\n Members of Turkey's tiny Armenian community have kept a low profile since US President Joe Biden recognised the Armenian genocide, fearing retribution should they openly celebrate the landmark step.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Discretion has become a part of our daily lives,\" said an Armenian Turk who, like many others interviewed by AFP, wished to remain anonymous to protect his local business.\n<\/p>\n
\n Biden on Saturday became the first US president to brush aside Turkish pressure and call the 1915-1917 events a genocide in which \"1.5 million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination\".\n<\/p>\n
\n His words caused relief and bittersweet joy in Armenia and among the the tiny Caucasus state's vast web of ethnic communities across Europe and the Americas.\n<\/p>\n
\n Once an integral part of the Ottoman Empire's multifaceted society, only 60,000 ethnic Armenians are still believed to live in modern Turkey, most of them in Istanbul.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ankara accepts that both Armenians and Turks died in vast numbers while the Ottomans battled tsarist Russia, but denies the existence of a deliberate policy of genocide.\n<\/p>\n
\n Dozens of angry Turks rallied outside the US consulate in Istanbul on Monday to express outrage at Biden's decision.\n<\/p>\n
\n President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it \"groundless, unfair\" and detrimental to US-Turkish ties.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Turkish-Armenian businessman said his community faces waves of anti-Armenian sentiments whenever debates resume about the century-old events.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We were raised since childhood not to speak Armenian on the street. We were even told to call our mothers 'anne' (in Turkish) instead of 'mama',\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Everyone has differences on every issue but when it comes to the Armenian question, everyone is united in Turkey.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Hate speech' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Yetvart Danzikyan, editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos -- whose former editor Hrant Dink was gunned down in Istanbul in 2007 -- said the annual commemorations pass in a \"climate of tension\" in Turkey.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The climate is shaped by (Turkey's) tough response, which goes as far as to hold Armenians responsible\" for what happened, Danzikyan said in a telephone interview.\n<\/p>\n
\n Fahrettin Altun, Erdogan's powerful press adviser, tweeted on Tuesday that \"distorting history further encourages Armenian extremism\", pointing to the Turkish diplomats assassinated by Armenian militants in the 1970s and 1980s.\n<\/p>\n
\n For Agos's Danzikyan, Altun's words and similar comments represent a campaign of psychological pressure and intimidation that make it difficult to speak freely.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"How can you expect a community which has lived under pressure for decades to speak up?\" Danzikyan asked.\n<\/p>\n
\n Selina Dogan, an ethnic Armenian ex-MP from the main opposition CHP party, agreed that her community's silence since Biden's announcement was part of an attempt at self-preservation.\n<\/p>\n
\n Armenians have remained discreet \"to maintain their presence in these lands,\" said Dogan, who is now a municipal assembly member representing a district on the European side of Istanbul where many Armenians live.\n<\/p>\n
\n In Turkey, \"hate speech is glorified\", said Dogan.\n<\/p>\n
\n Paramaz Mercan, a 50-year-old Armenian who lives in the mostly Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir, said his attempts to relate the way his community felt to the media did not end well.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"On one particular occasion, I expressed a thought and said I wanted to live my own culture, which prompted some to say that I should be deported,\" he recalled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Members of Turkey's tiny Armenian community have kept a low profile since US President Joe Biden recognised the Armenian genocide, fearing retribution should they openly celebrate the landmark step. \"Discretion has become a part of our daily lives,\" said an Armenian Turk who, like many others interviewed by AFP, wished to remain anonymous to protect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-76465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n