The journey from Turkey to Aleppo of the young girl who had lost her whole family in 1915 is the cry that is heard from the other side of the diplomacy that has been configured around the term ‘genocide’. The story of that young girl was told by her granddaughter, Salpi Ghazarian, who at one time was engaged in the efforts to arrive at diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey…
“I personally do not expect apologies. What I expect is an acknowledgement of responsibility. What is important for me is that my 3,000 years of existence be accepted, that there be a continuation of that existence, that legacy, those values.”
This is how she responds to the question – Do you expect an apology from Turkey.
Salpi Ghazarian is the director of the Civilitas Foundation, established by former foreign minister Vartan Oskanian. Before that, she was Oskanian’s special assistant in Armenia’s foreign ministry.
It was in Yerevan where we met with her, during a journalists’ dialogue program jointly sponsored by the Hrant Dink Foundation and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
A story that stretches to Aleppo
During our meeting, Salpi Ghazarian, who had for years worked on diplomatic relations with Turkey, did not use fine and measured diplomatic phrases. Ghazarian, whose roots go back to Mush, Kayseri and Gurun, spoke about the special place her grandmother has in Ghazarian’s own story. Her grandmother, who had lost her family in 1915, was around 12 years old when an Armenian merchant purchased her from the Turkish family with whom she had ended up. “My grandmother could probably have remained with the man who married her, as so many others like her probably did,” she says and continues, “But she left everything behind and ran away. My mother was already born, and so these two children — my mother and my not-very-much older grandmother — arrived in Aleppo, living together in an orphanage.”
Salpi, too, like her mother and grandmother, spent her childhood in Aleppo. She says she was eight years old when in 1964, her family moved to the US.
“My grandmother spoke Arabic, Kurdish and Armenian, but did not know how to read or write. I taught her to read Armenian. I remember, when we had a birthday, she’d say, ‘I don’t know my own birthday.’ If I bought a skirt or pants without pockets, she’d say, ‘But if you find something along the way, where will you put it?’ She was completely a person of the desert. I only have a child’s memories of her stories, but they were her life. Her stories have had a huge impact on my life.”
I look for commonalities
Salpi Ghazarian, who studied history, has interviewed those who survived 1915. She says that meeting Taner Akçam in 1999 was a turning point.
“My grandmother had passed away a few years earlier. Taner knew Armenians and Armenian history well and was very careful in articulating his thoughts. In talking to him, I understood that it is possible for our two societies to talk to each other, to try to understand each other. We talked. After that, trying to find ways of sharing and communicating became very important for me.”
I ask Ghazarian – what does an apology mean for you, personally. In response, she talks about her daughter.
“In the 1980s, as I would interview Genocide survivors, one of the questions we would ask was – if things were different, would you go back? And the answer often was, ‘But where? Where would I go? Where do I belong?’ One day, with my daughter, I will go to Aleppo, to try to trace my grandmother’s path, to see the places my grandmother had lived, to see how she arrived at the orphanage. It’s important for me that my daughter know where she’s from – is she from Mush or Van? Personally, I don’t expect, I don’t demand an apology. I expect that the wrong be acknowledged. What is important is that my three thousand years of existence be accepted, that that existence, that legacy, those values be continued. Today, it is not just the genocide that is denied, but also our past and our very existence.”
Film whose ending we know
“Whatever the diplomatic process, at the end we must reach reconciliation and acknowledgement,” she stresses, referring to the Protocols. “It was like a film, and we all knew what the ending had to be. But the players – the diplomats – pretended not to know. And so they created a document that could not work.”
Then, she adds a ‘but’ and continues. “The Americans say that no one is talking about the elephant in the room. They don’t see or they don’t want to see that elephant – that difficult topic.”
As to what the ending of the film must be, she says, for her, is simple.
“I expect that the Republic of Turkey will reject the wrong committed by the Ottoman Empire; just as Armenia and other states acknowledge that what happened was genocide, it was a wrong, and they recognize and condemn it. Can’t Turkey too, which has in fact rejected many things about the Ottoman Empire, including the alphabet, can’t it recognize and condemn this wrong?”
Stories that don’t fit in one sentence
In response to the question whether the protocols which have been ‘frozen’ since April could be useful in securing progress in relations between the two countries, Ghazarian says, “Protocols can be formulated and signed in the traditional way. Traditional protocols are based on international norms and principles including respect for each other’s territorial integrity, non-interference in internal affairs. Armenia and Turkey must sign protocols based on those principles and naturally on the border being open. Once such protocols are signed, whenever they’re signed, then it becomes possible to study any issue between two peoples, including genocide recognition.
Ghazarian concludes by remembering her grandmother.
“But if a two-page document attempts to stuff my grandmother’s and another million similar human stories into one sentence and set them aside, that’s unacceptable, and can’t move us forward.”