Anoush:
“My interviewee was a 34 year old Turkish citizen of Kurdish and Armenian origin. He was born in a village in Batman province, lived in Diyarbakır during his middle school and high school years, attended university in Ankara, studied abroad in Korea, and now lives and works as a lawyer in Istanbul. His story is particularly poignant due to his dual Armenian-Kurdish identity, for he remains always an outsider, always an ‘Other.’ In the local Kurdish environment, he represents the Armenian ‘Other,’ while in the national Turkish environment, he represents the Kurdish “Other”.”
From the interview:
Anoush: So, you told me before that you found out your family was Armenian from the kids in the street. How old were you when that happened, can you tell me that story again?
Agop: I cannot remember how old I was, but I started primary school and after primary school I think I was fighting with someone and they said, “You are ba file.” I didn’t know what was ba file. I figured out it was something bad, and then I went home and I said, “They called me ba file, what is ba file?” My mother said, “They are referring to the origins of your father, but we are more Muslim than them.” I mean, “We are better Muslims than them.” That was the way to cope with this for my family.
Anoush: Did that only happen once or did this happen more than once?
Agop: No, it happened more than once. I think I was at the first grade. Or first or second grade, maybe 7? Yeah, 6 or, because I started very early, I was 6 and I started primary school and even teacher refused to register me at first. My brother said, “He is good, he will learn faster than the other guys,” then he accepted. Because he used to register 7 years old children. I was 6.
Anoush: So when, I mean, after you found out that what was ba file, then what happened?
Agop: Nothing happened, I also felt bad actually about it, what can I do? I was sometimes, I remember I was hating my father sometimes.
Anoush: Why?
Agop: Because he was a file, kind of, his origin was not…, and it made us somehow different, because, you know, in the village, as we talked before, you should have your family, and your lineage with you, and this gives you a feeling of comfort. But if you don’t belong to a certain part of those big families in the village, there were three big families in the village… [coughs] Sorry.
During this interview, the interviewee preferred to remain anonymous.