The Armenian Minority of Turkey

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."

"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."

For previous generations life was even tougher.

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.

There is a similar tragedy behind every Armenian door here, but the local patriarch has banned his community from discussing it - if they want to keep their jobs in Armenian churches and schools.

"It's fear," Anush told me simply.

As we talked into the warm evening, and glasses of tea gave way to Armenian cognac, I began to understand the price people like that choir master pay to live in peace in Turkey.

To many Armenians abroad their silence is a sort of treachery. For Anush, Vartan and the others it is about protecting a fragile peace.

But it is all built on the shakiest of foundations.

"I am positive. I do have hopes for Turkey," Anush told me as I put on my shoes to go.

"But I don't remember ever feeling truly comfortable living here. Always at the back of my mind is the thought that one day I may be forced to leave."