Shedding light on living history

French native and historian Sebastien de Courtois is living history in Turkey. De Coutois’ first encounter with Turkey was through stories he heard from his family about his great grandfather who lived in Istanbul at the turn of the century and worked at Osmanlı Bankası.

A few years later de Courtois, 34, found himself living on the same street as his ancestor near the French Palace in Beyoğlu. His great grandfather’s apartment building still bears the same name, Polonya.

"From the first moment I knew I belonged to the city; that something of me belonged to the city," he said. "It’s significant for me to know an ancestor was here and went to similar cafes."

But the French historian’s relationship with Turkey is deeply tied to its diversity in peoples and faiths. One of de Courtois’ primary interests in Turkish history is in fact the parts of it that still inhabit southeast Turkey.

The first time he came here in 1998, he made his way to eastern Turkey with a friend as far as Trabzon and Lake Van and ended up in Mardin. The moment they stepped out of the bus they saw a Suriyani priest. Amazed that there might be a priest in these parts of Turkey, he walked up to him and asked him who he was in English only to get a reply in his own language, French. He was from Kirklar Kilise, one of the churches in Mardin.

Aramaic alive and well
"That was my first meeting," he says of his first encounter with Suriyani people and history. The priest suggested that they travel to the mountains to see the Suriani churches. "And so we arrived at Mor Gabriel Monastery where we stayed for a week," he said, "but we couldn’t believe it when we realized they were speaking Aramaic."

Back in Paris at the Sorbonne University he spoke to a professor and friend who encouraged him to look into studying the people who are still speaking Aramaic, a language once thought dead, at least in Turkey.

"It’s a living language, of course, with influences from Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish. They call it Turoyo - this means the language of the mountain," he said.

Thus de Courtois left his work as a lawyer to get a PhD in 19th century Ottoman history through French and English diplomatic reports. "That was fascinating for me because I discovered a world, a new world of interaction," he said of the Christian Greek, Armenian and Suriyani communities living side by side with Jews and Muslims be they Arabs, Kurds or Turks. "In Mardin for instance you had all these communities. Mardin was a little Istanbul on Mesopotamia, an amazing place."

Shared past, present
For de Courtois, one of the manifestations of the peaceful co-existence of these different cultures and religions was the architecture which borrowed elements from each other. The dome of the 5th century church of Deyrulzafaran was influenced by a local madrasa, he explained.

Only to fortify his own connection with the east of Turkey, de Courtois said that while studying Ottoman era diplomatic reports for his PhD, he found that another direct ancestor was French consul in Erzurum in 1840s. "Our family knew he had ended up as a diplomat in St. Petersburg Russia, but I found that he started his career in the east of Turkey," he said.

De Courtois has now published three books on the peoples of southeast Turkey.

"What is important for me and historians is that we are not working on dead people," he said. "There are still Syriacs living here and have a living heritage. That’s important. It’s important to see them. They are the first and last Christians of eastern Turkey."

The historian explained that the Syriac villages in southeast Turkey have been at risk due to immigration. Many left due to local problems in the 1970s and 1980s and now have the possibility to return to their villages which are sometimes occupied by Kurdish families.

"So everyone is fighting for the same land," he said of the current legal battles that the Turabdin monastery is facing as local villages have opened a land dispute with it and claim it should be turned into a museum.

But de Courtois underscores that something living cannot be treated purely as a tourist attraction, and in the case of Turabdin, a center of faith for so many, its spiritual significance needs to be respected.

"Turabdin is a sacred land where you need to be spiritual," he said. "Churches are not museums. They mean a lot of things for local people. They are history and local heritage."

In his travels there, he said he has met courageous people who have gone through a lot of turbulence and who are deeply connected to the land. "This is real living history and people are facing legal problems to keep the integrity of the land," he said. De Courtois said he hopes that just as he discovered his past and embraced it, Turkey can make peace with its own past in southeastern Turkey and become a part of it.

The French historian shares his time between Paris and Istanbul.