Tuzla Armenian Children's Camp - A Story of Seizure, Human Rights Association Istanbul Branch, 2000
One morning, they took us, 13 children… We walked from Gedikpaşa to Sirkeci… We crossed over to Haydarpaşa by ferry… Then by train we travelled from Haydarpaşa to Tuzla Station… And then they took us, by foot, to a wide, immense piece of flat land between the lake and the sea. Back then Tuzla wasn’t a place full of villas for the rich and bureaucrats like it is today… An untouched beach with fine sand and a piece of a lake, cut off from the sea… One or two houses, fig and olive trees few and far between and brambly blackberry bushes spread out along the ditch…
And the Red Crescent tents we erected…
13 puny kids, our ages ranging from 8 to 12, we were no longer sentenced to the concrete garden of the Gedikpaşa Orphanage…
We only remembered our family and close ones when we watched the city lights flickering in the far distance at night. We likened the city lights to old stars fallen to the ground and piled up.
For three years, we got up at dawn and worked until midnight to complete the camp building. One of our shortest, “Kütük” [The Log] (That’s what we used to call Zakar) could take a cement bag up in his arms all by himself and carry it to the roof. At night, we used to pee in our pants from exhaustion.
I was eight years old when I went to Tuzla. I worked hard for a full 20 years there. I met my wife Rakel there. We grew up together. We got married there. Our children were born there… After September 12, they took the director of our camp in for “raising Armenian militants.” It was a false accusation. None of us had been raised as Armenian militants. I and my friends who were raised there took up the job so that the leaderless camp and orphanage was not closed.
But one day they thrust a piece of paper into our hands.
“You Minority institutions don’t seem to have the right to purchase property! And we made a mistake given you the permission in the first place. This place will now belong to its old owner.”
We were defeated despite our 5-year resistance… Unfortunately, the opposition was the state.
Dear humanity, I have a complaint!...
They threw us out from the civilisation we created.
They pick-pocketed the efforts of 1500 children who were raised there. They usurped our child labour. If they had made it into an orphanage for poor children again, if they had used as a camp for poor or disabled children, whatever their identity, I would have given my blessing. But I don’t give my blessing when my labour has been abused like this.
And now, the “Tuzla Poor Children Camp” we created, our “Atlantis civilization” lies in ruins...
When the chirping of children was gone, the water in the well dried up too… The building stands with sunken shoulders… The land is barren… The trees are resentful…
And the nosedives of my rebellion are as sharp as the swallow whose nest, built with so much care, is destroyed with a single blow…
Yet helpless…