grâce à la discrétion protectrice protectrice de leurs cousins passés eux-mêmes jadis à l'islam hérétique alévi, ces convertis de force avaient pu passer au travers du système répressif turc. Quel bonheur de retrouver leurs racines, après au moins six mois de catéchisme: un nouveau grain de sénevé pour la Turquie[à l'image des catholiques clandestins de Nagasaki il y a 150 ans!] mais il reste de gros problêmes familiaux pour ceux qui avaient épousé des femmes et eu des enfants élevés dans la culture dominante et discriminatoire...
(©LaPresse)Twelve Armenians have been baptised in a church in Istanbul; their families had concealed their heritage after the genocide of 1915

MARCO TOSATTI ROME
Twelve Armenians from Dersim, the old name for modern-day Tunceli, an Eastern Province of Turkey, were baptised in recent days in an Armenian church in Istanbul. After the genocide of 1915, the families of this group of newly-baptised Christians had kept their Armenian Christian heritage secret for a century. Now, they have finally decided to overcome the fear of social prejudice and revive an identity they had long been denied.

The ceremony was celebrated by the Patriarch’s Vicar, Archbishop Aaram Atesyan and by Fr. Dirtad Uzunyan, in St. Stephen’s Church (Surp Istepanos) in Yeşilköy, in Istanbul. The baptism was preceded by a 6-month catechism course and lessons on Christian doctrine. During the ceremony, two Christian weddings were also celebrated. One of the newly baptised Christians, Hovannes Minas – who received the sacraments of baptism and marriage on the same day – said he had wanted to fulfil a moral duty towards his parents and grandparents. “This is a very happy day for me,” he said in a statement to Armenian website Agos. “I was baptised and we got married in a religious ceremony on the same day, my happiness is indescribable. We never forgot about our religion. Now we can live freely.”

He continued with some particularly moving words: “I had promised my father and mother that we would bury them in an Armenian cemetery. And I was able to keep that promise. Initiatlly there were just three of us that wanted to be baptised; but others gradually joined and now there are twelve of us. We are very happy.”

One man, who was baptised Arev, added: “Now I am feeling the freedom of being able to defend myself against those who insult us. We have dreamed about this day since we were children and we have waited for it for a long time .We are going back to our roots.”

Until 1915 a third of Dersim’s population was made up of Armenians who were called “Armanians”, while they called themselves “Hay”, which is Armenian for “nationality”. They had an identity, their own form of dress, popular rituals and cuisine, which differed from those of other ethnic and religious groups. They were generally more cultured than the average person and there were many villages that had churches flanked by parish schools with links to the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople. The genocide of 1915 not only wiped out practically the entire Armenian population, but also their architectural imprint.

But a unique situation made it possible for some families or groups of relatives to save themselves or to return, albeit concealing their religious and cultural identity following Turkey’s defeat in the war an the relative stability that followed in the 1920s. This was due to a strong Alevi presence which interpreted Islam in a unique way and the Alevis had mixed with the Armenian population for centuries. Many Alevis had converted over the past centuries and so remembered their Armenian origins and had maintained close ties with the part of their family that had remained Armenian and Christian. The Kurdish Alevi communities found themselves in a similar situation.

Many of them are now returning to their roots in a more or less official way. This is happening in Dyarbakir, where many Armenians who were Islamised during the genocide, now have two names: their official Islamic name and the name that links them back to their origins. The parents of the protagonists of this journey back in history, were very conscious of their Armenian identity but concealed it because the very word “Armenian” was taboo. This is understandable when one looks at the propaganda of denial and school textbooks which accuse Armenians of betraying Turkey in the 1915-1918 war, in their support of the “Allies” and Russia.

Quite big problems arose for many of those who grew up in Muslim families and possibly married Muslims. These problems were made worse by the social constraints. “When I was 25,” one of them says, “I was treated as a fileh,” a derogatory term in Kurdish which translates as “infidel”. The rediscovery of existing roots,- and possibly even relatives living in Europe and America – a language and a religion can pose existential problems, particularly if one’s wife and children have been brought up in the dominant culture.

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