Despite the silence which dominated the whole century, in the past few years, Turkish literary circles bore witness to a burgeoning interest in the Armenian literature produced in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. A group of Turkish academics and some intellectuals outside of the academia rediscovered the important role Armenian culture played in the Ottoman Empire. They were fascinated by the vast literary heritage, which was almost totally unknown to Turkish public. Armenian became a preferable academic language for young scholars and at the same time, some researchers began working on Turkish texts in the Armenian alphabet. In this process, first of all, the number of translations from Armenian increased and the Turkish audience became acquainted with Ottoman Armenian writers such as Hagop Baronyan, Krikor Zohrab, and Zabel Yesayan. Secondly, contemporary writers and poets who wrote in Armenian or both in Armenian and Turkish, such as Megerdich Margosyan, Zaven Biberyan, and Zahrad became popular.Footnote ¹ Thirdly, various books and articles by researchers and literary critics such as Marc Nichanian, Kevork Bardakjian, and Boghos Levon Zekiyan were translated into Turkish as a parallel process to the increasing number of literary works.Footnote ² And finally, works by Turkish scholars, which also include research on Armeno-Turkish texts and comparative studies between Armenian and Turkish literatures, accompanied the incremental number of resources translated from Armenian or other languages, mainly English.Footnote ³

The watershed in this “Armenian Studies turn,” without a doubt, was the assassination of Hrant Dink in 2007. His heartrending death was a harsh and unexpected blow for many people in Turkey and caused an intense emotional reaction. Soon after, this emotional reaction was transformed into a multi-faceted search to understand the country’s so-called “Armenian question” and of course its Armenian past.Footnote ⁴ This search brought about a new map of positions especially in terms of the role of Armenian cultural institutions, which drastically changed in the process. In this new cultural map, at least some of those institutions came to have much more central roles in Turkish intellectual scene; in other words, they shifted from their relatively peripheral position to intellectual and cultural centers of the country. The most important examples of this shift were Agos (Dink’s newspaper) and Aras Publishing House. This was a herald of increasing interest in Armenian culture and literature, which was accompanied by other publishing houses (like bgst and Belge) and cultural institutions with new products based on Armenian culture.

In this new atmosphere, it is not surprising to detect new research trends and formulate new questions which mark out a new era for Armenian literary studies in Turkey. Indeed, under the dominating atmosphere of denial, literary studies on the modernization of literature in the Ottoman Empire generally overlooked the existence and influence of Ottoman Armenian literature. Furthermore, literary historiography deliberately refrained from mentioning the Armenian pioneers of Turkish literature. It may be surprising to hear that on the one hand, Vartan Pasha wrote the very first novel in Turkish in Armenian alphabet, namely Agapi Story in 1851; on the other hand, Armenian priests in San Lazzaro authored the first Turkish plays, again in Armenian alphabet, in the last quarter of the 18^th century.Footnote ⁵ That is, Turkish literary historians and critics developed and experienced a double-denial: They not only preferred to forget Armenian literature, but also, at least temporarily, put the Turkish literature produced by Armenians in the waste bin of history. In recent years, the attitude of the students in the field has gradually started to change. Let me explain the main pillars of this change.

First of all, the increasing number of translations and publications, mostly by Aras publishing house, has attracted critical interest. For instance, Turkish literary critics have been paying increasing attention to Megerdich Margosyan’s works and a good number of scholarly articles are now produced on his work. Some of these studies have an interesting anthropological perspective where they read his works as a way of understanding authentic Armenian-peasant life in Anatolia. With the help of this approach, not only Margosyan but also Armenian rural literature, including Hagop Mntzuri and Hamasdegh, have attracted some attention.Footnote ⁶ Another remarkable point regarding the literary criticism of Margosyan has been the scholarly tendency to analyze his works side by side with Kurdish writers, especially with Mehmed Uzun, in a comparative perspective. Here, the main point has been to understand the common literary expressions of two victimized communities, which had a long experience of living together.Footnote ⁷ Another noticeable fact is the bold emphasis on the Deleuzian term “minor literature” used to explain the literatures of minorities written in major languages.Footnote ⁸

In addition to Margosyan, Zabel Yesayan and Hagop BaronianFootnote ⁹ also drew the interest of literary circles to a certain extent. In this process, Zabel Yesayan became a legendary person and many appraised and exalted her as the symbol of a free, courageous, and talented Ottoman-Armenian writer. Yet, despite her fame in the past few years, Zabel Yesayan’s works have scarcely been translated into Turkish. First, Belge Publishing House translated Gardens of Silihdar. Unfortunately, this was a translation from English, not Armenian, and the source was Ara Baliozian’s translation and edition published in 1982 with the title Gardens of Silihdar and Other Writings. For a second book, the audience had to wait until 2013. In this year Yesayan’s legendary book Among the Ruins came out, published by Aras Publishing House. The book has not been read extensively as expected, but Yesayan’s fame has continued to grow.Footnote ¹⁰

One of main subfields of Armenian literary studies in the academia –and maybe the most popular one- is Armeno-Turkish literature. Especially nowadays, many young academics work on Armeno-Turkish texts, particularly on novels and plays. Famous Turcologist Andreas Tietze edited Vartan Pasha’s Akabi Hikayesi (Story of Agapi) at a relatively early date, in 1991.Footnote ¹¹ Yet, his edition was neglected for a long time. This publication was in fact a very important challenge to Turkish literary history, because the novel was written in 1851, twenty-two years before the so-called “first novel in Turkish” Taaşşuk-ı Talat ve Fitnat by Şemseddin Sami. Turkish literary circles waited almost twenty years to discuss the Turkish literature in the Armenian alphabet produced by Armenians.Footnote ¹²

One other growing subfield has been that of comparative literary studies. The Ottoman Empire in the 19^th century was a unique hub. Istanbul was an unrivaled center to see the comparative modernizations of different literatures such as Greek, Arabic, Ladino, Persian, Armenian, and Turkish. A side-by-side and comparative analysis of these literatures creates many different opportunities to understand the complex map of negotiations and conflicts among the Empire’s agents, particularly in the last century of the Empire.Footnote ¹³ In this cosmopolitan atmosphere, modern Armenian and Turkish literatures, which were born and developed in the capital city of the Empire, played the main roles. It seems an impressive opportunity to read these two literatures comparatively. Let me briefly explain the base of this opportunity.

Coming from different classical traditions, the two literatures had experienced more or less the same levels of modernization and in the 1890’s both attained similar literary understandings. However, despite all parallelisms and convergences between the two literatures in the 19^th century, it is not easy to notice a real and deep interaction and mutual influence.Footnote ¹⁴ Of course, the relationship between the two groups was asymmetrical and hierarchical, because the majority of Armenian writers could read Turkish texts, whereas Turkish writers could not read Armenian ones. Only after the 1908 Revolution, intellectuals had the chance to destabilize this tragic hierarchy. Especially the new and short era began in 1908 seems to have great potential for comparative literary analysis of both literatures.

The period between 1908 and 1915 was an era of literary boom and liberty for both Armenian and Turkish literatures in the Empire. Although this short interval was full of chaos, it produced unique opportunities for literary interaction. This was a period of mutual recognition which came after a long modernization process in literature. In 1912, Sarkis Srents, an Ottoman Armenian teacher and journalist, translated some short stories of prominent contemporary Armenian writers into Turkish and published them one by one in the famous journal Servet-i Fünun. One year later, he compiled all those stories in a book named Ermeni Edebiyatı Numuneleri (Examples from Armenian Literature). The book was an historical watershed. Although two years earlier, Diran Kelekyan had translated Krikor Zohrab’s short story collection Hayat, Olduğu Gibi, Ermeni Edebiyatı Numuneleri provided a large anthology and was the very first work to introduce modern Armenian literature to the Turkish reading Muslim public.Footnote ¹⁵

Another unique event in this new atmosphere was the publication in 1912 of Yervant Odian’s voluminous novel named Abdülhamid and Sherlock Holmes, simultaneously in both in Armenian and Turkish.Footnote ¹⁶ This was a detective novel which included harsh criticism of Abdulhamit II and praise for the new era of freedom. On another level, this novel could be read as an invitation for a new public sphere in which all Ottoman citizens, not subjects, would live together while preserving their ethnic, lingual, and religious identities. As we all know, this historical moment and surprising feeling of mutual recognition had a tragic and quick end. It was only three years before 1915, and the pleasure and amazement stemming from the recognition of the literature of fellow Ottoman Armenians had only two years to go.

To sum up, Armenian literary studies in Turkey has many new prospects and questions to build upon this new base of research in the past few years. First of all, 19^th century Istanbul seems a very fascinating case for comparative literature or world literature studies. In this context, comparative studies on Armenian and Turkish literatures of the Empire will be very significant in paving the way for new inquiries on the culture of the late Ottoman Empire and its political implications. It is also a promising opportunity to save the literary history from the domination of national literatures. Second, one of the prospects should be the criticism on post-genocide literature. Especially under the influence of Marc NichanianFootnote ¹⁷ and Krikor Beledian, Turkish literary circles now seem much more interested in concepts such as mourning, catastrophe, and testimony. Translations of the writers of the Catastrophe, such as Hagop Oshagan, Zabel Yesayan, and Nigoghos Sarafian will help many in understanding the catastrophic experience of Ottoman Armenians as well as its literary manifestations. Third, gender based criticism probably needs more attention.Footnote ¹⁸ Because it implies the possibility of a new way of interpreting the crisis of the Ottoman Empire—a feminist way that underscores women’s differing perceptions and imaginations, which were aloof from the nationalism of the era.

Last but not the least, it is necessary to underline how difficult it is for researchers in Turkey to reach sources in Armenian. In Istanbul or other cities, there exist no libraries which include sufficient Armenian titles. It is evident that a research library of Armenian resources is an urgent need. In Armenia, on the other hand, one can access all types of sources. The National Library of Armenia and other libraries contain voluminious and invaluable collections, and are highly accessible. Apart from Armenia, the archives and libraries of the Mkhitarist Congration in Venice and Vienna, AGBU Nubarian Library in Paris, and American university libraries such as those of the UCLA, University of Michigan, and Harvard University also contain very valuable collections.