Armenian Women in Istanbul
Subject to Racist Attacks
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is fond of reiterating a line by 13th century Turkish Sufi poet Yunus Emre: “I love the Created because of the Creator.” While Yunus Emre’s immortal words express the divine love for God, the central idea of Sufism, Erdogan uses them to describe what a great sense of tolerance his government, his party and himself have for “the Other,” especially ethnic and non-Muslim minorities.
In other words, when he repeats this line — at least once in many speeches he makes every week — Erdogan aims to demonstrate that Muslim tolerance has a philosophical background and, thus, underscores the soundness of his ideology.
But no matter what reason the Turkish premier has for repeating Yunus Emre’s words, it seems that people who care nothing for them are living in Turkey, and moreover in its most cosmopolitan city, Istanbul. In the first month of 2013, one of Istanbul’s ancient neighborhoods, Samatya, became synonymous with attacks on elderly Armenian women. With only two years to go before the 100th anniversary of the great catastrophe that befell Armenians in 1915, the mysterious attacks, directed at poor defenseless Armenians, have revived the century-old trauma and sparked fears that racist nationalism in Turkey may be rearing its ugly head again.
The first omens of the January attacks in Samatya had in fact come the previous month. A lone 87-year-old Armenian woman was severely battered in her home in early December and lost an eye as a result of the assault. On Dec. 28, another Armenian woman, 84-year-old Maritsa Kucuk, was stabbed to death.
As all mysterious incidents, those attacks on elderly, lone and poor Armenian women are marked by a pattern of intriguing symbolism. First, why Samatya?
Samatya is not the only Istanbul neighborhood with a sizeable Armenian population. Armenians reside in significant numbers also in Bakirkoy and Yesilkoy, two districts near the Ataturk Airport, as well as in Pangalti and Kurtulus, in the vicinity of the city center of Istanbul’s European section. But Samatya has some peculiarities that distinguish it from the rest.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ori...cks-armenian-women-samatya.html#ixzz2JltFRWM7
Subject to Racist Attacks
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is fond of reiterating a line by 13th century Turkish Sufi poet Yunus Emre: “I love the Created because of the Creator.” While Yunus Emre’s immortal words express the divine love for God, the central idea of Sufism, Erdogan uses them to describe what a great sense of tolerance his government, his party and himself have for “the Other,” especially ethnic and non-Muslim minorities.
In other words, when he repeats this line — at least once in many speeches he makes every week — Erdogan aims to demonstrate that Muslim tolerance has a philosophical background and, thus, underscores the soundness of his ideology.
But no matter what reason the Turkish premier has for repeating Yunus Emre’s words, it seems that people who care nothing for them are living in Turkey, and moreover in its most cosmopolitan city, Istanbul. In the first month of 2013, one of Istanbul’s ancient neighborhoods, Samatya, became synonymous with attacks on elderly Armenian women. With only two years to go before the 100th anniversary of the great catastrophe that befell Armenians in 1915, the mysterious attacks, directed at poor defenseless Armenians, have revived the century-old trauma and sparked fears that racist nationalism in Turkey may be rearing its ugly head again.
The first omens of the January attacks in Samatya had in fact come the previous month. A lone 87-year-old Armenian woman was severely battered in her home in early December and lost an eye as a result of the assault. On Dec. 28, another Armenian woman, 84-year-old Maritsa Kucuk, was stabbed to death.
As all mysterious incidents, those attacks on elderly, lone and poor Armenian women are marked by a pattern of intriguing symbolism. First, why Samatya?
Samatya is not the only Istanbul neighborhood with a sizeable Armenian population. Armenians reside in significant numbers also in Bakirkoy and Yesilkoy, two districts near the Ataturk Airport, as well as in Pangalti and Kurtulus, in the vicinity of the city center of Istanbul’s European section. But Samatya has some peculiarities that distinguish it from the rest.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ori...cks-armenian-women-samatya.html#ixzz2JltFRWM7
