Letter: Armenians have a right to their identity

Am I entitled to know the original last names of my great-grandparents? The Genocide of 1915 abruptly uprooted the Armenian people from their ancestral homeland and effectively wiped out all traces of their identity. From Ani to Van, from Erzurum (Garin) to Sivas (Sepastia), churches, monasteries, schools, cultural centers, businesses and ancestral homes were demolished, culture was repressed and the freedom to remember what had happened was cruelly denied — as if to prove Armenians never existed in their ancestral lands. Orphaned children who were absorbed into Turkish and Kurdish families were deprived of their names and heritage, and dispossessed of all connections to their former lives.

The Armenian Genocide, in addition to incalculable losses, has snatched from us our ancestral surnames, a truly integral part of our being. Thus, so many Armenians in the Diaspora no longer carry their original names, encompassing instead a first name, a location or birthplace, a profession or trade, or specific characteristic that was Turkish in origin. There can be no excuse to such an act of blotting out one’s memory and identity and withholding them from the very ability to learn about one’s roots. After the Genocide, these are simple rights all Armenians are entitled to.

I would like to appeal to the United States Congress to use its influence with the Turkish authorities and help make available the state’s full resources to allow for a select group of researchers to carry out these inquiries on Armenians’ behalf. Providing them access to the records and registries found in the Interior and Ottoman Prime Ministerial archives will undoubtedly be one great step forward toward the rediscovery of Armenian identity.

Garbis Der-Yeghiayan
La Verne

Editor’s Note: The writer is president of Mashdots College in Glendale.