Death of Mgrdich Margosian (April 7, 2022)

Mgrdich Margosian was the last representative of Armenian provincial literature in the Armenian language.

He was born in the Khanchebek (“Gâvur” or “Infidels’ Quarter”) district of Diyarbakir on December 23, 1938. After receiving his primary education in local Turkish schools, he moved to Istanbul, where he studied at the Bezjian and Getronagan schools. He pursued higher education at the Faculty of Philosophy of Istanbul University.

During his time working as a supervisor and teacher at the Karageozian Orphanage, he founded the journal “To” along with his friend, the poet Varteres Karageozian (1959). Between 1966 and 1972, he served as the director of the Surp Khach School in Üsküdar and taught Armenian and philosophy. Later, he left the field of education and entered business.

He contributed articles and literary works to Armenian and Turkish publications. Some of his short stories published in the Marmara daily newspaper were later collected in his first book, “Those Parts of Ours” (1984), which was reissued in 1994.

In 1993, he co-founded the Aras Publishing House together with Yetvart and Payline Tovmasyan, Hrant Dink, and his brother Artashes Margosian. In 1999, he published his second book in Armenian, “From the Banks of the Tigris.” He also published four volumes of literary works in Turkish in 1995, 1998, 2006, and 2016. His Turkish-language articles, which had appeared over the years in various newspapers (Evrensel, Agos, Yeni Yüzyıl, and Yeni Gündem), were also collected in separate volumes.

Margosian’s “Those Parts of Ours” was published twice in Turkish and translated into Kurdish (in two editions) as well as into English. In 2022, a collection of his short stories came out in French.

Mgrdich Margosian passed away on April 7, 2022, in Istanbul and was buried in the Armenian cemetery of Şişli.