TUNCAY OPÇİN
“Days Gone By, Issues That Remain” was the title of Alper Görmüş’s column in Aktüel. Each week, the veteran journalist dissected Turkey’s chronic troubles. He identified the events that exposed the country’s entrenched mindset and examined them as thoroughly as his column allowed.
Today, I too want to revisit an unresolved issue from years gone by and tell you about Orhan Bakır. For the overwhelming majority of this article’s readers, his name will mean nothing. Those approaching sixty who read newspapers in the 1970s may vaguely remember him.
Orhan Bakır was a rather famous “anarchist” in those years. Back then, the word “terrorist” was not yet in use; “anarchist” was the preferred term. Bakır lived up to his notoriety. His activities ranged from robbing banks in cities to fighting soldiers in the mountains. But what set him apart was his identity: Bakır was Armenian. He had changed his name so that his people would not be held responsible for his actions.
I had known Bakır’s name and story since the second half of the 1970s. Most likely, a report about a bank robbery had lodged in my memory. Many years later, I came across his name in Agos and learned that he had been Hrant Dink’s closest friend.
Meanwhile, Belge Publishing had brought out a novel in which Bakır appeared as one of the characters. When we decided to launch Chronicle in 2005, Orhan Bakır was among the first people I wanted to profile. I wasted no time and finished the piece for the magazine’s second issue. I now leave you with that article.
BEATING A TEACHER IN THE NAME OF PROTEST
Armenak Bakırcıyan was born into a large family in Diyarbakır’s Gavur Mahallesi—the “Infidel Quarter.” He was still very young when his father disappeared. His father had traveled from Diyarbakır to Istanbul and was never heard from again. No one had seen him; no one had any news. Years of searching yielded nothing. Armenak was now fatherless.
He pursued his education with the guidance of Der Giragos, the priest of the Armenian church his family attended in Diyarbakır. After completing primary school there, he moved to Üsküdar, Istanbul, to continue his secondary education. Armenak Bakırcıyan became a boarding student at Surp Haç Tıbrevank Armenian High School.
His adolescence coincided with some of the most turbulent years on Turkey’s streets. The spark that flared in Paris in 1968 had spread around the world and was beginning to have a profound impact on Turkey. Hundreds of thousands rallied to slogans such as “Freedom for the Peoples,” “Jobs, Labor, Liberty,” and “Deniz, Mahir, Ulaş—Fight Until Liberation.”
The ferment in the streets attracted high school students as much as university students. At an age when he might otherwise have been enjoying a carefree youth, Armenak fell under the spell of these slogans. Like all his friends at school, he became a committed leftist.
“Because we were boarding students, we discussed all the country’s problems. We had also read leftist literature in the greatest detail,” Hrant Dink recalled of those days at Surp Haç Tıbrevank. Dink, whom I interviewed for this article, had been both Armenak Bakırcıyan’s schoolmate and his dormitory companion.
Their friendship began with late-night conversations in the dormitory. When they met, Armenak was in his third year of high school and Hrant in his second. Their discussions quickly moved from theory to practice—and increasingly toward violence. As they saw it, the time had come to take action at school. The leftist students regarded their teachers as representatives of the oppressor class. Someone, they believed, had to put a stop to this state of affairs.
Their anger focused particularly on the English teacher. He did not teach from the textbook distributed by the school, using an imported book instead. Most students at Surp Haç came from poor families in Anatolia. They could not afford the book he used; in Turkey at the time, they could scarcely have found it even if they had the money.
The school’s first—and last—protest action would target this teacher. One day, during a second-year English class, the classroom door burst open. A large group of students led by Armenak Bakırcıyan stormed in and began beating the teacher with sticks they had prepared. Hrant Dink, who was in the class, managed to get his teacher out into the corridor, risking a beating himself.
The intervention of other teachers and students narrowly averted a tragedy at Surp Haç Tıbrevank. But the incident marked a turning point for Bakırcıyan. Following the teacher’s complaint, both Hrant Dink and Armenak Bakırcıyan faced disciplinary proceedings. At the end of the school year, both were expelled.
The two young men—one in his third year, the other in his second—were left alone and penniless in Istanbul. They slept at the Şişli clubhouse of the Surp Haç High School Alumni Association and enrolled at Şişli High School. Before long, they heard that an Armenian school in Balat was looking for someone to supervise its boarding students.
The school admitted both boarding and day students, boys and girls alike. Two houses had been rented as dormitories for students from outside Istanbul: one for the girls and one for the boys. The administration needed an “older brother,” a resident supervisor, to oversee the accommodation. Both Hrant Dink and Armenak Bakırcıyan applied.
There was only one paid position available, but Dink and Bakırcıyan were willing to share a single salary. The two inseparable friends would gladly take on the work as long as they had somewhere to sleep. The school agreed, and the small student house in Balat became their home.
That year, Hrant Dink gained admission to Istanbul University’s Faculty of Science, while Armenak Bakırcıyan entered the Faculty of Letters at the same university. Their university years brought both men deeper into politics.
“I had gone beyond being a sympathizer. I was at a crossroads: I would either go to the mountains or stay in Istanbul. Armenak chose the first. I was in love at the time. Knowing that, he told me I should stay in Istanbul. As Armenak saw it, people were needed here too.”
THREE FRIENDS CHANGE THEIR NAMES
As every restraint fell away and events swept them along, Armenak Bakırcıyan announced a decision to his friends: they would change their names.
At the time, Tercüman was the leading newspaper on the right. Day after day, it published claims that Armenians were active in leftist organizations, that they were dragging Turkey into a quagmire of terror, and that they wanted to divide the country. Bakırcıyan did not want to provide ammunition for this propaganda.
According to Dink, being Armenian could cause problems even within underground leftist organizations.
“Suppose you were trying to win a leadership position in a trade union. People would quietly start spreading the word that you were Armenian. Some people would hit below the belt. Armenak was aware of that too.”
Armenak’s greatest fear was that his people would become targets because of him.
So the three friends—Hrant, Armenak, and Stefan—applied to the court. Only Sarkis, an older friend at the association, knew the circumstances that had led them to this decision. The three acted as witnesses for one another in court. Hrant became Fırat; Armenak became Orhan; and Stefan became Murat.
“That allowed us to participate more freely in the leftist movement,” Hrant Dink said of their name changes.
Alongside their political work, Hrant Dink and Armenak Bakırcıyan were active in Armenian community life. Following the Great Catastrophe of 1915, Armenians had been scattered across Anatolia. Their younger generations had forgotten Armenian. Particularly in the east and southeast, there were now Armenian villages whose inhabitants spoke Kurdish.
“We would go to these villages, find students, and bring them to Surp Haç High School in Üsküdar,” Dink explained.
This work took them to Midyat, in Mardin. They spoke with villagers living in tents and located Armenians in the surrounding villages. Their greatest help came from Der Grigos, the priest from Diyarbakır. They traveled throughout eastern and southeastern Anatolia on horseback, seeking out the Armenians who remained after 1915.
The Armenian patriarch Karakin Haçaduryan, who had come to Turkey from Argentina, was one of the strongest supporters of these efforts. Indeed, he had made the launch of this search a condition of his coming to Turkey. Hrant Dink and Armenak Bakırcıyan became Der Grigos’s principal assistants. With limited resources, they were resisting the assimilation of their people.
Following Armenak’s advice, Hrant Dink stayed in Istanbul. Some time later, he married the great love of his school years. Armenak, meanwhile, took to the mountains.
Not long after their separation, however, news arrived that Armenak had been caught in İzmir. A police operation had broken up a cell of TİKKO, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Liberation Army of Turkey. One of those in the cell had named Armenak Bakırcıyan. Brought before a judge on charges of belonging to the organization, he was remanded in custody and sent to Buca Prison in İzmir.
During what would prove to be a short period of imprisonment, Hrant Dink and members of the Bakırcıyan family frequently traveled to İzmir to visit him. Meanwhile, the organization decided to free Bakırcıyan from “captivity.” A hospital offered the best opportunity. Citing dental problems, Bakırcıyan requested a hospital transfer. Members of the organization, waiting for this news, broke him out of the hospital on October 18, 1977. In the process, the TİKKO militants killed two gendarmerie conscripts.
After the escape, Armenak Bakırcıyan was on the front pages of every newspaper. He was in Istanbul, hiding with acquaintances. Both the police and his comrades knew he was there. Two weeks after his escape, a robbery took place at Kızlarağası Han in Istanbul. The press and police believed Armenak was responsible for that too.
There was no longer any way for him to remain hidden in Istanbul. Somehow, he would have to reach the countryside. Before long, an “anarchist” known as Ali Ağa would acquire legendary status in the triangle between Tunceli, Elazığ, and Erzincan. The man using that alias was none other than Armenak.
In the mountains, he had found the freedom he so desperately wanted. There, they were known as the “Fugitives.” Among themselves, they addressed one another as kirvem—a term of kinship and affection.
A REVELATION YEARS LATER
During this period, he lost contact with his friend Hrant Dink. Yet there were still witnesses to what he and his comrades did and experienced in the mountains.
After an article introducing Murat Kahraman’s novel Çığlık (The Scream), an email arrived at Agos, the weekly newspaper published in Armenian and Turkish. Signed by Azad Demir, it appeared in the newspaper on May 27, 2005. After twenty-five years of silence, Demir recounted what he had witnessed.
Shortly before Orhan’s death, the fugitives had arrived in a mountain village in Tunceli. It was spring. The villagers welcomed their guests wholeheartedly. Among them, the person whose behavior stood out most was Azad Demir’s father. Well past seventy, the old man worked with all his strength. He even slaughtered and cooked one of the newborn goats himself for the visitors. His attentiveness, and the relationship between him and Orhan Bakır, caught Azad Demir’s attention.
As the guests were leaving, the old man said something to Orhan Bakır in a language Azad did not understand. Afterward, a strange sadness came over his father. But what truly astonished Demir happened after news of Orhan Bakır’s death arrived. His father grieved almost as though he had lost his own child.
Let us follow the rest in Azad Demir’s own words:
“We heard about Orhan’s death on the radio. My father was stunned; the color drained from his face. He called me over.
“‘My Azad,’ he said. He kept swallowing, crying, unable to speak. Every cell in his body seemed to be in pain.
“‘Orhan is gone. Take me to him.’
“There was no car. How could I carry my father on my back all the way to that accursed place called Karakoçan? Besides, Orhan’s body had not been released. After radio and television announcements describing him as a ‘notorious Armenian terrorist,’ the police had spirited his body away and buried it.
“Of course, he had to be brought to the place he had specified while he was alive: ‘If I die, bury me on this hill in Faraç!’ His friends did not hesitate to honor his wish. They dug up his body from the place where the police had buried it and brought him to Faraç.
“When word reached us about the funeral, my father could barely breathe.
“‘My Azad,’ he moaned, taking my hand between his feeble hands.
“‘My child, we are Armenian too. Go and see your brother off on his final journey, then come back.’
“Thousands of us stood at Orhan’s grave. The women’s laments competed with the men’s resounding slogans. A few days later, I lost my father too.
“After his death, I struggled to pull myself together. I found myself constantly questioning my true identity. What had happened, and why? Why had my father hidden who he was? He had lived all these years—why was he telling me only now?…
“I began to find answers among my father’s friends, men his own age. They told me about those painful days. Between twenty-five and forty thousand Armenians who had sought refuge in Dersim during the massacres had been saved. Some tribes in Dersim had also persecuted them, but many had shown them kindness.
“There were many people like my father, and they were grateful to the people of Dersim. During the massacres, they had seen how Alevi communities in Dersim, and communities of Dersim origin extending as far as Zara in Sivas, had selflessly protected them.”
In writing about Bakır, Azad Demir was, in fact, giving voice to his own tragedy. This was Anatolia, and even after almost ninety years, the tragedy of the past was only beginning to come to light…
