Lusine Balyan

"I'm black ant, and you're a red one. Now, the black ants are going to kill the red ones." 
"I want to be a black ant too." 
"You can't, because you're Armenian."

That's how Kadriye Bagrjioglu found out she was Armenian, when she was seven or eight years old, playing in the yard with a Turkish friend. Since then, she has lived in fear, suffering from a kind of split personality. She found out that she was Armenian, but she had no idea what it meant to be Armenian, and why it was something that had to be covered up. Kadriye remembers that when she was young, she wanted so much to be a Turk - more than any Turk would - so that nobody would doubt her Turkish heritage. This might sound strange to us today, but it was a matter of survival for a humiliated, servile Armenian in Turkey (Historical Armenia), for a person convinced by those around him that being Armenian was shameful.

Kadriye explained, "Our father was the only one who stood up for us, saying that the Armenians were a hard-working, dignified people who never hurt anyone. 'You have no reason to be humiliated. You can't say all this out loud, but be sure of it, and don't be afraid'. But living among Turks and Kurds, where anti-Armenian sentiment was pervasive, my father's words meant very little."

Kadriye's parents had been miraculously spared physical harm. The Kurdish agha 's son had fallen in love with her aunt, Siranoush, and expressed the desire to marry her. Kadriye's grandfather, ParsamAgha , refused the offer. Then in 1915, when her father had been taken to Der Zor, Siranoush was approached by the young Kurd, who offered to save her if she agreed to marry him. The Armenian girl refused at first, but later, considering the situation, agreed to give him her hand if he would protect her family. The young Kurd saved Siranoush and ten members of her family. Thus, the Bagrjioglu family, taking a new name and converting to a new religion, came to settle in the village of Adiyaman .

Kadriye's husband, Haji Mehmed Demirjigil, comes from another family of converted Armenians living in Turkey.

"All the converted Armenians living in Western Armenia know each other," he explained. "All the artisans, through some unwritten law, are converted Armenians. The artisans interact and get to know one another, and often end up as in-laws. There are also exceptions, when Turks or Kurds try to take our beautiful girls. The Armenians resist every way they can, and there are often clashes." HajiMehmed Demirjigil's father was one of the Armenian children orphaned in Moush, and was adopted by a Kurdish family in Tigranakert. He was raised as a Muslim, in a household that served as for studying the Quran study. His sons says he grew up in a state of constant fear.

We wrote down the story of this converted Armenian family in the fall of 2004, when they had come to Armenia for the first time. The family has lived in Germany since 1975. They were able to discuss their identity for the first time there, and, curiously enough, were first encouraged to do so by the Turkish reporters and writers in Germany who had found out that they were converted Armenians.

These people led more than half their lives as Turks, far removed from anything that would remind them of Armenia . Now a new chapter has begun, and they hope to locate their Armenian identity in their children.