Have you ever felt pulled between your identities? The most relatable one I can think of as a means of expressing this feeling would be trying to be successful at work while also trying to be a good parent or caregiver. At times, it can feel like you never have enough resources (time, energy, money, knowledge, confidence) to give of yourself fully to impact either role meaningfully. Some days, one role gets more, and you feel like you’ve aced it, but often at the detriment of the other identity and the responsibilities it carries. Most days, you fumble through, learning to accept that your contribution to both roles is subpar at best, and that’s just how it’s going to have to be so that you don’t lose yourself completely.
For those of us who straddle different worlds through our cultural or regional identities, we live with this strange truth of loving lands and cultures that, from the outside, we don’t belong to. How do we define belonging? My friend Annahid does an amazing job of putting words to some of this in her brilliant book, Bones of Belonging, which was published earlier this year.
People frequently ask me if I visit my parents’ hometown of Istanbul and my relatives often. I hate this question because it’s so loaded for me as one of the world’s 10 million remaining Armenian-identifying people. But I will try to explain it today.
My family is ethnically Armenian. Armenians are thought to have originated from the Caucasus, from the Armenian Highlands. We briefly had a small empire (the Kingdom of Armenia, 331 BC to 428 AD) after we became a fully Christian nation — the first one in the world. We are the OG Jesus freaks. We bought into the idea of Jesus so hard that we brought Christianity to much of what is now known as the Middle East. (It’s why we have an entire quarter in Jerusalem.) Religion does matter deeply to this story.
We were Zoroastrian before that, thanks to the Persian invasion and centuries of overlordship, which influenced our culture deeply. And before that, we were some type of sun-worshipping pagans. The pre-Christian temple of Garni still stands in Armenia as one of our many UNESCO World Heritage sites. Some day, I will write a book about crafting your own feminist spiritual path, and while I began writing that book seven or so years ago, it’s not the one speaking to me now.
I come from an ancient people who, to the best of my research, lived amongst Persians/Iranians, Jews, Greeks, Georgians, and Assyrians. Eventually, when the Mongols and Seljuks invaded the region, the land between the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas was overseen by the people now known as Turks — sometime between the 11th and 14th centuries.
My family has lived for centuries on the lands now known as Turkiye. There’s no real way to trace it back. If they existed, any records were destroyed when the Ottoman Turks decided to evict us from our homes and lands during WWI, marching many Armenians to a camp called Der Zor outside Allepo, Syria. If you made it to Der Zor, it means you weren’t murdered or didn’t die of disease or starvation on the way, and you were lucky. Many historians believe that the Armenian Genocide (a point in history still denied by the country that enacted the atrocities) laid the foundation for Hitler’s ideas for the Holocaust. That psychopathic asshole is quoted as saying, “Who remembers the Armenians?”
In the Armenian Highlands, there's disputed territory that we Armenians call Artsakh, and the world calls Nagorno-Karabakh or just Karabakh. The region is immensely meaningful to Armenians and, until recent intentional Azeri settlements, was almost completely populated by Armenians. The Armenian alphabet came to Mesrop Mashtotz there in a dream.
After the Armenian Genocide, which began in 1915, Armenia was briefly independent from 1918 to 1920, when the Soviet Red Army invaded, creating a Transcaucasian Union of sorts. Lots of the history at the time is murky. The Russians were fighting the Ottomans at the end of their empire, fearing that the Muslim nation, with its incredible influence over the Islamic world, was a threat. (The Ottomans were incredibly successful colonizers, which is why Turkish food is among the greatest of the world’s cuisines.) The Armenians were likely conspiring with the Russians to overthrow the Ottomans in exchange for independence. Part Caucasian Turkic and part Iranian, the Azeris have not been in the region as long as the Armenians but somehow have most of the land that was left. After the Russian Civil War, Armenia became an official SSR in 1936. The Soviets, at some point, divvied up the land super weirdly, and Azerbaijan sits on two sides of Armenia. How no one thought this could be an issue is beyond me.
We are a Christian nation surrounded by Muslim countries who want us erased. I wish religion and politics never met in modern capitalism — the marriage of the two only ever causes harm. As for Artsakh, known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh and recognized officially as part of Azerbaijan, the Armenians who've lived there since time immemorial have been fighting for sovereignty ever since guns and overlords decided the borders. The story changes depending on who is telling it. If you say something enough times, those listening will believe it to be true.
In this past week, civilian houses were bombed after a year of Azerbaijan slowly starving the region’s 120K Armenians by blocking the Lachin Corridor (the main road to Artsakh’s towns). Suddenly, the UN was involved, leading to an agreement to evacuate Artsakh’s Armenians into Armenia proper as refugees. The day after the evacuations began, Aliyev and Erdogan met to discuss their plans for the region, and, as always, there is oil at the root. With Russia (often Armenia's only ally in the region) busy invading Ukraine and not supplying oil to Europe, leaving Armenians vulnerable, these two dictators saw an opportunity.
Similar to Netanyahu redrawing a map of the Middle East recently, these two are redrawing maps and erasing what’s left of my ancestral homeland in real-time. It has super effed me up because part of my heart also lies in Istanbul, and the internal conflict of loving a culture that actively steals and destroys mine, a nation that tries to erase my people, is difficult to put words to. What I know is that I see hate on both sides of this story, and I don’t believe you can fight hate with hate.
I have a unique perspective as an Armenian with roots in Istanbul, Çorlu, and Kayseri. I have an extended family that I love immensely who is half Muslim-Turk (a story for one of my books, perhaps). Many Armenians see my heart and beliefs as Turkish because I have a love for the land, its culture and many of its people. But I am always Armenian first. I love my Armenian language, culture, and ancestral lands passionately. I despise Turkish governments, who would wish us extinct. While unpopular, it is also true that Turkiye has a special place in my heart. Watching this episode of Chef’s Table the other night brought me to tears. Just seeing the Istanbul skyline from the water breaks my heart. I cannot go back to hug my cousins, given current circumstances.
This is what imperialism and colonization do to a people. They churn what we cling to about our cultures of origin like butter until they are smooth against the culture we are mixed into. They try to strip us of our languages, our traditions, and each other. Friday was Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada, and in the powerful KAIROS Blanket Exercise I participated in at work, the stories of Indigenous Genocide in Canada felt so close to my family’s own cultural experience. Here we are in the land that was supposed to create safety for us, only to learn that much of what we left Turkey for was happening here, too.
This past weekend, I submitted edits for “Word to the Motherland,” the essay I wrote about my 2019 trip to Armenia, to my editors, Omar Mouallem and Taslim Jaffer. Book*Hug Press is about to print our anthology of diaspora travel stories, Back Where I Came From. I am equal parts thrilled and extremely nervous about it. Even hitting publish on this post leaves me open to hate and danger. Believing that Armenia and Armenians have a right to exist should not leave me open to harm, and yet so many of us (the Trans community, Canada’s Indigenous peoples, the Muslim diaspora, and the Ukrainians, to name a few) are fighting daily for the simple right to exist peacefully in our identities, to have equity, safety and, ideally, some semblance of sovereignty and autonomy.
None of this will be achieved through hatred — we’ve tried that for millennia —and so, for me, the healthiest path is choosing to see all of us as variations of the one. Governments are not people, though they become tools for greed and control through those who continue to uphold systems of oppression. Violence begets violence, so I’ve always chosen peace. And yet, without military force or international intervention, there might be no Armenia soon. Hence my heartbreak. I belong nowhere, and, as such, I must belong everywhere in this world and the lands I was dropped into. And so do you, wherever you are, whoever you are. You matter, and you deserve to live in peace and love.
If you made it this far, thank you. I just needed to express it before it burned me up.
This was so good
It was beautifully written which at one point it made me cry. God Bless You🙏