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ANN/GROONG-Turkey: Village Survived The Century's First Mass Ethnic Expulsion
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Turkey: Village Survived The Century's
First Mass Ethnic Expulsion
By Jolyon Naegele
Vakifli Koyu, Turkey; 27 May 1999 (RFE/RL) --
Turkey's last surviving Armenian village -- Vakif -- or in
Turkish, Vakifli Koyu, is perched on the southern slope
of Musa Dagh, or Mount Moses, overlooking the
Mediterranean and within eyesight of the Syrian border.
Orange and mandarin groves circle the village. The air is
pungent with jasmine.
Coming upon this community of 135 ethnic Armenians in
Turkey, the visitor has the odd feeling of having found
the last Mohican somewhere in the wilds of New York's
Central Park, or a Jewish shtetl in contemporary Poland,
or an Azerbaijani village in today's Nagorno-Karabakh.
Vakif is unique in that it survived the century's first mass
ethnic expulsion -- not because it was overlooked but
because its inhabitants beat the odds and resisted their
oppressors until help arrived. Although the inhabitants
were forced to evacuate, they came home once it was
safe to do so and stayed.
In 1915, Turkish authorities ordered that all Armenians
be expelled into the Syrian desert. Armenian and
Turkish historians disagree over how many were killed in
the expulsions. Turkish historians put the figure at
200,000, while Armenians say up to 10 times that
number died.
Dutch historian Erik Zuercher, in his "Modern History of
Turkey," says the death toll is probably 600,000 to
800,000. He says the reason for the discrepancy,
propaganda apart, lies in differing estimates of the
number of Armenians who lived in the empire before the
war and the numbers who emigrated. Up to two million
Armenians are believed to have inhabited Ottoman
Turkey at the outbreak of the first World War, but by
the end of the war, there were no more than 100,000
left, mainly in Istanbul and other parts of western
Turkey.
The inhabitants of six villages on the slopes of Musa
Dagh, Vakif among them, chose to resist in 1915 and
set up fortifications on the mountain. For 53 days they
repelled onslaughts by Turkish troops until French
sailors sighted a banner the Armenians had tied to a tree
on the mountain emblazoned with the words: "Christians
in Distress: Rescue." French and British naval ships then
evacuated some 4,200 men, women and children from
Musa Dagh to Port Said in Egypt.
The Prague-born Viennese writer Franz Werfel wrote a
stirring novel in 1933 based on this resistance: "The 40
days of Musa Dagh." Werfel took the liberty of changing
certain details to give the story biblical dimensions -- 53
days became 40 days, and six villages became seven
villages.
After the World War I, Musa Dagh and the surrounding
province of Hatay became part of French-administered
Syria. The end of Turkish administration in the area
enabled the Armenian inhabitants to resettle their six
villages on the slopes of Musa Dagh.
But following an agreement between France and Turkey
and a controversial referendum, the district reverted to
Turkey in 1939, a move still not recognized by Syria.
Some 5,000 of Musa Dagh's Armenians fled Hatay
once again with the help of the French navy, this time
settling in Lebanon's Bekaa valley.
There, they built the town of Anjar, naming its six wards
after the six villages of Musa Dagh (Vakif, Haji Hababli,
Kabusia, Khdr Bek, Yoghun Oluk, and Bitias). Disease
and malnutrition took the lives of many of the new
settlers in the first months of their arrival. Many more
have since fled Lebanon's civil war and fighting in the
Bekaa valley.
Anjar is currently home to some 2,400 Armenians.
They and their brethren now living in the diaspora have
established an internet web page, complete with local
folk music including a song (written and composed by
Yessai Markarian) about the exodus from Musa Dagh
and the hardships they faced in Anjar:
But others stayed in Vakif. Today, it is a peaceful
farming community and is quite prosperous, judging by
its homes, cars and tidy appearance. In addition to
Armenians, Vakif is home to one Kurd and one Turkish
Muslim family.
The village church has recently been reconstructed and
expanded. A plaque on the wall says the church was
renovated in 1994-97 with assistance from the Turkish
government.
The day this reporter visited Vakif, the mayor was just
leaving and had no time to talk. The priest was away
ministering to the Armenian community in nearby
Antakya, where he spends every other week meeting
with 35 Armenian families there. But Bedros Kehyroglu,
a local farmer who helps look after the parish office and
church, had time to talk.
He says the Armenian community in Vakif enjoys "100
percent autonomy." In his words, "since there is
democracy in Turkey, the government lets the people
manage the village themselves." He says the Armenian
community is not under any pressure from political
parties and points out it was under the pro-Islamist
Welfare (Refah) Party that Ankara subsidized
reconstruction of the church.
He says villagers speak Turkish in public and an
Armenian dialect at home. As he puts it, "when we are in
the village, we speak Armenian." He says he's not very
fluent in Armenian, but that he cannot deny that he is an
Armenian. He adds, "a person who denies his identity
cannot be trusted."
He and other villagers of Vakif say they have virtually no
contact with the Musa Dagh Armenian diaspora, which
in addition to Lebanon is spread out over Austria,
Britain, France, Canada, the U.S., Venezuela, and
Australia.
"We have no contact with Armenians in the diaspora,
just with some villagers who work in Europe and come
home on vacation -- and with the Armenians in
Istanbul."
Busloads of Armenian residents of Istanbul, of whom
there are several thousand, pay visits to Vakif and
Antakya. Nearly 100 came last month with the
patriarch, crowding into the church for a service and
then spending their time playing backgammon in the local
teahouse.
Vakif's Armenians are undergoing gradual linguistic
assimilation by the Turkish majority. While the older
generation can read and write in Armenian, most
members of the younger generation cannot.
Those who want to learn Armenian have to go to an
Armenian boarding school in Istanbul, where they are
taught in Turkish but attend lessons in Armenian as a
foreign language.
The ethnic Armenian owner of the teahouse in Vakif and
a nearby beach hotel, Garbis Kus, says although his
mother tongue is Armenian, he can't speak or write in
Armenian. As a child, he attended the local Turkish
school.
When asked if he has a message for the Armenian
diaspora, Kus responds in a way that reveals the
politically delicate position of this isolated community:
"There are Armenians in different places, but everyone
lives his own life so we have no connections with the
others living elsewhere."
He made the remark in Turkish and declined to do so in
Armenian.
Arab and Kurdish inhabitants of nearby villages are in a
similar predicament because of difficult relations
between Ankara and Syria as well as constitutional
restrictions. Insurgents of the outlawed Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) occasionally cross into Turkey
from bases in Syria. Posters for alleged PKK terrorists
are plastered all over Antakya and Samandag and
truckloads of security troops are a frequent site.
All school instruction, news media, and public signs are
in Turkish as prescribed by the Turkish Constitution of
1982, which was imposed by the military before it
returned the country to civilian rule. Article 42 stipulates
that "no language other than Turkish shall be taught as a
mother tongue to Turkish citizens at any institutions of
training or education." An additional clause says foreign
language instruction shall be regulated by law.
The last Armenians on the slopes of Musa Dagh face an
uncertain future as they gradually lose the ability to
communicate in their mother tongue and are assimilated
into the Turkish mainstream. Their lifeline remains as a
holiday retreat for Istanbuls insular Armenian
community.
Copyright 1999 RFE/RL
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