The Eastern Armenian translation of “The Sounds of Silence I: Turkey’s Armenians Speak”, was presented at an event jointly hosted by the Hrant Dink Foundation and AGBU Armenia on September 14, 2021. The book which gives voice to Turkey’s Armenians is the first in an oral history series being published by the Foundation since 2011 and the first volume which has been translated into Eastern Armenian.

At the book launch the background of “The Sounds of Silence” series was presented, by highlighting the importance of the Foundation’s endevours in creating a memory repository on Turkey's Armenians.

The talk kicked off under the moderation of Tatul Hakobyan, the Director of ANI Armenian Research Center and columnist at Aliq Media. Hourig Attarian, Associate Professor at College of Humanities & Social Sciences, American University of Armenia, addressed the oral history methodology and its ability to deal with hard and taboo topics, emphasising that individual and collective memories are interconnected. She mentioned the relationship between the researcher and the narrator, singling out the main criteria for a successful interview, namely shared authority, deep listening, informed consent, mitigation of harm and ethical responsibilities. Dr. Attarian expressed a hope that this talk would pave a way for an organised series on oral history which is an important but frequently neglected academic sphere in the education system in Armenia. At the end of her speech, Dr. Attarian acknowledged the institutions that practice and promote oral history in Armenia.

Melisa Bilal, distinguished Research Fellow at the University of California Los Angeles, Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a lecturer at the Department of Ethnomusicology, touched upon the memory policy of Turkey and the place of Turkey’s Armenians in it. Dr. Bilal addressed the issue of advocacy of epistemology of denial and how with this aim, both facts and memory are erased from the official history and memory policy of states. She also presented the perspectives of Turkey’s Armenians, highlighting the challenges they are still facing and their continued struggle for their collective rights that help them survive as a community. Moreover, their daily existence in Turkey is a struggle which entails them to develop strategies to protect whatever heritage is left from previous generations. Namely, the Istanbul Armenians feel the responsibility to invest their scarce resources to prevent the destruction of their tangible cultural heritage which is the witness of their existence in the past and present. She also mentioned the struggle of Turkey's Armenians to be recognised as an inevitable part of the cultural and intellectual heritage of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, highlighting especially the importance of music.

Lastly, Tatul Hakobyan summed up the relations between Armenia and Turkey in the past as well as in the present, in light of the 44-day Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The book has been translated from Turkish into Eastern Armenian by Arpi Atabekyan and edited by Anzhela Avagyan. 

Since 2011, the Hrant Dink Foundation has been building on the importance of memory studies. You can find more information on the Sounds of Silence series here. The Eastern Armenian translation of more books from the series will be available in the coming months.

The Eastern Armenian translation of the book was made possible thanks to the support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Sida, the Olof Palme International Center and Chrest Foundation.