| KAYSERI, Turkey (AP) � Some 150 Armenian-Americans joined their brethren in Turkey on Friday for a religious service to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the founding of the Armenian church in a city where Christianity is scarcely practiced.
Less than a dozen Armenians now live in the central Turkish city of Kayseri, where St. Gregory the Illuminator � founder of the Armenian church � was baptized in the church that still bears his name. It now holds just two or three services a year.
Inside, purple-robed priests wafted incense above the chanting of some 300 worshippers celebrating the anniversary of their faith.
For many of the Armenian-Americans the trip to Turkey was a personal voyage of discovery � a chance to see the towns and villages their parents or grandparents were forced to flee as violence shook the Ottoman Empire early last century.
Armenians say 1.5 million of their people died in mass killings during World War I that amounted to genocide. Turkey strongly denies the label, arguing that the numbers are inflated and the Armenians were killed during civil unrest.
For generations, this dispute has poisoned Turkey’s relations with neighboring Armenia � and with countries, like France and the United States, where Armenian diaspora communities have pushed for official recognition of what they say was genocide.
“Those events broke a friendship that had stretched back for centuries,” said Hajak Barsamyan, the head of the Armenian church in New York City, who presided over the service alongside Turkey’s Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II. “But anything that’s broken can be repaired.”
“There’s an affinity between Armenians and Turks, it’s more than geographical,” said Noubor E. Kazarian, a stockbroker from New York City.
Like many others, Kazarian said he had come “to see the Turkey where my father and mother grew up.”
A two-week tour of central and eastern Turkey, organized by the Turkish-Armenian Business Council and the Armenian church in the United States, will take the group through some of the cradles of Armenian culture.
Kebor Toroyan, an academic from New Canaan, Conn. and the group’s chair, is looking forward to visiting the southern city of Adana � his grandfather’s old home.
“When I was growing up in the United States, my grandfather said to me, over and over, ‘You should see the size of the peaches in Adana’,” he said with a smile.
Armenians still living in Turkey � there are some 65,000, though most live in Istanbul and few remain in the former heartland of the east � welcomed their trans-Atlantic brethren.
“Let them come and see � it’s the birthplace of Armenian culture,” said Bogos Yilan, a furrier from Istanbul. “This year, 150 came. Next year, 2,000 will come.”
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News Source:Â The Associated Press, Fri 8 Jun 2001 |
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