Laz and Hemshins

The allure of north-east Turkey, with its rich Greek, Armenian and Georgian, as well as Turkish heritage, is further enhanced by the region’s ethnic diversity. Its Greeks and Armenians were evicted or massacred nearly a century ago. But the presence of two small minorities, the Laz and the Hemshins, is a reminder of the ancient kingdoms that once held sway in these lands.

This, with western Georgia, was Colchis, the land to which the Argonauts sailed in search of the golden fleece. The land of the Laz, a small people nowadays, inhabiting a stretch of Turkey’s eastern Black sea coast. Their language is part of the same family as Georgian, as well as Megrelian and Svanetian, which are spoken in western Georgia. The Hemshins, who, like most Laz, are Muslim, speak a dialect of Armenian, and inhabit the mountains and valleys just inland from the Black Sea town of Pazar.

The Hemshin valleys

I travelled up to the spa resort of Ayder, in the heart of Hemshin country. Having read that the modern Turkish state, with its insistence on the indivisibility of the Turkish nation, discouraged any manifestation of non-Turkish identities, I was interested to see what evidence of the presence of these two minorities would be apparent. They did not appear shy about their identities. Checking into a hotel in Ayder, I noticed a calendar on the reception desk, with the months and the days of the week in three languages. The first, in big, bold type, I did not recognise. The second, in smaller type, I recognised as Turkish, while the third, in still smaller type, was English. When I asked what the first language was, the receptionist replied proudly, “Lazuri”. It turned out that several of the staff in that hotel were Laz. Trying to communicate with the young receptionist in her limited English, I asked her if she could speak any French or Russian. She answered “no, I speak Lazuri”.

Hemshin women in Ayder

Hemshin women look very fine in their distinctive dress, with a light scarf around their heads, and a second, often brightly coloured, tied around it, with strings of beads hanging under their chins. This appeared to be their day-to-day dress, often even for quite young women, a rare example of folk costumes that have not yet passed into folklore. Hemshins spend a few months each summer in their high mountain villages. Walking in the lush green mountains, swathed in cloud much of the time, with their extraordinary abundance of wild flowers, through our Turkish guide, I asked some of the women we met (and it was mainly elderly women) whether they could speak Hemshin, and in each case they replied that they could, one of them smilingly greeting us with a few phrases, which none of us, including our guide, could understand. Even a young girl who served us tea while we waited for the dolmuş back to Ayder, who was dressed in modern clothes, told us she could speak Hemshin.

So for now the languages and cultures of the Laz and the Hemshin survive, albeit kept alive by a very small number of people. The forces of integration and obliteration threaten. With even small villages in eastern Turkey often having internet access, and with education and media in Turkish, how long can they hold out?