There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond

247 Pages·2014·1.44 MB·English

by  Meline Toumani

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For Mom and Dad
Contents
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
DEDICATION
MAP
NOTES ON LANGUAGE
PART ONE: DIASPORA
1. When We Talk About What Happened
2. Summer Camp, Franklin, Massachusetts, 1989
3. “How Did They Kill Your Grandparents?”
4. A Real Armenian
5. False Assumptions
6. “With This Madness, What Art Could There Be?”
PART TWO: ALTERNATE REALITIES
7. “So You Are a Bit Mixed Up Now”
8. “Armenians Are Killers of Children”
9. January 19, 2007
PART THREE: TURKEY
10. Paradoxes
11. Language
12. Knowing and Not Knowing
13. How to Be a Turk
14. Official History
PART FOUR: ARMENIA
15. Country on Maps
16. Hello, Homeland!
17. Reunions
PART FIVE: POWER
18. The Narcissism of Small Similarities
19. Excess Baggage
20. Soccer Diplomacy
21. Terms
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A NOTE ON SOURCES AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT

Notes on Language
Because the issues I’ve written about in this book are highly sensitive for Turks
and Armenians, every choice I’ve made is doomed to be a political act, even
decisions on spelling. In my research, I have often lamented the frequency of
error in the Turkish and Armenian media with regard to name spellings of
members of the other ethnic group, and even as to whether a given name is male
or female. Generally the mistakes are unintentional; but often they seem like
evidence of a larger failure to engage, or to attempt to understand the other
culture and take seriously its symbols. With this in mind, I’ve chosen to spell all
Turkish names with Turkish spellings and diacritical marks, even though this
may seem cumbersome to an Anglophone reader.
GUIDE TO TURKISH PRONUNCIATION:
The Turkish language uses Latin characters, a handful of which take special
diacritical marks. Approximate pronunciations are as follows:
c – hard j sound, as in “jar.” Turkish example: Cemal, often spelled in English as
“Jemal.”
ç – ch sound, as in “chicken.” Turkish example: Çarpanak Island.
ğ – similar to w sound, but in practice nearly silent, such that Erdoğan sounds
like “Erdowan” or “Erdo-an.”
ı – similar to the “schwa” vowel sound, as in the first syllable of “again.”
Turkish example: the final syllable of Diyarbakır.
ş – sh sound, as in “share.” Turkish example: Paşa (“Pasha” in English).
ABOUT ARMENIAN TRANSLITERATIONS:
Armenian uses a distinct alphabet, so all transliterations of Armenian words into
English are subject to debate. In some cases I have deliberately chosen to render
a word in a specific dialect, or opted for the spelling most likely to be used by
the group I am describing. For example, the word “Hai,” which means
“Armenian,” is spelled as such in “Camp Haiastan,” but in the word “Bolsahay”
I have kept the “hay” spelling typical in Turkish-Armenian usage. The most
attentive Armenian-speaking readers will notice inconsistency in my rendering
of the Armenian oo vowel sound. I have rendered it u in some cases and oo in
others, depending on my own sense of how a given spelling will be interpreted
by an English-speaking reader.
PART ONE
Diaspora