Edited by Stephan Astourian and Raymond Kévorkian
750 pages, bibliog., index
“This excellent volume combines cutting-edge work from some of the most prominent experts on mass violence in Turkey with a clear conceptual through-line.” • Matthias Bjørnlund, Danish Institute for Study Abroad
“This work represents a solid endeavor that brings together multi-disciplinary research on various aspects of mass violence in Turkey and ties mass violence to national-identity construction from the late Ottoman period to the present day.” • Janet Klein, University of Akron
Turkey has gone through significant transformations over the last century—from the Ottoman Empire and Young Turk era to the Republic of today—but throughout it has demonstrated troubling continuities in its encouragement and deployment of mass violence. In particular, the construction of a Muslim-Turkish identity has been achieved in part by designating “internal enemies” at whom public hatred can be directed. This volume provides a wide range of case studies and historiographical reflections on the alarming recurrence of such violence in Turkish history, as atrocities against varied ethnic-religious groups from the nineteenth century to today have propelled the nation’s very sense of itself.
Stephan Astourian is the William Saroyan Director of the Armenian Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also an Associate Adjunct Professor in Armenian and Caucasian history in its Department of History.
Raymond Kévorkian is a historian, Director of research emeritus at the Institut Français de Géopolitique (Université Paris 8, Saint-Denis), and President of Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Foundation (Erevan). He is the author of works on the Ottoman Armenian society, especially on mass violence.
Foreword
Introduction (download PDF)
Raymond H. Kévorkian
PART I: CASE STUDIES IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Chapter 1. On the Genealogy of the Armenian-Turkish Conflict, Sultan Abdülhamid, and the Armenian Massacres
Stephan H. Astourian
Chapter 2. The Long Assyrian Genocide
David Gaunt
Chapter 3. The Hamidian Massacres: Gendered Violence, Biopolitics, and National Honor
Aysenur Korkmaz
Chapter 4. On Collective Responsibility in the Extermination of Ottoman Armenians
Raymond H. Kévorkian
Chapter 5. The Final Phase: The Cleansing of Armenian and Greek Survivors (1919–1922)
Raymond H. Kévorkian
Chapter 6. Collective State Violence against Greeks in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1821–1923
George Shirinian
PART II: CASE STUDIES IN REPUBLICAN TURKEY
Chapter 7. The Attempted Pogrom Against the Jews of Thrace, June–July 1934
Rifat Bali
Chapter 8. A History of Armenians Remaining in Turkey: Survival and Denial
Talin Suciyan
Chapter 9. The Events of September 6–7, 1955: Greeks, Armenians, and Jews within the Context of the Strategies of the Turkish Republic
Dilek Güven
Chapter 10. State Violences in “Kurdistan”
Mesut Yeğen
Chapter 11. Physical and Epistemic Violence against Alevis in Modern Turkey
Markus Dressler
Chapter 12. Inscriptions of Denial of the Armenian Genocide in Memory Narrations from Dersim
Annika Törne
Chapter 13. The Yazidis: Resilience in Times of Violence
Caroline Schneider
PART III: THEMATIC ESSAYS
Chapter 14. “Who Did This to Us?” Blaming the Enemies as Part of Turkey’s Authoritarian Political Culture
Uǧur Derin
Chapter 15. Violence and Its Masks: History and Nation
Etienne Copeaux
Chapter 16. Public Violence in Turkey (19th–21st Centuries)
Hans-Lukas Kieser
Chapter 17. Structures of Power, Coercion, and Violence in Republican Turkey
Hamit Bozarslan
In Lieu of a Conclusion: Shapes, Legitimation, and Legacies of Violence in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey
Stephan H. Astourian
Index