Gevorg Halajyan’s Diary “To the Gallows” as a Primary Source on Turkified Armenians during and after the Armenian Genocide

Abstract

Gevorg Halajyan’s (Taparakan) diary-memoir was published in the USA yet in 1932, but it has not been decently studied and systematized. This extensive work is an invaluable source about the Turkification and assimilation of Armenians in several provinces of Western Armenia in 1924-1928. To stand before the Independence Tribunal of Kemalist Turkey, Halajyan had to travel to Adana, Diyarbakir, Kharberd, Malatya, to be eventually imprisoned in the jail of Sebastia. Halajyan wrote down whatever he eye-witnessed and heard of about the conversion and assimilation of the Armenians in the provinces. Later he escaped from prison to Bulgaria and then to America. This article analyzes the data Halajyan left about Turkified Armenians, as well as discusses the issue of desacralization of churches and chapels during the Armenian Genocide. It also singles out Turkification cases, forms, and mechanisms to compare them with the mechanisms of Islamization in the Ottoman period to reveal not only the similarities but, first of all, the differences, particularly, due to the concept substitution.