THIS PHOTO

Attached is a translation of Ara Sanjian’s post today on his Facebook page, titled, ԱՅՍ ԼՈՒՍԱՆԿԱՐԸ.

 

Courtesy Wikipedia

"Since it was the anniversary of the seizure of the “Bank Ottoman”, many Armenian Facebook users, and not only they, had reposted this famous photo on their pages.

There is a widespread belief that this group photo shows the Dashnak youth who seized the bank, photographed after arriving in Marseille from Constantinople. I have also shown this photo to my students in the past, during my lectures. I must admit, however, that I was always puzzled as to why these young people were dressed in the typical attire of peasant farmers. It seemed somewhat illogical to me that they would have worn such clothes in their daily lives in the mid-1890s, or that they would have been able to enter the bank building and take it under their control while wearing such clothes.

A few months ago, Zeynep Devrim Gürsel’s study “Portraits of Unbelonging” was published in the United States, about some circumstances of the history of Western Armenians during the Hamidian era. I have not yet seen the published volume, but I read an early version of it in unpublished form. The author also referred to this photograph, which was printed in the French newspaper L’Illustration on October 31, 1896. Based on Ottoman archives, the author shows that the Ottoman chief diplomat in France was closely interested in this photograph, as he wanted to identify the individuals involved in the incident. In the end, he found out that the people in the photograph were not the young men who had seized the bank, but Armenian villagers from the Ottoman Empire who were emigrating to the United States at about the same time.

Therefore, from now on, this photograph should be presented within the framework of the Armenian migration from the Ottoman Empire to North America at the end of the 19th century.

I fear, however, that it has already become so widespread that, due to inertia, it will continue to be circulated for a long time as a group photo of young Armenian Dashnaks who seized the “Bank Ottoman”.

In the initial version of Kursel's book that I saw, there were copies of other documents and photographs related to the capture of Ottoman Bank", although not of individuals. I hope they are included in the printed copy and will later be circulated by Armenian history buffs. "