Nubar Gulbenkian’s pointed depiction

 I quote from the first two pages of Nubar Gulbenkian’s autobiography titled “Portrait in Oil”. The chapter is called “Escape in a Gladstone Bag”. Please read the short paragraph and get to know Nubar’s pungent humor pervasive in his autobiography. Vahe H Աpelian

“I was born on the 2^nd of June 1896, in that same village of Kadi Keui, which was the ancient Chalcedon, the seat, in the 451 of the fourth Council of Christian Church¹, to which I belong by tradition, if not always by deepest religious conviction. I am an Armenian. My father came from a family of Armenian merchants who were engaged in trade with the old Ottoman Empire and also in export business. He was a member of the family firm which had a branch in England; my mother was the eldest daughter of an Armenian banking family from Constantinople. I was their first born.

I was only a few weeks old when we left Kadi Keui and fled from Turkey, for the year 1896 was the time of the Armenian massacres. The Armenians, deeply attached as their were to to their church, were one of the Christian minorities in the old Ottoman Empire, and although, by their financial and commercial abilities they rendered great services to the Empire, they were apt to look towards the Christian Great Powers; they were also used by those Powers, not only against each other, but also against the already decaying Empire. “The Armenian Question” was a problem of long standing and Abdul Hamid the Second, known variously as the Sick Man of Turkey or the Red Sultan, was determined to find a solution to it. He set about it in a very logical way. If there were no Armenians, he reasoned, there could be no Armenian Question; hence the massacres.”

That Turkic mindset Nubar Gulbenkian pointedly, if not sarcastically,  depicted, has not changed.

Note: 

1. 1. The Armenians did not participate in the fourth Council of Christian Church in Chalcedon in 451 because they were preparing for the imminent attack by the Persians, or were already waging the war in what would be known as the Vartanian War, Vartanants Baderazm.