Cemil Aksu

The article was written within the scope of Vahan Ishkhanyan’s project regarding the Hamshens. Read about the author here.

Recently, social and political issues regarding the Hamshens, the Hamshen identity have attracted greater attention. This focus is borne out by the growing number of discussions and publications on the topic.

 Levon Haçikyan’s “The Hamshen Enigma”,[1] regarded as the first extensive work on the Hamshens, is an apt name for the issue facing us. Despite all that has been written and the academic debates, the question “Who are the Hamshens?” remains unanswered.

Should the Hamshens be viewed as merely residents of this or that region, or do they constitute a distinct ethnic identity? Is the name Hamshetsiner just an appellation given to those living in the districts of Çamlihemşin and Hemşin (Hamshen) in Turkey's Rize Province? Does it represent those who speak Homshetsma, a distinct Western Armenian dialect? Is it a combination of both?

[Translator’s note: I will use the term “Hamshens” as a noun (the Hopa-Hamshens) and as an adjective (Hamshen identity)]

The Hopa-Hamshen village of Çamurlu

Do the Hamshens have Armenian or Turkish roots? If they are Turks, then why do they speak an Armenian dialect? If they are Armenian, then why are they Muslims? What are the similarities/ differences between the Hamshens of Hopa and Rize? When and where did they come from? Confusion and debate still surround such questions.

Along with providing some general definitions regarding the Hamshens, I will be focusing particular attention to the Hopa-Hamshens in this article.

Professor of Linguistics Bert Vaux explains that the language of the Armenians of Hamshen (Hemşin) depends on their location.[2]

-          Eastern Hamshens – Sunni Muslims living in the Hopa and Borçka districts of Turkey’s     Artvin Province who speak a dialect of Western Armenian called Homshetsma or Hamshesnak.

-          Western Hamshens – Sunni Muslims living in Turkey’s Rize Province (districts of Çamlihemşin and Hemşin) and, in smaller numbers, in the mountain valleys of Fındıklı, Çayeli, Pazar, Ardeşen and İkizdere. Armenian by extraction, they speak Turkish peppered with Armenian words.

-          Northern Hamshens - Non-Islamicized Hamshen Armenians who today live in Russia and Georgia and speak the same Homshetsma dialect. Originally from Hamshen proper, many fled the Ottoman Empire for the relatively safety of the Caucasus across the border. Others migrated to the Black Sea towns of Samsun, Trebizond, Giresun and Ordu before 1915.

Today, as a result of past and recent migrations, the Hamshens mainly reside in the Turkish northeastern provinces of Rize and Artvin, the province of Erzurum (districts of Tortum and İspir), the western provinces of Sakarya, Bursa, Düzce, the district center of Kemalpaşa in Izmir Province, the Black Sea coastal towns of Samsun and Trabzon, and the cities of Istanbul and Ankara.

The Hopa-Hamshens still use Homshetsma as a means of daily communication. The Hamshens of Rize, to the west, speak Turkish and only know a few Homshetsma words other than place names, flora, and other sundry items. 

Language is the most important means for defining identity.  This is so because to construct linguistic uniformity, the other means applied in the process of forging an ethnic identity, a unified history and the unity of the fatherland, must be present.

The thesis propounded by official Turkish historians, that the Hamshens learnt the Homshetsma language from neighboring Armenians, does not warrant our attention The arguments they make to back up their claim as to why Armenian was adopted by the Hamshens are flawed and fly in the face of historical and social realities. What needs to be clarified is how the Hopa-Hamshens were able to preserve the Homshetsma language whereas the Hamshens of Rize forget it.[3]

Also problematic is the label used to describe the Hamshens of Rize. This “Rize Hamshens” appellation is used to describe everyone living and regarded as a native resident of the overall Hamshen region that was divided into two provinces with the founding of the Turkish Republic. The Hamshen reality, as an ethnic identity, is something else entirely. We know from history that many Turkish tribes lived in this area under Ottoman rule. The classical policy of the Ottomans, i.e. the Turkification of captured non-Muslim lands and the subsequent policy of Islamicization, when the Ottoman Empire was in a period of retreat, culminating in the Armenian Genocide, followed by the policy to resettle Muslim exiles in former Armenian populated areas, lead to many outside families settling in the region.  

For example, Turkish families with the surname Kepenek wound up in the Hamshen area as a result of such policies and remain well represented with large extended families.   In addition, we know that Laz and other peoples, both locals and those who migrated from the Caucasus, lived here in the past just as they do today. Thus, the Hamshen “essence” (hamshenakanutyun), as an ethnic identity, doesn’t include all the Hamshens of Rize. However we must raise the following question – when we refer to the Hamshens (Hamshentsi) are all of them ethnically Hamshens? 

Village of Başoba – Hamshen woman

It is also important to examine the lineage of these families and Ottoman documents pertaining to these population settlements.

The Hamshens we are to discuss here, regardless of accepting them as Armenian, Turk, or only Hamshentsi/Hamshetsi[4], now and in the past are the speakers of an Armenian dialect. Starting in the 1990s, the growing economic ties with post-Soviet countries, including Armenia and the Armenians, have led the Hopa-Hamshens to review the issue of their origins. The apparent social, cultural and linguistic differences between the Armenians of Armenia and the Hamshens served as a basis for the strengthening of the view within the Hamshen community that they constitute a separate ethnic group. Contributing factors are the differences between Homshetsma and both the literary and conversational Armenian spoken in the Republic of Armenia. Such differences are quite natural and actually few in number when we factor in the processes of Islamicization and Turkification.

The Hamshens have undergone three major historical events of disassociation:

1. Their departure from Armenia proper as a result of the first migration towards Hamshen, thus restricting future relations between them and other Armenian communities.
2. The process of Islamicization that began after the Ottoman conquest of the eastern Black Sea region.
3. The disconnect resulting from the religious and cultural assimilation stemming from the Turkification and modernization processes implemented by the newly formed centralized Turkish state.

All these served as ingredients in the making of a ‘hybrid’ Hamshen identity.

As a result of Ankara’s state policy of assimilation, Turkish influence on Hamshen identity has been pronounced and dominant. Even the Hamshen dialect (Hamshesnak/Homshetsma) has not escaped the impact of the dominant language, Turkish, and now uses Turkish figures of speech and words.

The infiltration of words into any language, especially from a dominant language (either state or nationality), is a fairly natural phenomenon. It is only from a comparison of fundamental words that we can understand what language the loan words subsequently came from. Fundamental words are numbers, human body parts, basic actions (walking, eating, crying) and names of sundry items long since in use. Examples of non-fundamental words include – republic, book, fashion, restaurant, capitalism, television, computer, party, nation, bus, advantage, spirit, octopus, philosophy, etc. From this perspective we see that the fundamental words in Homshetsma, either wholly or with slight phonetic differences, are Armenian. Whether or not the names we give objects that enter our lives afterwards are the same as words in another language, depends on the social and political relations existing between the two societies. Given that the Hamshens were under Turkish domination for centuries, it is only natural to find expressions of that domination in their language and culture. Even though, from an academic perspective, the Hopa-Hamshens have the right to an ethnic identity, for a number of reasons they haven’t been studied to the degree of the much beloved Çamlihemşin area.

Field research carried out by the magazine Biryaşam[5] (One Life) regarding the folklore of the Hopa-Hamshens has been seen an important step towards rectifying the matter. There are no written records as to when, why, or from where the Hamshens came to Hopa. Given that oral testimonies on the subject are relatively new, the question of the Hamshens’ arrival and settling in Hopa hasn’t been researched all that much. In his doctoral thesis “The Geography of Hopa County”, Zeki Koday provides some historical information regarding the settling of Hopa. Koday notes that the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi visited the area in 1640 and recorded that the population of Hopa was mostly Laz and a minority of Greeks.

Hamshen storeowners in Hopa

After the area was brought under Ottoman control, the local Hopa landowners were banished and replaced by Turkish settlers. Turkish state historian Fahrettin Krzioğlu provides information contained in a 1516 “Registry of the Real Estate of Trebizond Province” regarding Başoba, the largest Hamshen village in Hopa: “[...] It is noted that the vilayet of Bagobit (Başoba village), located between Hopa and Makriyali (Kemalpaşa) and the total revenues of five villages there (Başköy, Esenkıyı, Yoldere, Çavuşlu, Koyuncular, was handed over to the local Christian martolos[6]

(Martolos, derived from the Greek armatolos, meaning “armed man” or militia. They were the remnants of the militia of the Byzantine Empire which the Ottoman gained control of around 1430 and which they maintained in some form into the early 19^th century. At the time of the full development of their organization under the Ottomans, The mostly Christian martolos served in many Ottoman provinces as part of the mobile troops and received a salary. Over time, most martolos converted to Islam.) [Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, Gábor Ágoston & Bruce Alan Masters; 2009]

In documents dating to 1520-1554, Arhavi is noted as the county seat and that other centers were Gönye (Muratlı-Borçka), Yagobit (Başoba-Hopa) and Makriyali (Kemalpaşa). According to these, in 1486 Kemalpaşa was comprised of 47 Christian families. It also notes that the center of Yagobit county (Başoba -Hopa) had 68 homes and that it was founded between 1510 and 1520. The same registry notes that in 1520 Yagobit (Başoba) and İskele (Hopa) were the centers of the county and that Yagobit was comprised of the center and six villages, and İskele of eight villages.[7] 

It appears from the above-mentioned sources that Laz, Greeks and Abazins, (a people related to the Abkhaz people) lived in Başoba, founded in 1515.

Oral histories show that Başoba lands passed from the Laz to the Hamshens. Certain place names still use the Lazuri originals. A number of Hamshen village names are also Laz (The former name of Yoldere is Zhourpichi, meaning “two brothers”, and there’s the belief that Ghigoba (Başoba) derives from Ghigi.)

But we still have no precise data regarding when the Hamshens migrated to Hopa. Historical research shows that from Hamshen proper (Çamlihemşin, Hemşin, Senoz in Rize), the prevailing migration routes due to forced Islamicization were to the west. Anthony Bryer believes that the Hamshens were subject to Islamic influence in the 15^th century and had mostly converted to Islam by the 18^th century. Those who remained Christian spread to the towns along the Black Sea coast, mainly Trebizond. [Bryer, Anthony (1975). "Greeks and Turkmens: The Pontic Exception"][8]

Bert Vaux believes that there was a mass conversion of Western Hamshens to Islam in the 16th and 18th centuries, a smaller number at the start of the 20^th century, and that the Eastern Hamshens adopted Islam in the 17^th.[9] Even though the Rize Hamshens still mark the Christian holiday of Vardavar (its celebration is devoid of any religious significance and is a summer festival in the mountain valleys), there are no traces of a former Christian faith amongst the Hopa-Hamshens.  Place names in certain Hopa-Hamshen villages including the word kilise (Turkish for church) most likely pre-date the arrival of the Hamshens.

There are many Hamshen villages in Hopa and Kemalpaşa today:  Başoba /Ghigoba, Yoldere/Zhulpiji, Çavuşlu /Chavoushin, Koyuncular/Zaluna, Eşmekaya /Ardala, Güneşli /Tzaghista, Balıklı/Anchurogh, Kaya Köyü/Ghalvashi, Çamurlu /Chanchaghan, Şana, Üçkardeş, Köprücü, Osmaniye, Karaosmaniye/Ghetselan, Akdere/Chyolyuket, Kazimiye/Veyi Sarp: Usually, Hamshen villages are made up of extended families of brothers. But those of Başoba, Ardala and Hendek are comprised of different families, leading us to infer that the process of settling took place in different time periods. It is only in the villages of Üçkardeş and Köprücü that the Hamshens live alongside the Laz.

The Hamshens now living in the area of Kemalpaşa, a coastal town in Artvin Province just a few miles from the Georgian border came from Hopa. Thus, the Hamshens first settled in Hopa and then started to move to Kemalpaşa. It is believed that the Hamshens first arrived in Kemalpaşa as agricultural workers, given that the land was better suited for this, and that gradually they purchased those lands themselves. Some of the Hamshen families now living in Kemalpaşa villages have relatives back in Hopa and note that their “native hearths” are the villages of Hopa. In the past, there were practically no Hamshens living in the town of Hopa. Today, due to the retreat of agriculture and animal husbandry and the parallel rise of commerce, more than half the town is now comprised of Hamshens.   

This “descent” of the Hamshens from the mountain valleys down to the town of Hopa, the seat of the Hopa district, wasn’t easy. The historical disagreements between the area’s peoples are still referred to today as the “Laz-Hamshen conflict.”

The Hamshens still remember the time when the Laz aghas of Hopa wouldn’t permit them to enter the town and the village produce they would bring to market was forcibly seized by agents of the aghas.

The socio-economic development of the Hamshens is a consequence of this resettlement. The former employment sectors of the Hamshens – agriculture (corn), horticulture, animal husbandry, and woodworking – overtime gave way to the trades and transportation. 

The growth and division of families, and the continuing difficulties associated with maintaining flocks of sheep in the mountain valleys of Ardahan, Ispir, Olti and elsewhere, were reasons for the Hamshens to turn to the towns and commerce. (The raising of animals became increasingly difficult after Hamshen sheep flocks were kicked out of Batumi, which was used as a winter respite, and the border was eventually shut tight.)

Hızır Yazıcı, who worked for many years as a bread and pastry maker in the town of Hopa, describes the process of Hamshens becoming traders and craftsmen thusly.

“I started out as a bread baker in 1935. There were six bread ovens back then. The Hamshens owned five in Hopa. There was Muhammed from the Koyuncu’s, two brothers from the Yağcı’s and Grandpa Şukru Akbıyık. There was Topal Cemal’s father, Harun, and a guy called Mehmet Topaloğlu. I was the sixth. The rest were Laz. Kibiroğlu, Tosunoğlu, Mustoğlu, Vajoğlu; they all had flocks. That’s how it was until the 1940s.” [10]

Before the construction of the harbor in 1972, Hopa was a fairly sleepy town. Like other Hopa residents, the Hamshens went off to work as laborers in Ardahan, Murgul, Batumi and regional towns and centers like Zonguldak along the western Black Sea coast. In time, they brought back the crafts they had acquired to Hopa and other places. A state sponsored plan to introduce tea in the 1970s did away with corn growing and horticulture. The government made huge investments and all suitable land was purchased to make way for tea fields. The tea industry also served as an alternative to animal husbandry.

Parallel to the building of a harbor and the growth of the tea trade, the transport sector quickly grew. Many Hamshens entered the transport sector and it remains the chief job market for Hamshens along with bread baking till today. Early on, Hamshens worked as drivers for foreigners. Later, they organized companies of their own. With companies such as Koyuncular, Yalçınlar, Dalkılıç, Yenigüller, the Hamshens are serious players in the sector. Those large revenue generating transport companies, who started dealing   with the post-Soviet nations in the 1990s, slowly began to turn to the manufacturing sector. Today, there are Hamshen businessmen in all sectors of commerce. The cultural and political life of the Hamshens is also conditioned by socio-economic developments. The Hopa-Hamshens are the only Muslim Hamshens who speak Homshetsma.

The fact that the Hopa-Hamshens preserved their language is linked to their isolated village life. Their continued self-sustaining village life, due to agriculture and animal husband, allows them to pass down the language from generation to generation and for the maintenance of certain traditions. This situation began to change with the founding of the Turkish Republic, when the central government made the teaching of Turkish mandatory. Even those who had become merchants in the towns and those wishing to obtain decent jobs were obliged to know the official state language as their native tongue.

Many Hamshens only learnt Turkish in school and this was the case until the 1980s. It’s forbidden to use any language other than Turkish in the schools. School administrations would not only force pupils to speak Turkish but also instructed families to only speak Turkish at home to their kids.

The author Cemil with a relative

Those families who wanted their children to get a good education and decent work afterwards, began to speak Turkish at home. But they continued to speak Homshetsma while they learnt Turkish. Gradually, the pressures brought to bear for making Turkish mandatory lead to the weakening of Homshetsma. In the past, everyone spoke Homshetsma. Today, many children cannot speak it at all, understanding only a bit.

Concomitant with economic growth, the Hamshens started to show progress in their social and political affairs. A Hamshen was elected mayor of Hopa for the first time in 2004. Israfil Kotil, who heads the Hopa Drivers’ Union, and Engin Koyuncu, Chairman of Hopa’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, are both Hamshens. Hamshens are well represented in government and the public health and education sectors.

When it comes to politics, Hamshens are mostly left of center. This leftist tendency has received its fair share of scrutiny. In the run-up to the 2011 parliamentary elections, a press interview given by Cüneyt Aytolan, one of the managers of the ruling party’s Arhavi campaign office, gives an insight into the subconscious mind of the right-wingers and the authorities.

“The right of center electorate in Arhavi is 70%. It’s the exact opposite in Hopa. The reason isn’t the Laz but the Hamshen Armenians. They are playing at ethnic chauvinism.”[11]

Except for the “official historians” and the Hamshens themselves, everyone else regards the Hamshens as Armenians. Explaining their support of the left as a consequence of their being Armenian, would appear to be an expression of chauvinism.

Then again, the interpretation that all Hamshens vote for leftist parties is also baseless. For example, Başoba other villages are well-known as “Little Moscow”. However, the Hamshen villages of Ardala and Zaluna are bastions of rightwing Turkish nationalist parties.  

It would be more correct to say that the Hamshens, parallel to their economic and social development, are regarded to be more active in the political arena than others. Leftist partisan movements sprung up in the aftermath of the civil upheaval of 1974-1980 and the military coup of 1980. Hamshens were well represented in organizations of mass popular resistance. To understand what was going on, we have to look at the situation from different angles. First, the Hamshens were falling behind in the social and economic spheres. For example, the Laz living in the district center were integrated with the government (as city dwellers, modernization came much quicker), whereas the Hamshens started the process much later. Even as late as the 1980s, the Hamshens had to build village roads on their own, in a cooperative effort, without state assistance. Second, having their own “mother tongue”, the Hamshens were out of synch with the Turkish government’s concept of “One language, One Nation”.

Thus, the Hamshens expressed their social and political demands mostly in terms of leftist politics. In addition to sociological reasons, the structure of the Hamshen identity also contributed to their becoming “partisans”; i.e. on the front line of struggle.  Tackling the challenges and arduous conditions of daily life, the Hamshens have been gifted with a high degree of self-confidence, personal responsibility and a rebellious and temperamental nature. It was for these reasons that the Hamshens strove to be “on the front line” of whatever political movement they supported. Then too, an important segment of Hamshens preferred to be associated with political parties supporting the government, since they viewed such affiliation as the road towards economic advancement.

It’s safe to say that, subconsciously, those who adopted the “pro-government” approach were constantly fearful of being singled out as Armenians. The Hamshens know they are regarded by others as Islamicized Armenians and certain Hamshens, in an attempt to shed this image, wind up supporting the most rightwing political parties in Turkey. Political affiliation also divides Hamshens into those who acknowledge or disavow their Armenian roots.

Hamshens who accept their Armenian roots are generally those within the leftist-socialist political specter. Since the left-socialists are opposed to the central state ideology, its official view of history, and the nationalist motto “One language, one nation”, they do not emphasize historical problems that much

This section of the Hamshen community, however, also lacks any narrative of identity and makes no political demands based on identity. The issue of Hamshen identity was only put on the agenda in the late 1990s. Several factors were at play here, the primary one being the Kurdish movement; a political movement demanding various cultural and language rights. The Kurdish movement shook Turkey to the core and spurred other national groups subject to assimilation by the ruling powers to voice their opposition to the “official ideology”. The Laz, living alongside the Hamshens, followed the Kurds and experienced a reawakening of their own. Interest grew regarding the national language and music. Measures to assimilate the non-Turkish communities, which continued throughout the entire period of the Turkish Republic, led to the formation of different mindsets and psychological hang-ups.

The policy of assimilation spawned the view that Turkish, in addition to being the state language, was the language of modernity and urbanites. Local languages, viewed as crude and associated with rural backwardness, were ridiculed to the point of shame. To speak a language other than Turkish in public was regarded as unacceptable.

The Kurdish struggle, in defense of their language and cultural rights, and subsequent measures taken by the Laz to follow the Kurdish example, put an end to such psychological hang-ups. Members of various ethnic groups began to relate to their language and culture to a greater degree.

Laz singer-songwriter and activist Kâzım Koyuncu (1971-2005) issued a number of CD’s that featured songs in the Hamshen dialect. The Hamshen community, especially the young people, took this as a wake-up call to mobilize in defense of their endangered language and culture.   Kâzım Koyuncu had no hang-ups when it came to showcasing the music and culture of the peoples of the Black Sea coast. He became an instant hit across the country and both the Laz and Hamshen communities took this to heart and freed themselves from the tradition of self-belittlement they had come to accept as the norm. Many Hamshen youth, following Koyuncu’s example, rediscovered the songs locked away in the memories of their grandmothers - songs in the mother tongue long since forgotten. Young Hamshen songwriters also started to compose new songs in the mother tongue.

They began to circulate Hamshen language texts over the internet via social websites. In the music field, the following  singers and groups began to turn out CD’s featuring Hamshen songs - Gökhan Birben, Bizim Yaşar (Kabaosmanoğlu), Aydoğan Topal, Vova, Aydoğan Yılmaz, Salih Yılmaz, Meluses, etc.

Bilingual Homshetsma-Turkish articles first appeared in the magazine Biryaşam, published in Hopa. A few months ago, the “Hadig” Hamshen Cultural Research and Preservation Union, opened its doors in Istanbul.

These developments in the cultural sector have led to different approaches regarding the issue of Hamshen identity and related challenges. What steps can be taken to preserve the Hamshen language; the main defining component of Hamshen identify? Is the current Hamshen vocabulary sufficient or must links be re-forged with Armenian, the prime well-spring of Homshetsma?

Following the lead of the Kurds and other ethnic groups, should the Hamshens demand that the Hamshen language (Homshetsma) at least be taught as an elective subject in schools located in Hamshen communities? What does “Hamshen culture” mean?

Those individuals committed to the survival of Hamshen identity continue to debate and discuss such issues. It’s a recently launched exploration still fraught with uncertainty.

Photo by Anahit Hayrapetyan

Translated (from Turkish into Armenian)  by Tiran Lokmagozyan

See also:
Engagement in Hamshen. Mukerem and Sevim

Marriage in Hamshen. Aydemir and Zulya