Nazire : In trail of the life of a Turkish woman from Erzurum

     

     

 

     My aunt gave me further details about the life of my grandma Nazire Hanım (1893 - 24 April 1963) and kindly offered the album of my late uncle. This page will contain fragments from the life of my grandma as much as I could collect and some photos from the album of my uncle.

     Nazire had two elder brothers, Mehmet and Lütfü. When her father Mustafa decided to leave Erzurum which was occupied by Russian armies with voluntary Armenian troops on 16 February 1916, the elder brother Mehmet was fighting with the Russians and was taken as a prisoner. So the rest of the family left their hometown because Armenians encouraged by Russians massacred Turkish people. The family stayed for a while in Nevşehir and then moved further towards Istanbul. In Nevşehir they stayed with a friend of younger son Lütfü. The housewife was Kaşife Hanim. If her children or grandchildren come accross this page and wish to add some details they are welcome. In these years my grandpa Kamil was single and was fighting in the deserts of Arabian peninsula. Most people from Erzurum headed for cities in inner Anatolia such as Kayseri, Tokat and Sivas. Unfortunately many died because of cold in harsh winter weather. Erzurum was liberated on 12 March 1918 two years later, after living through great sufferings and losses. Furthermore, war on the eastern front continued until end of 1920. Therefore the family was able to return return home in 1921.

  The first photo on top is the portrait of my grandma, the one opposite to it shows my grandpa Kamil. In the middle one gradma is in front of Atatürk's statute with her younger son and grandson; the bottom one shows her with three children, son-in-law and grandson. On the first page of my uncle's album there is also a photograf of Atatürk. This is not a surprise at all. Because if the founder of Turkey Atatürk didn't lead Turkish people in the war of independence from 1918 to 1923 my family would probably be not able to retun to their hometown.

Selma Aslan

Armenian Holocaust:My Story blog by Selma Aslan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Gayriticari-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.