Author Explores Armenian Genocide 'Obsession' And Turkish Denial

Transcript

ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:

Writer Meline Toumani grew up in New Jersey in a tight-knit Armenian community, where identity centered on the commemoration of the mass killings of Armenians during World War I by the Ottoman Turks. In her new book, "There Was And There Was Not," Toumani explores her attempt to understand Turkey and the Turkish people - the people she was always taught were her bitter enemy - and what she calls the Armenian community's obsession with genocide recognition. Meline Toumani joins us now. Welcome to the program.

MELINE TOUMANI: Thank you, Eric.

WESTERVELT: So as a kid, you were under pretty intense social pressure to hate Turks for their mass killing of Armenians nearly a hundred years ago. And to fight for recognition of those killings as a genocide, you write about an Armenian national summer camp that you attended regularly. Can you read from that section?

TOUMANI: Sure. Now, this camp was one of the great parts of my childhood. I loved going year after year. And the section I'm going to read from offers some quotes from the camp newsletters that we would publish at the end of each two-week session of camp. And I've just finished in the book talking about all the parts where we describe our Armenian friendships and how valuable and precious they were for us. And then I move on to describe how we also used the newsletters to talk about learning about the genocide.

(Reading) Poems told of orphan children - a red so red, drips so endless. Why, daddy, why? Or national liberation, but just when they think they've got us all, we will rebuild. One day, an Armenian will find another, and red, blue and orange will raise high and not another Armenian will have to cry. A poem by one of the counselors, in which a billiard table served as a metaphor for Armenian history climaxed with the lines is it the stick behind the white ball which forces him to do evil? Or is it the Turk behind the stick?

WESTERVELT: Meline, it seems the Armenian community's narrative, you mentioning here of, you know, loss and anger at the Turks, became something of a straitjacket for you. Is that what motivated you to go travel and write about Turkey, this kind of forbidden place for Armenians?

TOUMANI: As I grew older, there would be moments where I felt almost embarrassed by a certain deep-seated prejudice in me. For example, if a friend comes back from vacation in Turkey, and they're talking about it, and I'm kind of bristling or brooding and just waiting for that to be over because I know that I can't say what I feel, which is, you know, I would never go to Turkey. The Turks, you know, killed the Armenians in 1915. You know, I would have these feelings rise up in me, and they didn't fit anymore in the life that I had created, which was otherwise very progressive and intellectually oriented. And that was when I decided I kind of - I need to explore this. And through a series of events, it entered my mind that exploring it would mean going to Turkey, talking to Turks - not to try to take seriously the Turkish version of the history of the genocide, but just to understand how does it happen that another group of people have learned this history in a completely different way leading to a completely different conclusion? And is there any way that we can connect if I find the right way to talk about it or the right way to listen about it?

WESTERVELT: Some of your fellow Armenians see you as something of a traitor for doing this project. And you've gotten attacked in some Armenian-American news sites, one calling you a self-serving, self-hating Armenian. I mean, I imagine that's some tough criticism to take.

TOUMANI: It is. It's actually surprisingly painful given that I've just written a book that describes the kinds of attitudes that lead to that kind of criticism. And you'd think I'd had seen it all and I knew that there would be people who would feel that way. And yet, part of what my book is about is this incredible tension between belonging to a community and trying to individuate from it. And it's sad for me to see that some people are so threatened that they're not even willing to engage, because most of the people publishing those attacks haven't read the book. In fact, one of them celebrates the fact that he hasn't read it, and in the same breath, calls for a boycott.

WESTERVELT: You learned first-hand, living in Turkey and writing this, that the Turks' propaganda is aggressively against calling this - the mass killings a genocide. You were clearly hoping to find something different.

TOUMANI: I was. I was perhaps recklessly optimistic in thinking that things wouldn't be quite as bad in Turkey regarding the Armenian issue, as I had been taught to believe in, as I had sort of grown up imagining. In some ways, they were even worse. The thing that shocked me the most was the fact that on a daily basis - you know, and this is over the course of two and a half years of living there - people would find out that I was Armenian and sometimes the reaction would be so blunt - well, I guess you came here to prove that there was a genocide. I want you to know that I don't believe that that's what happened, or something like. And those moments were really jarring and made it very difficult for me to ever really relax. There was a lot of stress in my daily life. And I want to be clear, of course, that I also had the opposite reactions. You know, there was a young man who I met outside of a restaurant with some friends - just totally at random on a Saturday night - and when he found out I was Armenian, he put his hand over his heart and he said, I want to welcome you back to your country and I want to apologize on behalf of the Turkish nation, you know. And so I would have every manner of reaction. But, to be honest, most of the reactions ranged from pretending I hadn't said anything at all to saying something sort of blunt and harsh.

WESTERVELT: What do you point to as signs of hope for any kind of reconciliation?

TOUMANI: My book is a memoir, and it was a few years ago already that I left Turkey. And in the time since then, there have been some big changes. For example, on April 24, 2014, which is the 99th year of commemoration of the Armenian genocide, in Istanbul you had several events commemorating the genocide openly and without any kind of the contorted language that you might have had in the past. Also, prime minister - now President Erdogan made a statement that was very much falling short but at the same time really breaking new ground in acknowledging that something tragic had happened to the Armenians. And although he, you know, was very careful not to call it genocide and to say everyone suffered and to use a lot of the same rhetoric that he has always used, I consider it a major step.

WESTERVELT: Meline Toumani - her new book is "There Was And There Was Not." Thanks so much.

TOUMANI: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.