FULYA ÖZERKAN – Hurriyet Daily News
“I am exhausted. I feel so sorry because when I tried to come up with something but it hasn’t lead to any tangible results,” Gencay Tunç told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview.
Tunç, who was born in Istanbul and has been living in Seattle in the United States for a year, started the documentary project “Sarı Gelin” in the late 1990s, which he said has been the most comprehensive documentary in the Republic’s history deeply analyzing the Turkish-Armenian relationship. Sarı Gelin is the name of an anonymous folksong. For Turks, it is “sarı gelin,” which means blond bride, while for Armenians, it is “sari sirun yar,” meaning the bride from the mountain.
The documentary included interviews with members of the Armenian diaspora in the United States as well as in Europe and reflected the views of Turkish-Armenians and Armenians in Armenia.
“It is a very serious production. We tried to find the truth and gave everyone the right to speak,” said Tunç, the only Turkish-Armenian in the documentary production.
But he added quickly he was declared “persona non grata” by the Armenian community in the United States after the project.
“I also received positive critics. I am telling the truth,” he said.
Tunç, however, was pessimistic over the course of the relationship between Turkey and Armenia and said efforts to reconcile have turned out to be futile.
“I am so upset about people’s indifference,” he said.
“Nobody, neither the Armenians in Armenia nor the Armenian diaspora can understand the feelings of us Turkish-Armenians. This is just like being between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
Tunç said as an Armenian being considered as a diaspora was making him uneasy.
“I don’t think of myself as a diaspora because I am Armenian. I am also a Turkish citizen. That’s the problem. It is a big problem. When you go to Armenia, they won’t accept us as a pure Armenian, because we are Turkish citizens. When we go to Turkey, they don’t like us because we are Armenian. We are in-between you know. It is so difficult,” he said.
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