A Turkish secret hiding in plain sight

30.10.2023 - 20:56 / bbc.com

On Wednesday and Saturday nights, if you follow the narrow, stone streets in Gaziantep, Turkey's old Armenian district to an unmarked silver door and knock three times, you're in for a treat. 

Moments later, a man with a long white ponytail and round glasses will appear, welcoming you to his cafe, Jazz ve Kahve, and whisking you away for a night of food and traditional Middle Eastern music. Inside a room filled with Persian carpets, locals will be listening to the melody of a ney (a Turkish wind instrument) intertwining with that of a Syrian lute-like oud in a 19th-Century Armenian mansion overlooking a scenic courtyardstrewn with dangling lights. 

"Gaziantep is a city at a crossroads in the heart of old Mesopotamia. When they were under the same empire, Armenians, Turks and Arabs all coexisted peacefully," said Murad Uçaner, the ponytailed cafe's owner. "In these few square metres, we are trying to revive that ancient vibe."

In the past few years, Uçaner's intimate cafe has become an institution in Gaziantep – one of the cities impacted by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck the Turkish-Syrian border in February 2023. Several buildings around this old Armenian neighbourhood of Kayacık were damaged or collapsed, but Jazz ve Kahve is still standing, and Uçaner is motivated to preserve its legacy. 

"This is not just a place where people eat and drink," he said. "It is also a place where people from different cultures and countries meet, exchange information and get to know each other's cultures."

The story of Jazz Kahve goes back to 2017 when Uçaner, a historian, translator and novelist, became fascinated with the history of Armenians in Gaziantep. While noticing the construction of more and more high-rise buildings across the city, Kayacık's cobbled streets and Ottoman konak residences made him feel nostalgic for a past he wanted to revive. 

Uçaner researched archival footage of the area and stumbled on a photograph taken in 1907 whose caption mentioned it was an Armenian house. As Uçaner explained, not only is the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks that took place during World War One something that is generally denied in Turkey, but he never learned that Gaziantep was once home to a thriving Armenian, Kurdish and Arab population. "It made me question the accuracy of the history they teach us," Uçaner said. "I discovered that even though Armenians survived for thousands of years in these lands, there have been attempts to erase the memory of their presence here."

Ümit Kurt, a Middle East historian and the author of the book The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province, explained that approximately 32,000 Armenians lived in Gaziantep before WW1, but as the war