The head of the Armenian Orthodox church is in the middle of a controversial visit to Istanbul. Karekin II has in the past angered Turks by accusing them of committing genocide against Armenians at the time of World War I. Turkey denies the charges of genocide.

I thought it was a perfectly simple question.

I had gone backstage to interview the conductor of an ethnic Armenian church choir after a rousing performance at Istanbul University.

As the choristers packed up their manuscripts, we chatted for a while about the music and the conductor was all smiles.

Then I asked his opinion on the conference his choir was singing at – the snappily labelled “Symposium on New Approaches to Turkish-Armenian relations”.

I wondered if he thought the event could help mend fences. Within seconds, he was edging away from me, apparently deeply uncomfortable.

“I don’t want to talk about politics,” he pleaded, “we just came for the music!”

It was a telling insight.

Closed borders

Turkey and Armenia are neighbours who might as well be a million miles apart.

Diplomatic relations have been frozen for over a decade; their mutual border is closed.

But the direct dispute is over a matter of history: The death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in eastern Turkey during the dying days of the Ottoman empire.

Armenia wants those deaths recognised as genocide. Turkey refuses to accept that term.

For Armenia and its vast and powerful diaspora, getting recognition from Ankara is a mission so important, it is almost a way of life. But here inside Turkey, ethnic Armenians have chosen an uncomfortable silence over confrontation.

I visited Anush and her brother Vartan in a leafy middle class suburb of Istanbul.

Their apartment was typical of the area, but with the odd design twists, like knotted dried flowers on the table that reminded me of my trips to the Caucasus.

“Turks still ask me where I come from,” Vartan told me, as his sister brought in the tea. “They seem to have no idea there used to be hundreds of thousands of us here.”

Uneasy existence

Anush and Vartan are just two of some 60,000 ethnic Armenians who still live in Turkey – a land their ancestors have inhabited for almost 2,000 years. It is an uneasy co-existence.

“We’ve lived with violence ever since I was born,” Anush told me. “Graffiti on our churches, abuse on the streets. I still think twice in some areas before I say my name openly.”

Anush’s parents barely speak Armenian, because their parents worried they would stand out and when Armenian militants began assassinating Turkish diplomats in the 1970s, Turkish Armenian families here made themselves more invisible still.

It is hardly surprising they do not normally voice an opinion on what happened in 1915.

Anush and Vartan are a rare exception and, even so, I have had to change their names.

We know exactly what happened, Vartan told me.

He said his Armenian great grandparents were forcibly deported south, accused of siding with Russian troops against the Turks. They handed their children over to Turkish neighbours for safety and never returned.

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