ISTANBUL, MAY 18, ARMENPRESS. The Turkish-Armenian community wants Armenia and Turkey to reconcile, Marmara newspaper’s Publishing Director Ari Haddeciyan told ARMENPRESS.

Ari Haddeciyan is the son of Marmara Editor-in-Chief, playwright and writer Rober Haddeciyan. He currently runs Marmara together with his brother as their 97-year-old father is having difficulties coming to the office due to health issues.

Marmara is an Armenian-language daily newspaper published since August 31, 1940 in Istanbul. Rober Haddeciyan has been its editor-in-chief since 1967.

“We have two homelands, Turkey and Armenia. We certainly wish for our two homelands to reconcile, so that we will be able to freely, easily and confidently travel, speak, and live happily,” Ari Haddeciyan said, emphasizing the importance of the Armenian-Turkish relations.

Normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey will positively impact the societies of the two countries, according to Haddeciyan.

Speaking about the Turkish-Armenian community, which has an estimated population of over 50,000 and is concentrated in Istanbul, Haddeciyan said that regrettably many of them don’t speak Armenian.

“There’s no one left who speaks or reads Armenian. We have 5 high schools and 12-13 elementary schools, every year thousands of students enroll in these schools, but finding someone among them who reads or wants to read in Armenian is like finding a miracle. They assimilate with Turkish,” he said, adding that this is one of the reasons why the number of Marmara subscribers has dropped significantly. (Both emphasis mine)

“Just like other Armenian newspapers, Marmara has a decreasing number of readers and subscribers, today we no longer have the number of subscribers we used to have some 10 or 20 years ago. But we will persistently struggle, we will continue our path, we hope that we will be able to continue publishing the Armenian newspaper for many years,” Haddeciyan said.

I highlighted two parts from the above interview with Marmara newspaper’s Publishing Director Ari Haddeciyan. I fully agree with the first one when he says Normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey will positively impact the societies of the two countries.

But I was quite surprised about the second highlighted part. We have 5 high schools and 12-13 elementary schools, every year thousands of students enroll in these schools, but finding someone among them who reads or wants to read in Armenian is like finding a miracle. They assimilate with Turkish,”.

I have written a few Monologues about the Armenian private schools in Diaspora in general and about the ARS Private School in Toronto in particular. The last one was just over a year ago on March 21 2022. The above highlighted statement tempted me to write again about this important issue. I will be brief and try to avoid repetitions from my previous Monologues.

There is a strong Armenian community in Istanbul (Bolise in Armenian) where the Armenian Patriarchate is located. There are few functioning Armenian churches associated with the patriarchate and also functioning Protestant and Catholic churches as well. Armenian language Marmara and Jamang, and Agos bilingual (Armenian/Turkish) newspaper are published in Bolise.

There is an active Aras Publishing house, and very active Hrant Dink Foundation. There are few more well established and active institutions as well. With all these establishments I thought the Armenian language was fairly well spoken.

I will confess that I was not surprised to hear that the new generation do not read the Armenian newspapers. That is the norm in the whole dispora where the young generation get their news and information from foreign language sources which are more easily and conveniently available to them.

No other diaspora community can pride itself in having  “5 high schools and 12-13 elementary schools, where every year thousands of students enroll in these schools”. Credit must be given to the leadership of the Bolise community for such a huge undertaking.

Since I have never been to Bolise and hardly know how the system works it is only natural that I will refrain from making any comment on the subject matter. All I can say is that I hope the above highlighted statement is a bit of an exaggeration.

As I said earlier I have written about the ARS Private School in Toronto. I have been part of the founding generation of the school, and in the past an active member as a parent, school board member, fundraiser, etc. My daughter was among the first graduating class and my son was among the second graduating class and my grandchildren are currently attending the same school. 

ARS School has more or less similar problems as most Armenian Private Schools in United States. Most of them use the same text books and use antiquated rote teaching methods and teach a bit of everything. History, literature, culture etc., etc.

Since The Armenian Language is thought as a second language with only about one hour a day for its teaching, it will be better to have a curriculum that is specifically prepared to  help students learn the Armenian language as a second language.

The main idea is to let the student learn the Armenian language through conversation. To encourage the students to tell stories, to ask questions, to debate pros and cons of the issues discussed, to dance, sing, etc. and have fun too. Needless to say all prepared according to the student’s age and class.

Is this a big task? Hardly. It takes professional language teachers and few concerned parent to come up with a proper curriculum. The cost should not be a deterrent to embark on preparing such an Armenian curriculum to justify the “Raison d‘être” of the Armenian school.

As I said above, the most crucial point for all schools is the reality that they have only about an hour a day to teach Armenian.  Needless to say, for the rest of the 4 or 5 hour of the school day, they learn to talk, to read, and to think in English. Their main conversation during the recess is English as well.

It is also the same when they do their homework with the help of their parent at home. These are the well justified result of the dominant English language educational curriculum. No parent is complaining about it. They know their children’s future depends on it and they are absolutely right.

But most of the young parents complain about the Armenian language homework  where they cannot be of any help due to the fact that – most of them do not know Armenian.

The only homework needed will be for the teachers to instruct the students to tell their parents about the great fun they had in Armenian class and talk about some of the issues they discussed. In a way “use” the students to get their parents interested in the Armenian language program and in due course maybe the young parents might learn conversational Armenian as well.  

Yes, the challenge is to get the parents interested in the Armenian program. It is a well established fact that no school could be successful without parents getting involved in the school’s curriculum, otherwise, the school becomes the domain of a self -serving elitist group that is more driven by ideology and indoctrination. Thus, the ignorant graduates from those schools become like parrots who repeat old ideological slogans similar to the ones their equally ignorant mentors repeat.

Let me finish by repeating again and again that indoctrination has no place in any educational system be it private or public. 

Zohrab Baibo Sarkissian