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The Lost Lullaby and Other Stories about Being an Armenian in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Melissa Bilal
Melissa Bilal*
Affiliation:
Deparment of Ethnomusicology, The University of Chicago
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Extract

Nınçir mangig im sirasun, Oror yem asum, Baydzar lusinn e meğm hayum, Ko ororotsum.

By analyzing the transmission of Armenian lullabies within the changing contexts of identity and cultural politics in Turkey, this paper addresses displacement and loss as two interrelated experiences shaping the sense of being an Armenian in Turkey. I criticize the liberal multiculturalist perspective that represents cultures in a way that cuts the link between the past and the present, by dissociating different cultures from the history of their presence in Anatolia and the destruction of that presence. I argue that in such a context where cultures are detached from lived experiences and memory, it becomes impossible to share the stories of violence and pain in the public sphere; hence, the loss itself becomes the experience of being Armenian. Finally, I try to explain how today young generations of Armenians in İstanbul, in their search for an Armenian identity, have developed a certain way of belonging to the space and culture, a way of belonging that is very much shaped by the experience of loss.

Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 34: Special Issue on Social Memory , Spring 2006 , pp. 67 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2006

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