EylemDaş/JINHA

ISTANBUL – The Armenian genocide of 1915, approaching its 100th anniversary in just four days, was a genocide with deep psychological impacts on the Armenian community.

For Turkey's Armenians who grew up around genocide survivors, the violence was a reality that haunted their childhoods.The continuing denialist policy of the Turkish state continues to produce ongoing and very real danger for Armenians attempting to speak of the genocide. As a result, memories of the genocide often remained in the shadows.

When FlorUlukBenli, a longtime peace activist andcurrent candidate for Turkey's parliament with the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), begins to speak about the family stories of 1915 that she heard growing up in Istanbul's Armenian community, she draws deep breaths and hesitantly clears her throat.

"There are many stories that make my blood run cold, just from the snatches I can remember," she said. Flor, recalling "the first sentences that made me look at everyone from outside my family with fear," said it happened one day when some old Armenian women were visiting the family.

"Three old women were in the garden of our gecekondu, sitting at the base of the acacia tree on a rug they had spread with care right next to the septic pit, drinking tea. One of the women said:

"'You remember that boy who survived the genocide and lost his mind? He didn't go crazy for nothing, you know. They gathered up all the men, took them to the banks of the creek, cut their throats, and piled them on top of each other. He was just a child at the time. Somehow, he didn't die from the wound, but they threw him in with the corpses. The poor guy lost his mind, from staying in a pile of corpses for days.'"

The scars of the genocide were a constant presence in the margins of Flor's life as she grew up in Istanbul's Armenian community.

"When we moved to a new building, our neighbors downstairs were called Grandpa Dikran and Grandma Ağavni, and they were over 100 years old," she said. "I would always go visit them and check if they needed anything. One day, I came to see the grandma and the moment I walked in the door, the grandpa—who would always sit in his corner, not speaking—told me to get down on the floor.

"I looked with surprise at the grandma. She gestured for me to lie down. The grandpa was giving order after order to the grandma. He was screaming: 'Avrat, latch the wooden door. Put the children in the trunk; cover it with a rug. Put out the lights; draw the curtains tight. Get down, get down on the floor!' And the grandma drew the curtains tight and crouched down under the couch.

"That day, just like today, we were assimilated. Most of the women who survived the genocide were forced to Turkify and become Muslims. Some of my cousins, even though they know we're cousins, act like we somehow became Armenian and Christian after the fact. To be an Armenian is a tragedy that reaches from assimilation beyond, to denialism motivated by the need for preservation."

KayuşÇalıkman, a ceramicist and translator, says that when she asked her father why 1915 was never discussed in their home, he told her that he didn't want her to grow up with complexes.

"I knew what my father meant when my own children grew up," she said. "My grandfather was from Geyve [in the Marmara Sea region]; he experienced the genocide disproportionately. It was a big family; my grandfather had brothers and sisters older than him. This was not just something that took place in April; it lasted the entire year.

"When it came to my grandparents, it was towards the end of June," she recalled. "They told us that in the east Armenians rebelled and had uprising. But Geyve is in Adapazarı," in the western part of Turkey, near Istanbul.

"At the time, my grandfather's family was getting ready to go up to the uplands," she said, referring to the practice of seasonal migration to highland plateaus for the summer. "They got the news that there's been no trace of the people who had gone up to that plateau. And it wasn't just this family, but a few families from the village who had gone up there. Not one of them returned."

Kayuş' grandfather's brother wanted to travel to the plateau to investigate, but the family refused. While the family by chance escaped the genocide in Geyve and fled to Istanbul, when they later returned to their village, they fell victim to the 1920 GeyveMassacre, in which tens of thousands died. Only Kayuş' grandfather survived.

"My grandfather would always say, 'they're coming, run away, hide,'" she recalled. "He was a melancholic, like other Armenians who witnessed the genocide."

Reading the Armenian socialist feminist ZabelYesayan'saccount of the Adana Massacre of 1909, said Zayuş, she remembered a passage describing the aftermath of the massacre that struck her.

"When the massacre was over, there was aid being sent from relatively better-off cities like Istanbul, Sivas and Kayseri. Women in Adana, when they saw the women waiting in line half-naked for the aid, said: 'You can wait. You're used to it.'

"Really, this one sentence is a summary of the tragedy,"Kayuş said.

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