worked illegally as a housecleaner in Istanbul since 2006, said that she and her husband, who works as a shop salesman, never discuss returning with their two children to their hometown of Vanadzor. They have learned Turkish and how to prepare Turkish dishes, and gained “many” Turkish acquaintances, she said.
Chances appear low that that trend will change anytime soon. Commented pollster Aharon Adibekian, director of the Sociometer research center: “Despite [Turkey’s] image as ‘the enemy,’ people keep leaving [Armenia] because . . . they have no other option.”
Editor’s Note:
Marianna Grigoryan is a freelance reporter based in Yerevan and editor of MediaLab.am. Anahit Hayrapetyan is a freelance photojournalist also based in Yerevan.
I would like to share my thoughts about Armenian realities—evolving ones, forgotten ones, and new ones.
This church had more than 200 deeds showing that a significant portion of the Diyarbakir city center belonged to the church prior to 1915. At present, several apartment buildings, state schools, offices, and shops are on these lands. So, the long and difficult process has begun, to reclaim these lands and properties by their rightful owner, the Surp Giragos Church.
Until 20 years ago, the Armenian reality was mainly Soviet Armenia and the diaspora. Then, a double miracle happened and we had a free and independent Armenia and Karabagh, creating a new reality, which became the triangle of Armenia, Karabagh, and the diaspora. And yet, throughout the past century, there’s been an often forgotten or dismissed reality—the Armenians remaining in Turkey. This is a tiny community of about 60,000, generally called Bolsahays as they live mostly in Istanbul, which was the intellectual, cultural, political, industrial, and social center for Armenians before 1915. Although they are called Bolsahays, they come mostly from the historic homeland, where they lived continuously for more than 3,000 years. These people are not exactly diasporan or Hayasdantsi. So, how do you define them? Where do we place them in the Hayasdan-Artsakh-Spyurk triangle? I suggest placing them in the middle, in the heart of the triangle. Let me explain.
For almost a century now, despite the hardships, pain, and grief caused by the Turkish state, despite the discrimination, harassment, and insults hurled at them by the general Turkish population, these Armenians have continued to preserve their identity and carry the heavy burden of protecting the legacy and heritage left behind by their ancestors, at least in Istanbul, keeping an open and active the Armenian Patriarchate, more than 30 churches, nearly 20 schools, and 2 hospitals. Until recently their efforts were all managed defensively, in a survival mode, until one Armenian, originally from Malatya, stood up in Istanbul and called upon the Turks and Turkish state to face their past, stop falsifying historical facts, and talk about the remaining Armenians. He stood up as an advocate of dialogue and a bridge between Turks and Armenians. Unfortunately, the enormous impact of Hrant Dink’s critical message and the new reality was only understood after his murder.
Around the same time, another Armenian in Istanbul, this time from Dikranagerd/Diyarbakir, stood up and declared that the historic Surp Giragos Church had to be reconstructed. This church, with its seven altars and capacity of 3,000 people—the biggest Armenian church in the Middle East—was partially destroyed by cannon fire in 1915 and left in ruins, on its last legs after its roof collapsed. Until recently, the Turkish state had not allowed even minor repairs to the Armenian schools and churches in Istanbul, let alone the full reconstruction of a historic church in Anatolia. And yet, Vartkes Ergun Ayik persevered; he hired expert architects, historians, and builders, obtained all the required permits and approvals, and even more incredibly, convinced the Diyarbakir municipal government to pay for one third of the church’s reconstruction. The construction is now underway, with two thirds completed, and more than half of the financing also secured.
This church had more than 200 deeds showing that a significant portion of the Diyarbakir city center belonged to the church prior to 1915. At present, several apartment buildings, state schools, offices, and shops are on these lands. So, the long and difficult process has begun, to reclaim these lands and properties by their rightful owner, the Surp Giragos Church.
This is the first time Armenians have begun to reconstruct a building in their ancestral homeland. It is the first time they have claimed the land and properties from their ancestral homeland, after losing them in 1915. This is a new reality.
Another new reality is how this church is helping shape public opinion in Turkey. Whoever sees the Surp Giragos Church, whether in person or through the media, keeps asking, “Where are the people that belonged to this church?” “Where are they now?” “Where did they go, and why?” The ever-changing and most recent version of the official Turkish state history claims that Armenians revolted on the eastern front during World War I to join the Russians and that, as a result, the Ottoman state temporarily deported them from only the “eastern war zones” to the south toward the Syrian desert. But Diyarbakir was not in the eastern front, nor in the war zone; nor was there any Armenian revolt. As these facts become evident, Turkish citizens—both Turks and Kurds—have started to question the falsified history. Still a tiny percentage, there is nevertheless an ever-increasing number of Turkish citizens, especially of the younger generations, who have started “seeking the truth” and demanding that the state face its past and stop its denialist policies. There are also Turkish citizens who are fully aware of the truth, and have developed a guilty conscience about their ancestor’s past evil deeds. This year, the April 24, 1915 events were commemorated in five Turkish cities, including Diyarbakir. This is another new reality.
The church, when reconstruction is completed, will become a historic destination of pilgrimage for all Armenians—a memorial and reminder of the past Armenian presence in Anatolia, and a hope for the future.
Armenians are few in number, and Bolsahays are even fewer, but by engaging in a dialogue with liberal-minded Turks and Kurds eager for the democratization of Turkey, and through cooperation with their colleagues in the media, academia, law, construction, finance, and political fields, these few Armenians remaining in Turkey are learning how to undo past wrongs much more effectively than the diaspora. No matter how often Diaspora Armenians gather together to hear their leaders give speeches demanding the return of their lands or to stop the denial, the deeds and results achieved inside Turkey are much louder than the words outside. The diaspora’s efforts surely serve a useful purpose in helping younger Armenian generations keep their identity, or even in reminding foreign politicians of the past injustices, but in terms of reversing these injustices, the Armenians remaining in Turkey are starting to play a vital role through dialogue and cooperation with their fellow Turkish citizens.
The Armenians in Turkey, therefore, deserve the maximum support of their fellow Armenians in the diaspora and Armenia. And this is the most important new Armenian reality.
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Cenk Taşkan, whose real name is Majak Toşikyan, is a leading figure on the Turkish music scene. During his professional career, which spans more than 40 years, he has composed hundreds of unforgettable songs and worked with many important singers, including Nükhet Duru, Hümeyra, Sezen Aksu, Tanju Okan, Aşkın Nur Yengi and Nilüfer.
More recently, he worked on Sibil Pektorosoğlu’s album, which was released in Armenian.
Taşkan started his professional music career as a guitarist in Yavuz Özışık’s orchestra in 1965. In 1966 he met Erol Büyükburç and worked with him until he left to complete his military service. He started to compose while he was serving in the military, after which he met lyricist Mehmet Teoman and singer Duru, with whom he composed songs with Turkish lyrics at a time when arrangements were very popular in Turkey. His album “Bir Nefes Gibi” (Like a Breath) is cited by critics as being among the best albums of all time in Turkish pop music history.
‘I dragged my heels’
During the most successful years of his career Taşkan suddenly decided to migrate to Canada. He said that the reason for this was the chaotic pre-1980 coup period. The Turkish-Armenian musician tells about the incident that led him to emigrate from his beloved country, saying: “Before the coup, a bank next to my apartment was bombed and my son’s school bus drove up while the building was still in flames. If the school bus had arrived 10 minutes earlier, my son would have been dead. In those days, not only minorities but everyone was concerned about ‘what was to happen next.’ I had relatives in Canada, so I decided to go there.”
Stressing that he is a Turk and expressing his admiration for Turkey at every opportunity, Taşkan said that migration was difficult for him. “I am a person who admires Turkey, İstanbul in particular. This is my hometown. I dragged my heels. However, since I had concerns about the future of my family, I had to go. During the time of Turgut Özal I thought of coming back, but could not leave my family.”
‘My greatest fear was being forgotten’
Taşkan decided to return to Turkey in 1997 after living in Canada for 16 years. “A person who dies in his homeland is the luckiest person in the world,” he said. “My greatest fear was being forgotten. I was quite afraid of that because in Turkey, the agenda constantly changes and people are forgotten very quickly, but it was not as I had feared. When I returned to Turkey, all the doors opened before me. It seems that I had left good memories behind.”
After returning to Turkey, Taşkan started to work with Duru and undertook many important projects, including “Sevgiyle El Ele” (Hand in Hand with Love), a series of concerts that he held in support of Turkey’s EU accession process, soundtracks for TRT documentaries and music that was used during the opening ceremony of the Türk Telekom Arena in İstanbul.
One of the most common questions people ask about Taşkan is why he changed his name. The veteran songwriter said that he changed it mainly for political reasons.
“At that time, if I did not change my name, my work would have been censured by TRT because of it. I changed my name when we started to send our work to TRT, so it would not cause trouble for my friends. Someone from TRT might reject our songs just because of that name,” he says, recalling: “We wrote a song called ‘Harp ve Sulh’ (War and Peace). The lyrics read, ‘Give flowers to children, not guns.’ Because of that song, Nükhet Duru and Mehmet Teoman were detained for two days on charges of spreading communist propaganda. So I thought my friends would be harmed because of my name. Fortunately, today there are no such problems.”
Nowadays, the musician who changed his name to bypass TRT’s censorship is composing music for TRT. Watching Turkey’s progress very closely, Taşkan is very pleased and optimistic about the future of the country. “In recent years, Turkey has made great progress in every field. People and ideas are changing. People are no longer interested in your identity. They are now interested in the quality of your work. This is a considerably important development for our country.”
Taşkan says he has two big projects in mind: “Nuhun Gemisi” (Noah’s Ark) and “Semavi.” He said that although foreigners have shown great interest in these projects, he wants to carry them out in Turkey.
“I am tired of pop music. If I could find a good singer, I would consider it, but I am now thinking about the world. I want to realize projects that will make an impression on the world. I want to carry out the projects in which I aim to unite the three divine religions on the same platform. I want this project to be completely in Turkish. There are offers from many foreign countries. However, I want to do this in Turkey because these projects tell stories from this land. I hope the state will support them,” he says.
‘Music made for money angers me’
Taşkan, who has composed over 300 songs, is not pleased with the current situation of Turkish pop. Still, he does not want to be so cruel and, although they are few in number, there is still some quality work.
He criticizes the music industry, saying: “[Turkey’s] is a pop music industry where much poor quality and absurd work is done for money. This makes me angry. The same things are being repeated over and over again. Unfortunately, there is nothing new. In the past, audiences in Turkey used to listen to music from all around the world. Now, a certain Turkish style has been created. It is so limited; everybody is doing the same thing. There is a certain pattern, a uniform, and the same uniform is worn by everyone.”
Turkey’s parliamentary campaign debate about the government’s treatment of ethnic minorities prompted hope among the country’s ethnic Armenians, its largest non-Muslim minority, that greater tolerance could be in the wind. But as Turkish-Armenians take stock of their situation post-election, a mood of caution still prevails.
Only some 300,000 ethnic Armenians are believed to have remained in Turkey after the 1915-1918 massacres of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Today, most members of Turkey’s estimated 50,000-strong ethnic Armenian community reside in Istanbul; a tiny minority of ethnic Armenians, who converted to Islam, live in the regions of Tunceli and Artvin.
Diaspora Armenians may think first of genocide recognition when Turkey comes to mind, but for those Armenians who live in Turkey, another issue carries equal importance – seeing an ethnic Armenian elected to Turkey’s parliament.
With a nose out for votes, two opposition parties – the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the National Movement Party (MHP) – earlier had planned to include two ethnic Armenians among their candidates in Turkey’s June 12 parliamentary elections. An uptick in nationalist rhetoric, however, prompted them to abandon such plans, some observers say.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) performed a similar about-face with wealthy Turkish-Armenian businessman Bedros Sirinoglu. In 2007, the AKP had been the primary choice for Turkish-Armenian voters who hoped that the party would carry through legal reforms that would allow the return of property confiscated from ethnic Armenians, said Margar Yesaian, a columnist for the Taraf daily newspaper.
Turkey and Armenia’s failed attempt to patch up the past, though, prompted many ethnic Armenian voters to change their loyalties, commented Marmara University’s Pagrat Merinoglu, an ethnic Armenian professor of computer engineering. “Erdoğan’s government broke all our hopes for the reconciliation process,” Merinoglu said.
Instead, “[t]his time, Armenians have placed their faith in independent candidates who declared their willingness to support ethnic minorities,” said Aris Nalci, an editor at Agos, an Istanbul-based Armenian newspaper.
Two days after the vote, whether that faith will be justified remains unclear. Some observers, though, say that the lack of an ethnic Armenian parliamentary deputy only feeds the Turkish-Armenian community’s feelings of isolation.
“The main issue for Armenians here has always been and still is the fact that they are not viewed as rightful citizens of the Turkish state,” said Ozge Genc, a manager of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation’s Democratization Program. “And Armenians are often treated with greater distrust than all other Christian minorities here.”
Armenians in Turkey are often portrayed as traitors who committed atrocities against Turks during World War I and sided with Russia against the Ottoman Empire. As a result, many ethnic Armenians have taken Turkish surnames and say that they avoid speaking Armenian in the streets. That wariness extends to politics and the Turkish civil service, Genc continued. “They have to go through a security check, and, as a result, Armenians . . . are not represented in the political field and public sectors.”
That trend has slowly begun to change. Non-Muslims have been allowed to hold official posts in Turkey since 1965. Fearing discrimination, few ethnic Armenians, though, have applied for such jobs. A marked exception occurred this March when Turkey’s Secretariat-General for European Affairs offered an advisor post to an ethnic Armenian; the offer made headlines in Turkish media.
Later that month, Ankara appointed Turkish-Armenian economist Daron Acemoglu, a two-time Nobel Prize nominee, as its ambassador to France.
Breaking the Armenian community’s tradition of silence has been a challenge, but the 2007 murder of ethnic Armenian journalist and Agos Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink proved a turning point, noted Professor Arus Yumul, the Turkish-Armenian head of the sociology department at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University. “It’s as if Hrant Dink’s death woke us up and made us remember our identity and not be afraid of being Armenian,” he said.
An ongoing trend of mixed marriages has contributed to that process. A decade or two ago, marrying an ethnic Turk would have been considered shameful for an ethnic Armenian, Yumul said. “Now, it is viewed almost as something normal. There is no confrontation on this issue, which means that the next generation will be more of a hybrid, and will be able to chose its ethnicity.”
Meanwhile, some signs indicate that many Turks, too, are taking a fresh look at relations with Armenians. Thousands of ethnic Turks took to the streets to protest the death of Hrant Dink, and protests and other events were staged in Istanbul this April to commemorate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians in the World-War-I-era massacres.
But the process of reconciliation is far from smooth. Silva Kuyumcuian, the principal of Getronagan, Istanbul’s oldest Armenian lyceum, charges that the Turkish government uses ethnic Turkish deputy principals to ensure that Armenian history is not taught and that more Armenian language classes are not offered in Turkey’s 16 Armenian schools.
“Of course, we are very cautious, and, for now, that’s the only right policy since we are trying to survive and not lose our students,” Kuyumcuian said.
But rather than silence and caution, some argue that the ethnic Armenian community’s best hope for the future lies in Turkey’s ongoing attempts to build political pluralism. “[O]nly that way can minorities’ problems be solved…,” said Taraf columnist Margar Yesaian. “A step toward democratization has been made, so we hope for more developments.”
Editor’s note:
Gayane Abrahamyan is a reporter for ArmeniaNow.com in Yerevan.
Eliz is a woman from Saritagh, a Yerevan neighborhood, who moved to Istanbul eleven odd years ago. She’s a veritable “ball of fire”.
Sitting on the sofa like a mother hen, she gathers up her disabled brother’s kids under her protective arms and tells me her story. Eliz says she made the move to take care of her brother and his kids.
Eliz resembles a traditional Armenian grandmother; barking out orders to those in the house. No one dares do anything without consulting her first.
Hakob, her brother, needed an operation and the children had to be fed and clothed. She says there were no options left but to move.
“My brother was disabled in a car accident. Hovo was one and a half years-old, Elizik was two and a half and Zhanna was a year older. We had no way of making a living back in Armenia. Eleven years ago, it was impossible to find any live in Yerevan. You probably remember how it was like. I worked and raised the kids. I wanted to give them a good education but it didn’t work out,” Eliz recounted.
Eliz is a woman in her mid-forties. Five days a week she cleans the home of her Turkish employer. She also serves as a nanny. She’s been working for the same family for the past seven years.
Eliz sleeps over at the house and returns home on Friday night. She told me her employer is the editor at some Turkish newspaper but didn’t wish to say more.
As I said, Eliz is a bundle of energy, but I detected a morose side to her as well. She appeared worn-out inside from her work and life in Turkey. It was something in her eyes.
During our conversation she said, “Please help to get my brother’s house back.”
Eliz’s seventy year-old mother is blind and resides in Yerevan along with her brother’s other daughter.
Eliz’s older brother had been renting for twenty years before returning to the family home. It was impossible for all of them to live together in that 54 square meter house.
The two brothers wound up suing each other in the courts. Hakob was left high and dry and soon became despondent. Life had ceased to have any meaning for him.
“In a word, they were thrown out due to the decision of the court. So I brought them here to Istanbul,” says Eliz.
Trying to shed a little humor on the subject, Eliz told me to write down her life story. “I’ll translate it into Turkish. We’ll publish a book and get rich,” she chuckled.
“No matter, just as long as the kids are OK. I’m a victim of my own destiny. It’s my fault and the fault of the government back in Armenia that my Hovo serves tea in an Istanbul cafe. At least Zhanna works in a textile factory and is learning to sew. She can return to Armenia and find a job. But what about the boy?” Eliz asked.
Then, as if I was an official representative from Armenia, she bellowed, “We want our homeland. We want the government to take care of us. Sick people shouldn’t be thrown out on the streets.”
One evening, at around 9, I followed twelve year-old Hovik home from his job at the cafe. There was another Armenian, a jeweler, escorting us. I asked the man to find the boy another job; so that he would no longer have to serve tea for his Kurdish boss. The jeweler promised me that he would teach the boy the trade.
“I make about 100 Turkish Lira ($70) a week. What’s hard is being on my feet all day. You can’t take a moment to sit down. The customers want their tea. My junior boss really is a chatterbox who gives me a headache, always saying I did this or that wrong,” Hovik told me afterwards at home.
The boy used to attend P.S. 167 in Yerevan. He said he had many friends there whom he misses a lot. When Hovik’s father asked the boy what he wanted to be as a child, his answer was “a soldier”.
Zhanna, Hovik’s fourteen year-old sister, was uncomfortable and said nothing at our first meeting. During our next conversation, she confessed that she always aspired to be a painter. Her work was displayed in the Yerevan school she was attended.
“When I was younger I wanted to become a painter but now who knows?” Zhanna confided. She makes around 50 Lira ($30) a week at work. The teenager leaves for work at eight in the morning and returns at nine.
“We sew dresses and blouses and attach buttons. I mostly work with Turkish and Kurdish children. There aren’t other Armenians at the factory.”
Aunt Eliz tried to get Zhanna enrolled at a painter’s club but one has to be a Turkish citizen.
“All four of us work here and get by somehow. The kids are little dolls. I have to keep my eyes on them amidst all these Turks. I don’t know whether to stay or go back to Yerevan. God willing, we can save up enough to buy a small place back home in order to return,” Eliz says.
Hakob’s wife also works as a house cleaner five days a week. He used to receive a 10,000 AMD disability pension in Armenia.
His wife used to work at the Rossiya marketplace as a floorsweeper. She made 30,000 AMD per month.
“The family income was 40,000. You do the math. That’s 8,000 per person. Deduct all the utility payments and what’s left is just enough for a loaf of bread every day. You ask why we moved here, so I’ll tell you. It was for the children. It was a tough decision. There was no alternative,” says Hakob. “It’s like a prison here sitting inside all day. At least in Yerevan I’d get around. There’s no place to go to here.”
via Aunty Eliz: “We moved to Istanbul for the kids” (video) | Hetq online.
In an attempt to find the “treasures” of an Armenian woman who runs a jewelry store at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, four people have dug a 20-meter hole underneath a 4-storey residential building at the city’s Fatih district.
