ISTANBUL—Armed with a large, shiny key, Sahak Tavukcu, the caretaker of Surp Hresdagabet Church, is one of the last Armenians remaining in Istanbul’s Balat neighborhood. The area was once home to a cluster of minorities such as Armenians, Greeks, and Jews. Today, however, the district’s residents are predominantly conservative Muslims, and Balat itself has attracted anti-Armenian sentiment, even though most Armenians left the neighborhood years ago.
According to the Turkish Armenian patriarchate, around 60,000 ethnic Armenians remain in Turkey, mostly in and around Istanbul, a far cry from the over a million Armenians who called it home before the tragic events of 1915-1917, when the Ottoman Empire led hundreds of thousands of Armenians on forced marches from the capital to the Syrian desert, saying they needed to be resettled for military reasons. Between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians died due to massacres, murders, or ill treatment.
