The Surp Giragos Armenian Orthodox Church in Diyarbakir is a remarkable building with a turbulent past. Built in the late 14th century, the church was the only Armenian church in the world to have seven altars. The building was used by the Germans as their military headquarters in Diyarbakir during the First World War. In the aftermath of the deportation of most of Diyarbakir's Armenian residents, the church property was seized by the state and became a storage warehouse of various state enterprise.
The church was only returned to the Armenian community in the 1960s after repeated legal actions by surviving Armenians. In October 2011, the church complex is once again open for religious service after undergoing two years of extensive restoration funded by donations from diaspora Diyarbakir Armenians all over the world amid a highly emotional consecration ceremony attended by members of the Armenian diasporas, political dignitaries including former foreign minister of Armenia and the leader of Armenia’s Heritage Party, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Mayor of Diyarbakır, as well as Archbishop of the diocese of the Armenian Orthodox Church of America and representatives of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and Syriac Orthodox Church in Istanbul.
If anything, the historic reopening of this church has shown that the Kurds in Turkey are far more willing than their Turkish counterparts to make amends and face up to the atrocities committed by their ancestors in the past against the Ottoman Armenians living in Eastern Anatolia. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the Kurds, just like the Armenians in 1915, are subjected to cultural and political oppressions themselves by the Turkish state. To a certain extent, this historic event also reflects a slow but ongoing - and hopefully irreversible - trend within the Kurdish and Turkish societies to acknowledge, even apologise for, the sufferings and injustice inflicted by their ancestors upon the innocent Armenian civilian populations in the eary 20th century.
For almost an entire century after the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916, Turkey has been living in a constant state of denial about what had happened to the country's Armenian populations in those fateful years. The Turkish state has until now categorically and consistently denies the existence of a genocide against the Armenian populations, preferring to call the events 'self-defence' and 'unfortunate but unavoidable consequences' of the war. In spite of the thawing of diplomatic relations between Turkey and Armenia in recent years, it is still a grave criminal offence to discuss the issue of Armenian genocide in public. This lack of open discussion in mainstream Turkish society about this highly contentious issue, the absence of objective reappraisal in Turkish school curricula of the role of the Ottoman state in the mass killings and deportations of ethnic Armenians in the eastern provinces, and the deep-rooted unwillingness among the older generations of Turks who have witnessed the atrocities to speak about what they had seen, ensure that the majority of Turkish citizens born after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire have virtually no idea about this dark and distressing episode in their country's history.
In recent years, however, even the use of state-sanctioned threats against the pubic discussion of Armenian Genocide has failed to tide the rising waves of doubt about the validity of the official version of the story. Following the publication in 2008 of Fethiye Cetin's book 'My Grandmother: a Memoir', the once frightening silence that had surrounde this absolute-taboo subject matter for almost a whole century was gradually broken. And inch by inch, the public opinions began to shift. Nowadays the focus of the debate is not so much about whether or if the genocide did happen - there is an unspoken but tacit understanding in Turkey over the last few years that the genocide did take place - but rather on the much more difficult questions of 'how and why'. Questions that require a lot of soul-searching. As one commentator puts it, it was much easier to deny the existence of the genocide when the Turks believed that they were all of the same 'pure bloodline' - if there is such a thing as a pure bloodline in the world; but once they realise that up to perhaps two million Turks - among them friends, relatives, colleagues, neighbours, any ordinary people they come across in their daily life, or even they themselves - have one grandparent of Armenian ancestry whose family had been victims of the genocide, it becomes very problematic to continue to deny the fact that this tragic event indeed did take place.
I visited the Church of Surp Giragos just a few days after its emotiona re-opening ceremony. The church is located in the old town of Diyarbakir, about 150m from the Four-Footed Minaret, on a small side street to the left-side of the street leading out to the Four-Footed Minaret. The entrance to the Church is behind a heavy metal gate usually watched over by some local youth. On that day, the entrance to the interior of the church was closed, but I could still walk around the garden of the church and take photos of the recently restored buildings. Although the main complex has been restored and reopened, there are still a few buildings inside the compound undergoing further reconstruction. Along the corridor and the archways of the main complex is a small exhibition of old photos and documents from various sources detailing the history and life of Diyarbakir‘s Armenian community in the pre-1915 years.
What caught my attention are the words written on the welcome banners on the windows of the main church building, which says 'Welcome to Your Home' in four different languages: English, Kurdish, Armenian, and Turkish. It is the first time in Turkey and Diyarbakir that I saw written Kurdish in public places. The signage is remarkable because it goes a long way to demonstrate the goodwill on the part of Diyarbakir's Kurdish municipal authorities to address the past wrongs and reach out to the diaspora Diyarbakir Armenian community. Although small, such a gesture was unthinkable only a few years ago, and it at least offers a glimmer of hope and marks the beginning of a long and possibly winding road towards reconciliation.
Copyrights@2012. All photos and text by YC Cheng. All Rights Reserved.
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