| |||
| My father died in 1995. Everybody's parents are special and unique. No matter how ordinary they are, every child believes that his or her parents are able to do whatever they want. This is pretty normal for a child. What he or she is aware of since birth is the fact that parents fulfill their needs and requirements to live. | |||
| My father was my hero. He became a real hero as I grew up because he was really a special man. His father, who was a leading figure and a rich man, lost everything in the aftermath of the 1915 tragedy; he was orphaned at age 6 and had to deal with a state of poverty that could only be depicted in Dickens novels. I did not believe it when he told me, but our relatives confirmed a story that appalled me: My father sold ring-shaped doughnuts (simit) he bought from the bakery at 5 a.m., then delivered newspapers and finally went to class at his school in Taksim. How could a 6-year-old do this? But it can be done. This is how life is. My father was eventually expelled from the school because he could not afford it. He experienced pain and agony his whole life because he was not able to study further. Next my father started to work in a shoemaker's workshop where he made custom-made shoes. After completing his military service, he started a small business. Then, he bought the store next door to expand the business. In the end, he made a mid-sized shopping mall out of this small store. This mall was one of the few enterprises in Turkey offering sales in installments. Almost everything was offered in the store, from ladies' dresses to watches and refrigerators. He became very rich, but he never forgot his past. He did a lot of charity work; he funded the studies and marriages of many young people, helped the poor and the elderly. He never discriminated among the people he helped based on their ethnicity or religion. He lost half of his family in 1915. He struggled with extreme poverty. He paid the bill for being an Armenian. His nationalism was limited to demanding the survival of the Armenian language, churches, schools and orphanages. His nationalism was so moderate that his third wife was a Circassian woman -- my mother -- and he had such a universal conscience that he asked his wife to remain Muslim. The 100th anniversary of 1915 is approaching. My father died in the mid-1990s, one of the darkest periods in Turkey. When he died, he was worried about his country and about us. I wanted him to see these days. Turkey has created an important democratic base and infrastructure to confront its past. We are now able to look at the present time and the future more freely. This enables the country to get rid of the burdens and baggage of the past. The huge rupture and tragedy experienced in 1915 now stands as a phenomenon that Turkey needs to confront with its reason and conscience. Will we keep carrying the sins and crimes of a racist group that seized power in the past by relying on the policy of denial or will we confront it bravely? Will we leave this sphere of confrontation to the radicals or will we deal with this darkness by relying on a mutual effort of understanding and empathy? Today, we have a huge chance to do it. Societies are getting freer and more liberal. The Turks and the Armenians are the two victimized communities of this trauma. Have we not realized that we are actually on the same side by virtue of this fellowship of victimization? I think that this process has begun. I do not care about politics. I look at the conscience of people and believe that the enlightenment there will change the world. True, the people could be intimidated or conned for a while. However, this is just temporary and no poisonous ideology or administration can survive in the face of the people's struggle. | |||
↧
My father
↧