Naira Poghosyan (Yerevan State University)

Introduction

The convergence of diverse nations, religions, and languages within the borders of an empire often fosters the emergence of unique, hybrid cultures. Armeno-Turkish, a form of Turkish written using the Armenian script [Western Armenian: Armenian letter Turkish:[1] – Hayata ṛ T’r’keren], exemplifies this cultural synthesis within the Ottoman Empire.[2] The Armeno-Turkish heritage spans a wide range of genres and subjects, including religious text translations, novels, plays, dictionaries, textbooks, periodicals, newspapers, diaries, memoirs, and private letters.[3] 

This article examines a memoir written in Armeno-Turkish in the Soviet Armenia by Penon Vasilyan, a survivor of the Armenian genocide from the town of Dörtyol (Western Armenian: Чорк Marzpan – Chʻorkʻ Marzpan) in the Hatay region of modern Turkey. By analysing Penon Vasilyan’s memoirs as a case study this article will first focus on the patterns of the utilisation of Armeno-Turkish as a ‘product’ imported to a new geography by the Armenian survivors. Secondly, it aims to elucidate the main themes addressed by the narrator and to explore the distinctive ways in which Armeno-Turkish was employed in the everyday lives of Ottoman Armenians.

This study contributes to the limited but growing body of research on post-1915 Armeno-Turkish literature. While most existing research focuses on earlier works, this article highlights the significance of Vasilyan’s memoir, drawing scholarly attention to an understudied period that holds significant potential for further research.

Writing Armenian, Reading Turkish: “Dissonant” heritage of the Ottoman Armenians

Numerous interrelated cultural, social, and political factors favored the flourishing of Armen-Turkish throughout the 19th century. The widespread production of printed works in Armeno-Turkish during this period is a testament to its significance. However, during the early 20th century, there was a noticeable decline in the use of Armeno-Turkish, a trend that accelerated significantly after the events of 1915. Despite this decline, Armeno-Turkish continued to be used by Armenian survivors around the world, albeit less commonly. For several decades, Armeno-Turkish persisted in various communities where Armenians had settled, helping to preserve their cultural and linguistic heritage[4] despite the increasing prominence of Armenian. This continued, albeit reduced usage, highlights the resilience of the Armenian people in maintaining their linguistic traditions amid changing circumstances. Over time, the intangible heritage of Armeno-Turkish, which Armenians carried to their new home countries, became “dissonant.” This dissonance arises from the contrast between the continued existence of Armenian cultural elements abroad and the near-total elimination of Armenian presence in Turkey. The concept of “dissonant heritage,” as articulated by Tunbridge and Ashworth, involves the discordance or lack of agreement and consistency.[5] Although initially developed to discuss the economic and touristic usage of different types of heritage, this concept is particularly apt for discussing the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, especially Armeno-Turkish, given the dispersal and spread of its consumers across space and time.

In the multilingual and multicultural environment of the Ottoman Empire, Armeno-Turkish seemed harmonious. However, post-1915, it turned into a “dissonant heritage” for both Armenians (due to the increasing proficiency in Armenian or the language of their host country) and Turks (due to the otherization of Armenians in both political and socio-cultural contexts). The decades-long indifferent attitude towards Armeno-Turkish legacy in the scholarly and social circles of both Armenia and Turkey can also be explained by this dissonance. Only recently have valuable contributions in the field of Armeno-Turkish scholarship stimulated scholarly debates[6] on the topic.

One of the most significant questions for the researchers is to determine degree of prevalence of this phenomenon among the Ottoman Armenians as well as other inhabitants of Empire and to examine how this has changed over time. Research in recent years and emerging evidence indicate that from at least the mid-nineteenth century, there were other consumers of Armeno-Turkish among the Ottoman elite. Cankara even argues, “Turkish language written using the Armenian script especially throughout the nineteenth century might have served as a written lingua franca among the members of different ethnic, religious and linguistic groups in the Ottoman Empire”.[7] In contrast, Der Matossian suggests that Turkophone Armenians adopted Armeno-Turkish to emphasise their distinct and persistent identity from the dominant culture.[8]  According Aslanian, “the reading market for Armeno-Turkish books still remains a puzzle. It seems undeniable that during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, the bulk of the readership consisted of Catholic Armenians residing predominantly in urban centers… However, in addition to the urban markets, one cannot help but wonder how many Armeno-Turkish printed texts ended up in the countryside where no doubt literacy levels were remarkably lower than in urban centers”[9]. This divergence in scholarly opinions highlights that there is no single approach to understanding the Armeno-Turkish heritage.

To address the complex question of “who were the consumers of Armeno-Turkish?”, it is necessary to look beyond the literature, textbooks, and theatre plays that were mainly intended for the educated elite. A more comprehensive approach includes examining ego documents such as letters, diaries, and memoirs, which represent more casual, informal, and simple examples of Armeno-Turkish literary production.Referring to the topic Aslanian indicates, “alongside the voluminous output of printed works in Armeno-Turkish, there was an equally abundant but more difficult-to-access literary production in manuscript form, much of which lies scattered across archives and in manuscript collections in half a dozen countries”.[10]  This idea was proven during fieldwork with the generations of repatriates from Turkey living in Armenia (2020), the most common answer about diaries/memoirs of their grandparents was “my grandma/pa used to write things in Turkish, we didn’t understand anything, we threw the copybooks out after her/his death”.[11] Luckily, some ego documents are still preserved either in private family archives or special manuscript collections and await research.[12] For instance, three handwritten memoirs in Armeno-Turkish are preserved in the collection of unpublished memoirs at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Foundation[13] in Yerevan.

Penon Vasilyan’s Memoir: A Case Study

This article focuses specifically on the Penon Vasilyan’s memoir written in Soviet Armenia up to 1985. The selection of this particular document is justified by two significant factors.  First, written nearly a decade after the last printed book in Armeno-Turkish, Vasilyan’s memoir is considered one of the “final chords” in the tradition of Armeno-Turkish, if not the latest. This positions the memoir as a crucial piece of the historical puzzle, potentially marking the end of an era for Armeno-Turkish written works. Secondly, Eastern Armenia, known as Soviet Armenia after 1920, has traditionally not been regarded as a significant locus for the use of Armeno-Turkish. However, testimonies from interviews and preserved memoirs and letters in the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute reveal a different narrative. Armenians fleeing to Eastern Armenia from bordering regions were predominantly Armenophone, but repatriates arriving in Soviet Armenia from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, France, and Turkey[14] brought with them the tradition of Armeno-Turkish. They used it extensively in their personal lives, highlighting a continuity of linguistic and cultural practices.

Moreover, in some instances, Armeno-Turkish functioned as a ‘secret language’ to narrate traumatic experiences, particularly because the political climate of the Soviet era was not conducive to discussions about the Ottoman past. This created an additional layer of “dissonance” as these documents, incomprehensible not only to the broader society but often even to the authors’ children and grandchildren, represented silent yet potent narratives of a displaced heritage. These ‘silent’ documents thus reveal a profound disconnection with their surrounding reality from the moment of their creation, illustrating the complex interplay between language, memory, and identity.

A Life Between Empires: Born Ottoman, Died Soviet

Penon Vasilyan’s memoir, written in the mid-1980s in Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia, epitomizes the dissonant heritage discussed earlier. It is a remarkable testament of an Ottoman citizen turned Soviet resident, whose life encapsulates the dramatic shifts of the 20th century. The inscription on the first page reveals the scope of the memoir: it is “a life saga” spanning from 1909, when Vasilyan was six years old, up to 1985. The author introduces himself, noting, “Vasilian Penon was born in Dörtyol in 1903 and in 1985 wrote everything that had happened to him and everything he had eye-witnessed during his life.” [Penon Vasilyanın romanı 6 yaşdan 1909dan 1985de romanı Vasilyan Penon Dörtyolda doğmuş 1903 tarihde 1985 de bütün ömründe başına gelenleri ve gördügi geçiştigi günnerin romanını yazmışdır].

The choice of Armeno-Turkish as the language of the memoir might initially seem symbolic, emphasising cultural links with the past. However, a passage from Vasilyan’s memoir reveals more practical reasons:

I remained illiterate because I did not go to school. I did not manage to learn the Armenian language because everyone spoke Turkish in our Dörtyol. Moreover, I lived in the Turkish village until the age of 12, later we spent 3-4 years in Arabistan, then after returning at the age of 16, I became a criminal. I could not go to school. If I had not been imprisoned, I would never have learned to read and write.

[Mekdebsiz kaldığım içun  yayan kaldım ermeniceyi öyrenemedim çünki bizim dörtyolda türkce dıl gonuşullar idi işte birde ben zaten türk köyinde 12 yaşa gadar türkçe idi dilim ondan sonra da arabistanda 3-4 sene galdık geri döndükten sonra da 16 yaşında hayıfcı olduk mekdebe gedemedim eyer mabusa düşmeseydim bu katarı da yazmayi öyrenemezdim mabus hanede ilazım oldu yazmak okumak][15].

Vasilyan’s limited formal education, reflected in his simple writing style filled with misspellings and grammatical errors, highlights the practical necessity of using Turkish, the lingua franca of his formative years. His choice of language indicates the complexity of his identity, shaped by the confluence of Armenian and Turkish cultures.

Dividing the story into short and long subtitles, the author initially focuses on the history and socio-economic life of Dörtyol.[16] He begins in the mid-eighteenth century when the first Armenian families were forced by the local authorities to move from Erzurum to Dörtyol. According to Vasilyan, his great-grandfather, Vasil Kehe Vasilyan, was among the first resettlers.[17]

The memoir details the genealogy of the Vasilyan family and the social, political, and cultural situation in Dörtyol, chronicling the history of a community that was once prosperous but later faced deportation, starvation, and slaughter. In the late 1800s, Dörtyol was home to 700 families. The town had three churches and three mills, as well as a large market located at the junction of four roads.[18] The main occupation of the inhabitants was the trade of oranges. Even the poorest families had at least ten orange trees, which provided an annual income of ten gold coins.[19]

Although Penon’s family also had a garden, his father Levon worked as a shoemaker in Değirmen Deresi, a Turkish village near Dörtyol.[20] The author even added a small, hand-drawn map to represent his hometown, illustrating its significance to him and providing a visual context for readers. Using a “parataxis” technique unconsciously, Penon combines day-to-day events, such as going to work, with more dramatic events, such as the death of a loved one or horrific scenes of massacres and torturous deaths. This approach allows readers to imagine the writer’s responses to the variety of his life experiences, bridging mundane and catastrophic moments seamlessly[21].

The first traumatic memories Vasilyan recounts are linked to the 1909 Adana massacres[22] and the defense of Dörtyol. The head of the village of Değirmen Deresi assisted his family when the hunt for the ‘gavurs’ (infidels) [կեվուր ավը – gevur avı in Penon’s words]began. This same village head helped Penon’s family again at the onset of the 1915 deportations. Penon’s father chose to stay with relatives, but due to deteriorating conditions, including scarcity of food and the spread of disease, Penon decided to flee. After years of displacement, in 1918, he and many other Armenian refugees managed to return to their hometown. Before 1914, the Vasilyan family consisted of 63 members, but by the time Penon returned, only a few had survived. Despite these losses, Vasilyan’s memoir highlights the complexities of Armenian and Turkish relationships. For instance, although Penon attributes the deportations to the policies of Sultan Abdulhamid II and the inaction of European countries, his narrative reveals that his interactions with individual Turks were often based on personal rather than ethnic or religious animosities. This nuanced view highlights the dissonant heritage theme, reflecting both conflict and cohabitation. Homesickness and longing for his lost homeland are recurring themes in Vasilyan’s memoir. This is poignantly illustrated by his references to Dörtyol as “vatan” or “memleket” [Turkish for “homeland”], while Soviet Armenia is simply referred to as “Mer Hayasdan” [Armenian for “Our Armenia”], with Armenian words being used sparingly. His deep attachment to Dörtyol is further emphasised by the substantial portion of the memoir—over 300 pages—dedicated to life there, compared to only brief mentions of his 35 years in Armenia.

The memoir also includes self-written poems[23] that reflect his longing and mourning for his lost homeland, particularly Cilicia. The closing poem encapsulates his enduring hope for the eventual return of Armenians to their ancestral lands, even expressing this wish as a vision he hopes to witness from the afterlife. Here are some parts of the poem:

Now I will write about my love,	Şimdi ben yazayım benim aşkımı
This love makes me suffer,	bu aşk benim ağrıtyor başımı
It makes me cry,	akıtıyor gözlerimin yaşını
The echo of Cilicia in my mind	başımdaki kilikyanın sedası
We cannot forget about our motherland,	unutulmaz bu vatan davası
The melodies could change,	deişilir çalgıların havası
Armenians’ wounds cannot close,	eyi olmaz ermeniyin yarası
Until Cilicia is not our motherland	olmadıkca bize vatan kilikya

Through these reflections, Vasilyan’s memoir provides a rich, personal account of the socio-political dynamics, cultural identity, and enduring legacy of a community deeply affected by displacement and change. It unveils the details of the “unnoticed lives” of ordinary Armenians, shedding light on their experiences, emotions, and aspirations as they navigated drastic political and social upheavals. The memoir addresses crucial questions such as “What did people feel?”, “What did they think?”, and “What did they want?” in the face of these transformations. By doing so, it offers invaluable insights into the human dimension of historical events, illustrating how ordinary lives were shaped and reshaped by the forces of history.

Conclusion

Penon Vasilyan’s memoir offers a micro-historical chronicle that illuminates the self-perception and identity of people living in a multi-religious, multi-lingual society before World War I. As a primary source, it provides invaluable insights into the social and cultural history of Ottoman Armenians and the broader cultural interactions within the Empire. The memoir illustrates the extensive use of Armeno-Turkish in daily interactions, highlighting its role in preserving Armenian heritage within the Ottoman milieu.

Vasilyan’s detailed account of life in Dörtyol and neighbouring villages enriches our understanding of the socio-economic and cultural dynamics of these communities, offering a significant resource for exploring the complexities of identity and language in a diverse imperial setting. His narrative demonstrates that Armeno-Turkish had a more common usage in everyday life than previously imagined, and even after 1915, it found a place in the geographical expanse of Soviet Armenia.

Analysing the memoir within the framework of “dissonant heritage” reveals how Vasilyan’s story disrupts and complicates straightforward historical accounts of Armenian and Ottoman interactions. His use of Armeno-Turkish indicates the persistence of cultural synthesis amid political upheaval, challenging the erasure and homogenisation of Armenian identity post-dispersal. The memoir’s creation in Soviet Armenia adds another layer of dissonance, reflecting the experiences of repatriates from diverse linguistic backgrounds. In the politically sensitive environment of Soviet times, Armeno-Turkish sometimes served as a “secret language” for recounting traumatic experiences. These “silent” documents, often incomprehensible to subsequent generations, deepen our understanding of the historical and cultural contexts from which they emerged. Thus, Vasilyan’s memoir stands as both a personal chronicle and a cultural artifact, enriching the scholarly discourse on Armeno-Turkish heritage and its enduring legacy.

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[1]For the transcription of Armenian names, I use the system of the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/armenian.pdf  (Accessed 04.05.2023).

[2]Analogous examples to that of Armeno -Turkish are encountered among other ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire, namely Greco-Turkish (Karamanlidika), Judeo-Turkish or Hebrew-Turkish, Cyrillic Turkish, Syro -Turkish. However, as J. Strauss mentions “since bilingualism was a common feature among Armenians, they were always much more familiar with the Turkish language than Greeks were, and Turkish books in Armenian script (far more numerous than those in Karamanli) found a wide readership”, Strauss, J., “The Millets and the Ottoman Language. The Contribution of Ottoman Greeks to Ottoman Letters (19th – 20th Centuries)”, Die Welt Des Islams 35, no. 2 (1995), pp. 189-249, p. 211 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1571230 (Accessed 04.05.2023). For detailed information see also Between Religion and Language. Turkish-Speaking Christians, Jews and Greek-Speaking Muslims and Catholics in the Ottoman Empire, ed. by E. Balta and M. Ölmez (Istanbul, 2011) pp. 15-318; Balta, E., “Translating Books from Greek into Turkish for the Karamanli Orthodox Christians of Anatolia (1718-1856)”, International Journal Turkish Studies, 23 (1&2) (2017) pp. 19-33, https://evangeliabalta.com/old/kitap/61_review.pdf . (Accessed 15.05.2023)

[3] For detailed information see Stepanyan H., List of Armenian manuscripts, Armenian-Turkish materials and Armenian-Turkish manuscripts, Yerevan Mashtots Library and Manuscripts of the Holy Etchmiadzin Mother See , Part A (Yerevan, 2008, in Armenian).

[4] [Till 1990s] The word heritage had a simple and generally accepted primary meaning, it was the collective generalisation derived from the idea of an individual’s inheritance from a deceased ancestor. [In the mid 1990s] The word has acquired much wider commonly understood meanings and is applied in a wide variety of contexts. It is used as a synonym for any relict, physical survival from the past. – For more detailed information see Tunbridge J. E., Ashworth G.J, Dissonant Heritage. The Management of the Past as a Resource in the Conflict (England, 1996), p. 2.

[5] Tunbridge J. E., Ashworth G.J, Dissonant Heritage, p. 20

[6] See for instance Pamukciyan, K., Ermeni Harfli Türkçe Edebiyat, ed. Osman Köker (İstanbul, 2002); Mignon, L., A pilgrim’s progress: Armenian and Kurdish literatures in Turkish and the rewriting of literary history, Patterns of Prejudice, 48:2, 2014, pp. 182-200; Ergen S., Son dönem Osmanlı Yemek Kültüründe Ermeni Mutfağının Katkısı Ermeni harfli Türkçe yemek kitapları (İstanbul, 2019). Çelik H., Sargsyan, A, “Introducing Transcription Standards for Armeno-Turkish Literary Studies”, Diyâr. Zeitschrift für Osmanistik, Türkei- und Nahostforschung, 3. Jg. 2 (2022), pp. 161-189; Uygur, K., Yalkin, C., Uygur, S., “Market-making strategies in Tanzimat era Istanbul: The quest for an elusive cosmopolitanism”, Business History (2023), pp. 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2023.2279128. Uygur, K., “Intercommunal Encounters Between Ottoman Turkish and Armenian Literati: The Case of Armeno-Turkish Print Media”,  Turkish Area Studies Review (TAS Review) (2022), pp. 32-38, Masayuki U., “One Script, Two Languages: Garabed Panosian and His Armeno-Turkish Newspapers in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire”, Middle Eastern Studies 52. 4 (2016), pp. 605– 622, Kiraz, E., Osmanlı Mizah Basınının Başlangıcı: Ermeni Harfli Türkçe Mizah Gazetesi Zvarcakhos “Latifeci” (1856) (İstanbul, 2024).

[7] Cankara, M., “Rethinking Ottoman Cross-Cultural Encounters: Turks and the Armenian Alphabet”, Middle Eastern Studies 51:1 (2015), pp. 1-16, p. 1.

[8] Der Matossian B., “The Development of Armeno-Turkish (Hayatar T‘rk‘erēn) in the 19th Century Ottoman Empire Marking and Crossing Ethnoreligious Boundaries”, Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 8 (2020) pp. 67–100, p. 71.

[9] Aslanian, S. D., ““Prepared in the Language of the Hagarites”: Abbot Mkhitar’s 1727 Armeno-Turkish Grammar of Modern Western Armenian’, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, vol. 25 (2016), pp. 54–86, p. 71.

[10] Ibid, p.  61

[11] For more detailed information see Melkonyan R., Poghosyan N. “Escape from the Motherland: Repatriation from Turkey to Armenia (1920-1980s) (Yerevan, 2022) (in Armenian).

[12]Survivors of the Armenian Genocide started to write their stories from the time when the Genocide itself was still going on. These Armenians pursued opportunities to tell their stories of survival and the destruction of their communities, mainly in the Armenian language but also in English and other languages. While a few of these memoirs achieved a measure of fame, more of them are obscure; but, of course, fame is not a measure of their value. Each book has value as a historical document and as a carrier of memory. For more detailed information and the list of published memoirs see Genocide Survivor Memoirs in Armenian & English, 1918-1955,  https://naasr.org/blogs/treasures-of-naasrs-mardigian-library/genocide-survivor-memoirs-in-armenian-english-1918-1955 (Accessed 04.05.2023).

[13] There are nearly 500 unpublished memoirs in the collection of «Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute» Foundation,For detailed information see The AGMI Collection of Unpublished Memoirs, http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/18_ag_20.php( Accessed 25.05.2023).

[14] For detailed information about the Repatriation of Armenians in 1946-1948 see Pattie, S., “From Centers to Periphery: ‘Repatriation’ to the Armenian Homeland in the Twentieth Century,” in Homecomings: Unsettling Paths of Return, eds. Fran Markowitz and Anders H. Stefansson, (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2004), pp. 109-124.

[15] For the transcription of Armeno-Turkish I use the system developed by Çelik and Sargsyan, “Introducing Transcription Standards for Armeno-Turkish”.

[16] Detailed information on the Armenian Community of Dörtyol before 1915 in English is available on https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayet-of-adana/doertyol.html

[17] The memoirs by P. Vasilian N 338 (206), p. 4.

[18] The memoirs by P. Vasilian N 338 (206), p. 23.

[19] The memoirs by P. Vasilian N 338 (206), p. 10.

[20] The memoirs by P. Vasilian N 338 (206), p. 2.

[21] For detailed information on “parataxis” see North P., Diaries and Silence, in Archival Silences: Missing, Lost and, Uncreated Archives (1st ed.), ed. by Moss, M., & Thomas, D. (Routledge,2021) p. 210.

[22] For detailed information see Der Matossian, B., Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022).

[23] It is worth to mention that there is a large tradition of writing Armeno-Turkish folkloric songs. The ethnographer Dr. Prof. Verjiné Svazlian has, for a number of years, investigated the memoirs and the Turkish-language folk songs depicting the events of the Genocide on the basis of the abundant materials․ She herself has written down from the aged male and female representatives of Western Armenians, who had witnessed and suffered the Genocide; moreover, she has skillfully put together their factual data with exact historical testimonies and has revealed the historical authenticity of the vivid and emotional images of the reality reflected in the oral tradition.  See Svazlianö V., “The Armenian Genocide In The Memoirs And Turkish-Language Songs Of The Eye-Witness Survivors”, https://hyetert.org/1999/01/01/the-armenian-genocide-in-the-memoirs-and-turkish-language-songs-of-the-eye-witness-survivors/ (accessed 25.05.2023).