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

Ayhan’s effort to learn Armenian and to investigate his family history in college is an attempt to redeemthis loss. His search leads him to work in an Armenian school, take up a new name, and to practicallyturn into a “project”: “I went to the school and said, ‘I’m Armenian, I don’t know Armenian, but I want towork in an Armenian school.’ The director looked at me and said, ‘It’s a good thing that you have sucha wish.’ She asked me for my baptismal name. And I hesitated, because nobody in our family was baptized.I said, ‘I don’t have a baptismal name.’ ‘So,’ she said, ‘We need to baptize you. You showed up suddenly,so your name should be Norayr, meaning newcomer’. I am a new graduate, full of fervour. The directorintroduced me to the founders of the association. They’re like, ‘we’ll raise this young man, we’lldo this and that, he’ll be very useful.’ They wanted to turn me into a project.”Like Ayhan’s Armenianness, which emerged from his Kurdishness, Norayr’s Kurdishness emerged fromhis Armenianness: “After Hrant Dink’s death there were many Kurds at the funeral. Some Armenianfriends believed we ought to walk silently in order to avoid provocations, but the Kurds were shouting atthe top of their lungs. They were saying, ‘This is the time to make our voice heard.’ I believed them andfelt closer to them.” Ayhan’s father, who says “We’re Kurds among the Armenians of Istanbul and Armeniansamong the Kurds,” experiences this distinction more sharply as a member of the previous generation.The Kurdish movement has a different perception of Armenianness, at least among the youngergeneration.Ayhan’s relationship to Kurdishness, Turkishness and Armenianness and the way this varies with timeand space invites us to rethink the defnition of identity while his lifestory demonstrates the significance1915 can still hold for the young generation in Turkey today.58