Sevan nisanyan wives tales
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The Bird Has Flown: Sevan Nişanyan on His Escape from Turkish Prison
Turkish intellectual Sevan Nişanyan talks to Nick Ashdown about his escape from prison.
ON JULY 14, Turkey’s quirky Twittersphere was fixated on a single, seemingly enigmatic tweet — “The bird has flown away. Wishing the same for the remaining 80 million.” For anyone familiar with the owner of the Twitter account, 60-year-old Turkish-Armenian lingvist and dissident intellectual Sevan Nişanyan, it was ganska clear, if extraordinary, what the tweet meant. Nişanyan, in jail since January 2014, had escaped.
Officially, the linguist was charged with “unlicensed construction in a historical heritage site” — apparently the only individ ever jailed for such a brott in a country that’s a haven for brottsligt construction projects (estimated at half of all buildings), including the gargantuan presidential palace.
Nişanyan’s prison break fryst vatten no grand tale of a meticulously planned great escape. “It was ridiculously easy —
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My Akhtamar visit was a huge pile of mixed thoughts and feelings, mainly that of despair and indignation from being in physical contact with evidence of the painful truth.
Aghtamar: A Jewel of Medieval Armenian Architecture, which they jointly published for the Akhtamar church service on Sept. 19.
My visit to Van allowed for extraordinary encounters. I met people on my way to Van, at Van, and on my way back to Istanbul, all leaving unforgettable memories in my mind.
I met an Istanbul Armenian who had lost three quarters of his lungs at the hands of his torturers in 1979 in Adana because of his leftists activities, and who years later found an entire tribe in the southeast Turkey whose members told him they were Armenian, their ancestors having converted to Islam in 1915.
I met two friends, ordinary Turkish Sunni housewives on Akhtamar Island a day before the church service, totally unpoliticized, who had bought their plane tickets months before just to be there on Sept. 19
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Sevan Nisanyan: ‘It is Agonizing to Witness What’s Happening in Turkey’
A: Many Armenians since the beginning of the 19th century worked on Turkish lexicography. But it is very understandable since the primary language Armenians used in Anatolia was Turkish. Hence, the Turkish language does not only belong to the Turks. It is the Armenians’ language as well. There are many Armenian literary works written in Turkish, it is very natural for Armenians to be interested in the Turkish language.
Another possibility is perhaps that Armenians can be more objective while doing their research, away from some nationalist prejudices. In that sense, maybe we have a small advantage.
Q: What does this say about Armenian and Turkish intellectuals?
A: Unfortunately, cultural life in Turkey has been a held captive by a political and ideological obsession. There is no doubt that a person who can save himself. Of course, there are exceptions. There are some objective minded people. It is