Turkey celebrates Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May. This tradition was established in the United States of America in 1914 and became popular around the world. According to ermenihaber.am, on this occasion, Turkey’s Agos Armenian Weekly is paying its tribute to the Armenian mothers who survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and who had the heaviest burden on their shoulders and felt the greatest pain, which has been expressed in songs as well. There are both Turkish and Armenian songs among the songs registered by the Verjine Svazlian Foundation.

Agos particularly presents the songs expressing the pain of mothers having lost their children, including the songs “Urfa’nın Etrafı Dumanlı Dağlar”
(“Misty Mountains Around Urfa”), “Ben Yavrumu Özlerim” (“I Miss My Child”), “Ah keşke doğmayaydım, yavrumun anası olmayaydım” (“Oh, If Only I Wasn’t Born And Didn’t Have A Child”).

“Misty Mountains Around Urfa”

(registered by Hagop Gyurjian in 1985)

A deer spins around Urfa,

Looking for the offspring it has lost,

Deer, my heart is struck like yours,

I sought, but didn’t heal my wound.

Misty mountains around Urfa,

Let me pass, misty mountains,

My son is in the distance,

He’s crying, screaming.

“I Miss My Child”

(registered by Anitsa Tokatlian in 1988)

I’ll get up, I won’t unbuckle my belt,

May the words of my child not fall from my chest.

The words of my child, more bitter than even poison.

-Don’t cry, mother, I will come again,

I will come in your dreams in fifteen days.

“Oh, If Only I Wasn’t Born And Didn’t Have A Child”

(registered by Azganush Abikian in 1986)

If only I was a rock, under the staircase,

When my son would go up and come down, I would kiss his foot.

If only I wasn’t born and didn’t have a child.