Armenian Heritage and Memory Beyond the Borders Armenian Heritage and Memory Beyond the Borders | Page 2

I
t is the first time I have ever been in Armenia. When i came to
Yerevan from Turkey, my aim was to be able to conduct feminist
and LGBTİ+ projects but i wasn’t sure what kind of those could be
like. When i wandered around the streets, the bilboards catched my
attention. They reminded me of some kind of memory works. These
billboards introduce remarkable Armenian figures who aren’t requested
to be forgotten. However, they’re generally certain men. Women are
very scarce and LGBTİ+ people seem not to have existed. Therefore, i
wanted to highlight the feminists and indicate Armenian Feminists who
lived in Turkey in Pre and Post-Genocide Turkey in order to make a
bridge between Armenian and Turkey. As far as I’ve observed that just
Zabel Yesayan among Western Armenian feminists is known. I can’t
say that she is widely known. On the contrary, as a documentary about
Yesayan called “Finding Zabel Yesayan” uncovers, people in Armenia
don’t recognize her and regard her as a leader, an important figure as
much as other men. However, feminism(s) makes us inquire the power
and struggle of ordinary lives and whether there is really discrepancy
between the privacy and public, what lives are regarded as important
and remarkable.Through this point of view and principle, i find the work
on the struggle of women to survive very significant. With Yesayan,
other less known Western Armenian feminists have to be uncovered
and mentioned with their contributions and struggles in order to
prevent them from being anonymous and non-existence.
This work to a great extent utilizes from and depends upon the works
that Lerna Ekmekçioğlu and Melissa Bilal have conducted with
the aim of revealing Western Armenian women’s struggle for gender
equality during the Ottoman Empire and beginning of Republic of
Turkey.
As each one of their works has underlined, Western Armenian
feminists not only wrote on gender inequality and women’s rights and
power, but also advocated for the existence and betterment of their
nation and nationality. Furthermore, the struggle for future of their
nation for the most of the feminists, especially Hayganush Mark, took
precedence over that of gender equality and women’s rights. In the
mainstream memory of Armenia, women are generally stereotyped as
a mother figure and victim as a weak creature. Although the feminists
strived for destructing the gender stereotypes having been created by
hetero-patriarchal society, especially Hayganush Mark and other some
feminists also advocated for acceptable womanhood that represents