AFP: Turkey's Armenians keep heads down after Genocide recognition

PanARMENIAN.Net - Members of Turkey's tiny Armenian community have kept a low profile since U․S․ President Joe Biden recognized the Armenian Genocide, fearing retribution should they openly celebrate the landmark step, AFP said in an article.

Biden on April 24 became the first U.S. president to brush aside Turkish pressure and call the killings a genocide in which "1.5 million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination". Dozens of angry Turks rallied outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Monday to express outrage at Biden's decision. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it "groundless, unfair" and detrimental to US-Turkish ties.

"Discretion has become a part of our daily lives," said an Armenian Turk who, like many others, wished to remain anonymous to protect his local business.

Once an integral part of the Ottoman Empire's multifaceted society, only 60,000 ethnic Armenians are still believed to live in modern Turkey, most of them in Istanbul.

The Turkish-Armenian businessman said his community faces waves of anti-Armenian sentiments whenever debates resume about the century-old events.

"We were raised since childhood not to speak Armenian on the street. We were even told to call our mothers 'anne' (in Turkish) instead of 'mama'," he said.

"Everyone has differences on every issue but when it comes to the Armenian question, everyone is united in Turkey."

Yetvart Danzikyan, editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos -- whose former editor Hrant Dink was gunned down in Istanbul in 2007 -- said the annual commemorations pass in a "climate of tension" in Turkey.

"The climate is shaped by (Turkey's) tough response, which goes as far as to hold Armenians responsible" for what happened, Danzikyan said in a telephone interview.

Paramaz Mercan, a 50-year-old Armenian who lives in the mostly Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir, said his attempts to relate the way his community felt to the media did not end well.

"On one particular occasion, I expressed a thought and said I wanted to live my own culture, which prompted some to say that I should be deported," he recalled.