Agos, 5 July 1996

When they took us there, it was just a flat piece of land. A few hundred metres beyond the land was a lake, untouched and unspoiled, and next to the lake the crystal-clear sea. We were scrawny students in our second to fifth years of primary school. There were about 20 of us. We were supposed to be going there to camp for the entire summer.

First we set out digging. We dug the tent poles into the ground, we dug and planted saplings, we dug a well. The 20 of us children, with a foreman in charge, built coops for chickens and barns for livestock. Believe me, that year we spent our entire time digging.

For three months we worked hard and transformed that flat and barren piece of land. It grew green and colourful, buildings began to appear, people who saw it would say, “Oooh…! This place has been touched by human hands. People are living here.” We had gone there that summer to camp, but by the time we returned to our boarding school, we had built a camp instead.

***

And for years, summer after summer continued in the same manner. Every year we went to the Tuzla Camp.^[1] And the number of us children increased. We dug new wells. Water became more abundant, the land more green. One day, that water pump that we had spent so many days and nights pumping by hand was replaced by a motorized pump. Over the years, the trees outgrew us and covered the buildings, and the sky above the camp no longer let the burning sun through. A soothing shade settled over us. Perhaps it was our childhood voices mixed with our child labour that fertilised and nourished the nature around us.

Not a single person who came to visit the camp would fail to be impressed. “Unbelievable,” they all used to say, “Absolutely unbelievable.”

***

Meanwhile, we children were slowly imbibing a culture based on living by what we produced, not by what we found readily available. I sometimes remember the abundance of eggs that we collected from the chicken coop several times a day, so many that we’d throw them at the target boards, aiming for a bullseye. Our deft fingers were never far from the hen’s bums, always at the ready to catch a freshly laid egg even before its shell hardened, while it was still like a rubber ball.

We brought prosperity and abundance to those two and a half acres of barren land. In the vibrant environment we had created for ourselves, we experienced all that was fresh and alive. We would hold mass to Beethoven’s music, and then clean out the barns. Or, as we whitewashed the lower trunks of the poplar trees on one end of the camp, we would listen to interpretations of our folk songs in four-part harmony over the speakers in the hall. Many hours of each day were spent working, and many hours praising God.

Our prayers always began, “Lord, do not deprive the needy of the blessings you have bestowed upon us.”

***

One day, an official document was sent from the General Directorate of Foundations to the Gedikpaşa Armenian Protestant Church, the camp’s owner. It turned out that since 1936, minority foundations no longer had the right to purchase any type of immovable asset or acquire property in this country. The law forbade this, it would seem. Therefore, the title deeds of the camp were to be revoked, and the land was to be returned to its previous owner.^[2]

And sure enough, they did what they said. With court cases and both direct and indirect sanctions, they took the camp from us and eventually gave it back to the previous owner.

***

And we were left with nothing.

Since then, the camp site and its main building have been abandoned to their fate. The camp is surrounded by sprawling villas. The building has become a doddery, tattered old ruin; its teeth fallen out, its cheeks sunken. Most of our beautiful green trees have been chopped down, and those that remain have withered and bent their heads in despair.

***

Last Sunday, at the opening of the summer season for the Kınalıada Children’s Camp I was constantly reminded of the Tuzla Camp. My mind was filled with thoughts of how all my ‘child labour’ had been stolen, requisitioned.

Now I ask, what is expected from me? Am I supposed to simply say, “So be it”?

Or perhaps… “Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable”?

[1] The list of property and sources of income requested from foundations following the introduction in 1936 of the Foundations Law no. 2762 (The 1936 Declarations) was used to prevent ‘community foundations’ — i.e. foundations established by non-Muslim communities — from acquiring property in later years. In 1974, on the grounds that community foundations could not acquire properties other than those declared in 1936, the General Assembly of the Supreme Court ruled that properties acquired by community foundations after that date should be returned to their previous owners or to the Treasury. This ruling later became the basis of many unjust rulings and actions.

[2] The plot of land in the area of Tuzla, Istanbul, was bought in 1962 by the Gedikpaşa Armenian Protestant Church for the purpose of building a summer camp — which would become known as Camp Armen — to provide holidays and summer education for the children of the church’s orphanage.