by David Zenian
There are no Armenians living in Shirnak now, but for decades until the mid-1960's, the remote Kurdish town in the southeastern corner of Turkey near the border with Iraq was home to a community of about 600 Armenians, trapped in a time capsule and effectively cut off from the rest of the Diaspora and the world.
They lived in a cloistered community that was at the mercy and under the de-facto control and protection of local Kurdish feudal lords. They were second class citizens with no access to education or contact with the outside world.
Little is known about the exact origins of the Armenians of Shirnak. Some elders say their parents were the survivors of the first wave of anti-Armenian pogroms in Turkey in 1895 that preceded the 1915 Genocide and deportation of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
Others say their ancestors came to the region much earlier from Van, the ancient Armenian city further northeast and close to the borders of present day Armenia.
"As a child I did not know anything about the Genocide. We did not live as other Armenians in the Diaspora. We were a very small minority in a Kurdish town and had a very primitive and isolated life. Only the elders remembered a few words of Armenian, the rest of us spoke Kurdish-not even Turkish," said Isa Sarican (pronounced Sarijan).
The town's Kurdish population numbered about 15,000 and the 600 or so Armenians always kept a very low profile.
Sarican learned Turkish after leaving Shirnak 26 years ago. The interview for this article was through an interpreter who translated my questions from Armenian into Turkish - an awkward mode of communication between two Diaspora Armenians.
Now a Dutch citizen and a 46-year-old successful entrepreneur, Sarican is busy helping fellow Shirnak Armenians in Holland, the country in Europe that has given them refuge along with France and Belgium. Still a tight-knit society, Holland's Shirnak Armenians are staunch supporters of the Armenian Church, an extension of their Christian faith which was the main tool of their survival in isolation. "The local Kurdish feudal lords knew we were Armenian, but we kept our identity to ourselves and within the walls of our homes," he said recalling his early childhood in a small, mainly agricultural town ruled by a half a dozen "Aghas", the local chieftains who owned not only the land, but also exercised control over the population.
Despite their financial security and monopoly over the weaving industry, the Armenians of Shirnak were nothing more than the "loyal subjects of the Kurdish Aghas."
They served at their dinner tables and often cooked for them at major town functions. They had no community life, but maintained their old Armenian traditions within the confines of their homes. "I remember my father saying that there was a very small Armenian school in Shirnak until sometime before the Genocide in 1915. That's where he had learned some Armenian, but the language was not passed on to us," he said.
The only telephone in the village was installed in the local post office in the early 1960's. There was no running water, electricity or paved roads.
"As far back as I can remember, we had no contact with not only Armenians in other parts of the world, but even Armenians living in Istanbul. For us, being Armenian primarily meant two things: One was our Christian faith, and two was being different from the Kurdish majority, but not much more," he said. Despite the odds, the Armenians of Shirnak maintained their religious roots. At the dinner table, the Armenians never forgot their prayers. Risking danger, they brought Assyrian Christian priests from other towns in the region to marry their children and baptize their newborn infants. But they had no Christian burials because that would have attracted too much attention.
As loyal "subjects" of the Kurdish feudal lords, the Armenians enjoyed a few privileges. Because they were the master weavers and artisans, the town rulers always needed them.
"The weaving industry, while very primitive, was in the hands of Armenian artisans who did everything from spinning the wool, making the cloth and tailoring the traditional Kurdish robes for the population. This was one profession which the locals did not know anything about," Sarican said. But despite this protection, life was not easy. "In the marketplace we were like all the other Kurds. We had no Armenian names, at least not in public. But we were always different. We kept our Armenian heritage behind closed doors and out of the sight of the local population. We were fugitives in our own homes," he said.
It was not uncommon for young Armenian children to be chased by classmates and showered with derogatory comments like "gyavour" which, translated from Turkish, means infidel.
It was also not uncommon for Kurdish youth to try to kidnap an Armenian girl for marriage. "When such incidents happened, we turned to the Kurdish Aghas for protection, who got our girls back and returned them to their parents," a Shirnak Armenian said.
But despite the everyday pressures, the small Armenian community of Shirnak never lost its Christian faith and diligently observed the national Armenian traditions.
"We did not work on Sundays, observed all our Armenian religious holidays, secretly baptized our children and gave them Armenian names in private," he said.
Isa Sarican was himself baptized as Mihran by an Assyrian priest who was whisked into Shirnak during the night to avoid detection.
"During Easter, my father would travel more than a hundred kilometers to get us eggs and fish. We had to have colored Easter eggs, fish and rice. Our home often served as a small church where couples were married or children baptized," he said. Lent was also very strictly observed by the entire Armenian population of Shirnak.
The community's first contact with other Armenians did not come until the early 1960's when news of their existence was conveyed by an Assyrian priest to the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate in Istanbul. "Even the Assyrian priest did not know that we were Armenians. For him, we were Christians in a Kurdish environment. Our ethnicity and faith were very private matters," he said.
Soon after the initial contact, young children were sent to the Armenian seminary school in Istanbul to get an Armenian education. A few at a time, the youth left Shirnak and some traveled to Holland as "guest workers" like the thousands of Turkish laborers who went to Europe for the first time in the early 1970's.
Others emigrated as refugees and were classified as "Christian Turks" by the Dutch authorities. Over the years, families were re-united and the Armenians of Shirnak re-grouped in a community in Holland. Today, the large Armenian families of Shirnak remain a closely-knit society where the elders still enjoy the same respect and clout they had back home.
"We are lucky to be here in Holland. We are free to live our lives as Armenians," Sarican says. Shirnak has today grown into a Kurdish city of more than 100,000 but remains surrounded by the Turkish army fighting Kurdish rebels in a region known as Kurdistan.
"I don't know what would have happened to us if we had remained there. We would have been trapped between the Kurds and the Turks, a situation which I don't even want to think about," Sarican says.
