Keep or Release? Kidnapped Women of the Armenian Genocide and Their Unkidnapped Futures

This paper will focus on three categories of Armenian historical actors in the aftermath of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. First, survivors who had been trafficked into Ottoman Muslim households and orphanages during the war years who were then rescued (or rescued themselves) after the war and returned to the Armenian community. Second, feminist intellectual women of Constantinople who had been exempted by the Ottoman state’s genocidal measures. Third, male intellectual, political, and religious leaders of the post-genocide Armenian community in the Ottoman capital. The main question that I interrogate is the following: how can the bodily autonomy of the genocide survivor ever be resumed? Some of the previously Armenian refugees regretted their decision to come back to the fold of the Armenian nation. Some of them loved their Muslim husbands (former kidnappers) or had children with new husbands that they did not want to leave behind. Many institutions in which these refugees were sheltered were run by Armenian feminists. My paper will discuss how the feminists (as directors and social workers in various hospitals, and shelters) commented on and made decisions about what to do with the refugee women who did not want to re-Armenianize. In some cases, the women wanted to re-Armenianize but did not want to keep their half-Muslim babies or even fetuses. Feminists were torn. On the one hand, they wanted to respect the choices of their “unfortunate sisters” and “forlorn mothers.” On the other hand, the nation needed as many members as possible; they couldn’t risk discarding any Armenian body, now or in the future. I will compare feminists’ attitudes with those of the male leadership in the community who had the ultimate say over who could belong where.