Speaking to One Another - The International Raoul Wallenberg ...

Turkey’s changing context is refracted in the different experiences, choices and feelings of three generationsin the family. Selin’s grandfather’s life was bound up with the events of 1915. His family losttheir home, farm and flour mills in Bursa. This is how Selin recounts the experience of her grandfather’smother: “When she goes to the mills she sees that the workers have appropriated them. She becomesvery upset and has a stroke. She has a misshapen lip for the rest of her life. The workers pity her andgive her six months’ profits.” Having lost everything, Selin’s grandfather grows up selling trinkets on thestreets. His eventual success as a trader is repeatedly thwarted by actions against non-Muslims. DuringWorld War II, he is drafted into units made up exclusively of non-Muslims. Subjected to the notoriouswealth tax, he goes heavily into debt. During 6-7 September 1955, he is forced to defend his homeagainst marauders. Struggling to make up their losses and living in fear, the family turns their hopes toAmerica. Selin’s maternal aunt is made to marry a man she does not care for so that she can move to theU.S. Selin’s mother is also sent to the U.S. as an adolescent; an experience which cuts her off from familyand friends and which she regrets bitterly. Ultimately, Selin’s grandfather is unable to make the moveabroad, and her aunt’s unhappy marriage is the only reminder of this unfulfilled dream.According to Selin, her grandfather is very attached to his Armenian identity: “My grandfather was aconservative Armenian. He was going to go to the States, he was going to leave this disgusting country.That made sense for him, he’d been through so much.” Though Selin is very close to her grandfather,her own life was shaped by the experiences, choices and feelings of her parents. Her parents chose notto send their children to Armenian schools or to teach them the Armenian language. They also replacedtheir Armenian surname with a Turkish one: “They spoke Armenian when my brother was a child buthis friends in kindergarten made fun of his accent. Then they stopped speaking Armenian. They spokeArmenian when my grandfather came and when he left they went back to Turkish. They changed theirsurname right before my brother was born.”It doesn’t matter who you marrySelin tries to explain the reasons behind her parents’ decisions: “My family has a dilemma. They are attachedto their identity but they also want to protect their children. Their lives are based on self-protection.Since they grew up under various pressures, they tried to protect us.” According to Selin, her parentswere more liberal than most Armenians of their generation: “Armenians grow up in a more closedenvironment. They go to Armenian schools, they are among themselves on weekends. A conservativeArmenian is someone who views Turks as different, who doesn’t want their child to be friends with ordate a Turk, who is attached to traditions, who lives detached from what happens in their own country,who wants to attain certain positions within the community, who is closed-minded, who lives with thepsychology of self-protection. Because of what she lived through, and because both she and her sistersuffered a great deal, my mother said she didn’t want to transmit to her daughter things like ‘we’re different,we’re Armenian.’ She used to say, ‘It doesn’t matter who you marry.’ She always took a universalisticposition. Armenians call Turks ‘Dacik’. It’s a somewhat derogative term. My parents get angry with53