It was warm evening in 2012 in the Italian town of Siena that the topic of the massacre of over a million Armenians (1915-1918) by the Ottoman Empire came up. A Turkish friend of mine, who represented all the fine qualities that a young man educated in the country possess, was agitated. He insisted that there was no genocide and that many Turks and Armenians died in a civil war that broke out. Since he was losing control of his emotions and we were, after all, just students enjoying a Tuscan summer, I changed the topic.
A year and a half later, I had the opportunity of visiting Turkey, a country I completely fell in love with at first sight. The flat I rented in the Beyoglu area of Istanbul was right next to an Armenian Church. There were still some people in the city who were parishioners.
My young and lovely landlady told me that the building and the flat were once inhabited by Armenians, who were then marched off to the desert in Syria. She said her grandfather recounted the tales of the expulsion, and that she would risk a jail sentence to say publicly that this was a genocide.
This girl is a secular Turk who admires the legacy of Attaturk but refuses to idolise him.
Realising that I may be slightly putting her in an uncomfortable position, I wanted to change the topic, but she persisted and talked about how there was still some hostility in the country towards its minuscule Armenian minority, who some hated as much as they did the Kurds.
She went on to tell me that many saw the expulsion of the Armenians from Istanbul as a great chance to seize their property. The very flat I was renting was occupied by poor Turks who guarded it with knives from other possible encroachers. This reminded me of what happened to many homes of Hindus and Sikhs in Lahore after the city fell on the wrong side of the Radcliffe Line.
As someone who loves modern Turkey, I really think the country must accept that the massacres did take place around the First World War and that they very much constituted genocide. In all fairness, the government in Ankara said it wants to invite scholars from all over the world and open up all the archives and let them reach a conclusion. This is something that the government of Armenia must accept.
A year and a half later, I had the opportunity of visiting Turkey, a country I completely fell in love with at first sight. The flat I rented in the Beyoglu area of Istanbul was right next to an Armenian Church. There were still some people in the city who were parishioners.
My young and lovely landlady told me that the building and the flat were once inhabited by Armenians, who were then marched off to the desert in Syria. She said her grandfather recounted the tales of the expulsion, and that she would risk a jail sentence to say publicly that this was a genocide.
This girl is a secular Turk who admires the legacy of Attaturk but refuses to idolise him.
Realising that I may be slightly putting her in an uncomfortable position, I wanted to change the topic, but she persisted and talked about how there was still some hostility in the country towards its minuscule Armenian minority, who some hated as much as they did the Kurds.
She went on to tell me that many saw the expulsion of the Armenians from Istanbul as a great chance to seize their property. The very flat I was renting was occupied by poor Turks who guarded it with knives from other possible encroachers. This reminded me of what happened to many homes of Hindus and Sikhs in Lahore after the city fell on the wrong side of the Radcliffe Line.
As someone who loves modern Turkey, I really think the country must accept that the massacres did take place around the First World War and that they very much constituted genocide. In all fairness, the government in Ankara said it wants to invite scholars from all over the world and open up all the archives and let them reach a conclusion. This is something that the government of Armenia must accept.
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