Armenian Survivor of Ottoman Killings Urges Peace

Centenarian recalls her family’s suffering but says now is time to build bridges with Turkey. By Gayane Mkrtchyan in Yerevan

Tigranui Kostanyan’s passport in her married name, showing her birth 100 years ago. She recounted her experience as a child in Ottoman Turkey when thousands of Armenians were massacred. (Picture: Nazik Armenakyan)

Tigranui Kostanyan at home in Armenia, where she recounted her experience as a child in Ottoman Turkey when thousands of Armenians were massacred. (Picture: Nazik Armenakyan)

One of the few living survivors of the killing of Armenians in World War One thinks it is time for Armenia and Turkey to make peace and open their borders, although she said her nation must never forget the crime committed against it.

Speaking on her 100th birthday, Tigranui Kostanyan told IWPR of the horrors her family lived through at the hands of Ottoman forces during World War One.

The campaign of slaughter, in which historians say 1.5 million Armenians were killed, has never been recognised as genocide by Turkey and has poisoned relations between the two peoples ever since.

“We need to make peace with Turkey, to open the border, but we must never [trust] them,” she told IWPR.

A Turkish-Armenian peace process looked close to restoring diplomatic relations late last year, but the movement has stalled recently and exchanges between the two countries over the genocide issue have become heated.

Kostanyan said several journalists had visited to hear her views on bilateral ties, including a young Turk.

“To the Turkish journalist who came, I said, ‘Go and tell your people that I am an Armenian woman who saw everything, but today I relate to the Turkish people without enmity’,” she said.

She does not need much prompting to recount how her family lost its home in Kaghzvan, a town in what is now eastern Turkey and known as Kağızman but then comprised mainly ethnic Armenians.

“I was born in Kaghzvan in 1910. My father was a famous man called Agha Yesai. We were rich, we had houses, gardens, but we dropped it all and had to run,” she remembered.

“My oldest brother Artashes was called for service in the Ottoman army, and he fought the Russians. We hid the younger brother, Artavazd, in the bed, under the covers, so the Turks would not find him.”

She said the town was looted by marauding Turks, while her family cowered in a neighbouring house.

“Through a hole in the wall of the house of a Turkish friend of my father’s, my two sisters – Armine and Lisa - and I saw terrible things. The Turks with their wives, all well dressed, in gold and expensive clothes stolen from the killed and exiled Armenians, came to the town and started their raid. They came into houses and hunted Armenians and their gold,” she said.

She said her three cousins were killed, then her uncle and aunt were murdered in prison.

“There were terrible rumours. They left us with nothing, except the right to leave our house. My father’s Turkish friends were also in danger. If we’d been found in their house, they would have been killed with us.”

Her home region, around the fortress city of Kars, changed hands between Russia, Turkey and independent Armenia repeatedly in the years around the end of World War One. Her family fled before the bloody turmoil, settling first in Alexandrapol - today’s Gyumri- then Tbilisi, and finally Armavir in southern Russia.

In 1920, when Kaghvzan was part of the short-lived Armenian Republic, they returned to their home but only got to enjoy it for 15 days. Forced once more to hide, they found refuge among the Molokans, members of a Russian Christian sect.

“My brother Artavazd hid in a Molokan house, with them pretending he was their son. From morning to night, he worked in the fields and did as much as he could so they did not hand him over to the Turks,” she said.

The Molokans, she said, gave the family members clothes and once more they fled to Russia. IWPR asked her to continue, but her energy was used up by the long story. Her eyes closed, and her son Albert was left to finish the tale of her wanderings.

“In 1928 my mother married Mikael Asatryan, a man from Kaghvzan. In 1931, they moved to Samarkand, and then to Yerevan. My brother Simon was born, then me, my three sisters Tamara, Anna and Lisa. Now, mother has 14 grandchildren and great grandchildren,” he said.

While Kostanyan rested, her daughter-in-law Gayane set the table, with a centrepiece of a birthday cake bearing the figure 100 in the centre, and lit candles. The old lady stood up with difficulty, but walked without help to the table, blew out the candles and smiled.

Gayane Mkrtchyan is a reporter at Armenianow.com.