Orhan Kemal Cengiz, in his article in Today’s Zaman “Linking women’s stories in Turkey and Armenia” writes:
“In 2010, a young woman living in Masis, Armenia, was beaten to death by her husband and mother-in-law.”
“Last year a woman’s body was found in Mersin, Turkey, stabbed 40 times in the name of honor.”
“Yet women’s stories across the Turkey-Armenia border are mostly invisible and unknown to women living on either side of that border.”
“We have been taught how not to see women across borders.”
“Those women over there, not here, not one of us, are other.”
“That they are easy, sluts, traitors, poor, uneducated, backward, liars, dumb and ugly.”
“That they are the enemy.”
“Between conflicted borders it is even more difficult to hear an alternative story.”
“We were not encouraged to be friendly.”
“We live on assumptions about each other’s lives.”
“We don’t know our neighbors’ stories.”
This series of quotations comes from a short animation produced as part of the project “Beyond Borders: Linking Our Stories,” an initiative of the Women’s Recourse Center in Armenia and volunteers from AMARGI, a feminist collective in Turkey. As part of the project, women from Armenia and Turkey come together to collect women’s stories from both sides of the border.”
Commenting on the initiative and urging to support the project, the columnist says that the core idea of the project is very appealing, as when “women come together, we all see that, whether Armenian, Turkish or Kurdish, all victims suffer under the same patriarchal mindset and are vulnerable to violence. I have always thought that if we are to overcome barriers between two nations, difficulties passed down through history, we must do it by eliminating the blinding effect of nationalism from our understanding of each other. When we start to see that there are good and bad people, perpetrators and victims on both sides of the border, we will really experience some progress in reconciliation and establishing a lasting peace.
When we start to see perpetrators as perpetrators and victims as victims, and forget the identity and nationality of these people, we will start to build something.”
The columnist finishes his article quoting Rumi:
“Come, let us be friends for once
Let us make life easy on us,
Let us be lovers and loved ones,
The earth shall be left to no one.”
