What if the movie Titanic had been directed in Türkiye? Its story would have begun in eastern Türkiye’s Bingöl province, and its main characters would have been five young Ottoman Armenians. Yes, you heard that right. This is how their story began.
The Titanic, the world’s largest and most luxurious steamship, set sail from Southampton, England, for New York on April 10, 1912, on its maiden voyage. Its slogan was highly provocative: “Even God cannot sink it.” Everything went smoothly until the visible tip of the iceberg appeared. After collecting its passengers from several European ports, the ship headed toward New York. On the fifth day of the voyage, at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg. At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, it broke in two, sank and disappeared into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
The sinking took nearly three hours, during which a desperate struggle for survival unfolded on board. A total of 710 people, a considerable number of whom were first- and second-class passengers, managed to escape in lifeboats. The order of rescue effectively ran from the wealthy to the poor. In other words, when disaster struck, the wealthy were among the first to be saved. This was why only around one-third of the 2,224 people on board survived.
Most of the 1,514 victims died from hypothermia caused by the freezing water. Death came rapidly, often in less than 15 minutes. Those who remained trapped in their cabins and went down with the ship also lost their lives within a short time.
The Titanic was, in every sense, a ship of dreams. Thousands of people wanted to pursue the dream it represented: Some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as poor passengers who had placed all their hopes in this voyage. That was the visible tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface lay the story of five men from Bingöl.
The hopes of five Ottoman Armenians from the Kiğı district of Bingöl who wanted to reach America were also aboard that ship. Neshan Krekorian, Arsen Sirayanian, Artin Zakarian, David Vartanian and Mapriededer Zakarian were all in their 20s. Their journey began in Kiğı, where they had been born and raised. They first walked for a week to Trabzon and then traveled by ship to the port of Marseille. There, hope appeared before them in the form of the Titanic, which they saw advertised by a travel agency.
According to the records, the five Armenians, who were listed as laborers, boarded the Titanic at the French port of Cherbourg. They purchased their third-class tickets for 7 British pounds, reportedly with the help of a small bribe. On the fifth day of their voyage, they witnessed the tragic disaster. The ship shook with a deafening crash. When they attempted to leave their cabin to discover what had happened, they realized that the doors would not open. The ship had an automatic locking system intended to prevent third-class passengers from entering areas reserved for first- and second-class passengers, and that system had been activated during the accident.
David and Neshan managed to break the lock on their cabin. The others were not as fortunate. When David and Neshan emerged, they saw pieces of ice scattered across the floor. Without wasting any time, they began climbing toward the upper decks.
There was widespread panic. Passengers who had paid tens of thousands of dollars for luxurious cabins wanted to be the first to leave the ship. The available lifeboats were lowered into the sea one after another, primarily for them.
David managed to reach Lifeboat No. 13, while Neshan reached Lifeboat No. 10. In fact, neither man was formally admitted to a boat. They survived by jumping into the lifeboats as they were being lowered toward the water. Of the five men from Kiğı, only David and Neshan survived. Their families in Bingöl learned about their connection to the disaster only months later, as they had not even known that the men had boarded the Titanic.
After surviving the sinking, David and Neshan traveled together to Ontario, Canada. David later settled in the United States. Born in Kiğı on April 15, 1890, he married Mary Baidzar in 1911. After leaving Bingöl, he sent letters to his wife but received no reply for a long time. He began to believe that she had died, although he could never be certain. Following years of determination and persistent effort, he finally managed to contact her.
Exactly 11 years had passed since their separation. After all that time, David and his wife were reunited at Niagara Falls. They later settled in Pennsylvania before moving to Detroit in 1940. David, who had three children, died there on Aug. 3, 1966.
As Neshan later recalled, when he escaped from the cabin in which they had been packed together like chickens, he saw an iceberg for the first time in his life. What happened afterward is already known. Neshan married Persia Vartanian in Canada in 1918 and worked for General Motors for the rest of his life, until his death in 1978.
The Titanic was the first and last ship Neshan ever boarded. According to his daughter, he would no longer even go near the water. Whenever he looked at it, the memory of that night could be seen clearly in his eyes.
In 2019, the descendants of the two survivors began planning a visit to Kiğı for the following year to see where their ancestors’ journey had begun. However, the trip was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and ultimately never took place.
Today, if you visit the Titanic Belfast museum, you can see the names of those who survived the disaster. Among them are Neshan Krekorian and David Vartunian, the two men from Kiğı who survived the sinking.
Of course, everyone tells a story from their own point of view. When Hollywood tells the story of the Titanic, it places Jack and Rose at its center. Yet had the same story been told through Türkiye’s eyes – or had Türkiye possessed producers with Hollywood’s global influence – it would have begun in Bingöl, passed through the Titanic and ultimately returned to Bingöl.