Starting in early 1915, the Ottoman Turks began deporting and killing hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the first major genocide of the twentieth century. By the end of the First World War, the ...number of Armenians in what would become Turkey had been reduced by 90 percent-more than a million people. A century later, the Armenian Genocide remains controversial but relatively unknown, overshadowed by later slaughters and the chasm separating Turkish and Armenian interpretations of events. In this definitive narrative history, Ronald Suny cuts through nationalist myths, propaganda, and denial to provide an unmatched account of when, how, and why the atrocities of 1915-16 were committed. Drawing on archival documents and eyewitness accounts, this is an unforgettable chronicle of a cataclysm that set a tragic pattern for a century of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman ...Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. Presenting these previously inaccessible documents along with expert context and analysis, Taner Akçam's most authoritative work to date goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a "crime against humanity and civilization," the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's "official history" rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that Akçam now uses to overturn the official narrative.
The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic.
By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.
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.
The Resistance Network is the history of an underground
network of humanitarians, missionaries, and diplomats in Ottoman
Syria who helped save the lives of thousands during the Armenian
Genocide. ...Khatchig Mouradian challenges depictions of Armenians as
passive victims of violence and subjects of humanitarianism,
demonstrating the key role they played in organizing a humanitarian
resistance against the destruction of their people. Piecing
together hundreds of accounts, official documents, and missionary
records, Mouradian presents a social history of genocide and
resistance in wartime Aleppo and a network of transit and
concentration camps stretching from Bab to Ras ul-Ain and Der Zor.
He ultimately argues that, despite the violent and systematic
mechanisms of control and destruction in the cities, concentration
camps, and massacre sites in this region, the genocide of the
Armenians did not progress unhindered-unarmed resistance proved an
important factor in saving countless lives.
Kurdische Erinnerungen an den Genozid an den Armeniern stellen die systematische Leugnung durch die türkischen Staatsstrukturen in Frage und eröffnen neue Möglichkeiten der Vergangenheitsbewältigung. ...Dieses Buch untersucht kurdische Biografien, insbesondere aus Van in der Türkei, und erforscht die Dynamik der miteinander verflochtenen Erinnerungsregime in Bezug auf die politische Gewalt an Armeniern und syrischen Christ*innen der osmanischen kaiserlichen Untertanen und an kurdischen Bürger*innen der Türkei. Diese Lebensgeschichten beleuchten die Komplexität des Erinnerns, einschließlich kollektiver und individueller Erinnerungsvorstellungen über Gewalt, Täterschaft und Opferrolle in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart.
Kurdish memories of the Armenian Genocide challenge the systematic denialism established by the Turkish state structures and foster new possibilities of coming to terms with the past. This book examines Kurdish biographies, especially from Van, Turkey, and explores the dynamics of intertwined remembrance regimes concerning the political violence on Armenians and Syriac Christians of Ottoman imperial subjects and on Kurdish citizens of Turkey. These life stories shed light on the complexity of remembering, including collective and individual memory of violence, perpetration, and victimhood from past and present.
Great Catastrophe de Waal, Thomas
2015, 2015-01-02, 2014-12-31
eBook
Drawing on archival sources, reportage and moving personal stories, de Waal tells the full story of Armenian-Turkish relations since the Genocide in all its extraordinary twists and turns. He looks ...behind the propaganda to examine the realities of a terrible historical crime and the divisive "politics of genocide" it produced.
How do victim and perpetrator peoples generate conflicting knowledge about genocide? Using a sociology of knowledge approach, Joachim J. Savelsberg answers this question in the context of the ...Armenian genocide committed during the First World War. Focusing on Armenians and Turks, Savelsberg examines strategies of silencing, denial, and acknowledgment in everyday interactions, public rituals, law, and politics. He draws on interviews, ethnographic accounts, documents, and eyewitness testimony to illuminate the social processes that drive dueling versions of history. Ultimately, this study reveals the counterproductive consequences of denial in an age of human rights hegemony, demonstrating the implications for populist disinformation campaigns against overwhelming evidence. “This pioneering book is critical for understanding the background to Turkish denial as the final stage of genocide. Savelsberg’s epistemic study is a warning against a revived shade of an Orwellian order, with its ‘alternative realities’ and ‘post-truths.’” CLAIRE MOURADIAN, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris “Knowledge denial is a deadly phenomenon and an urgent problem. Through painstaking research, unrivaled expertise, and ethical commitment, Joachim J. Savelsberg illuminates how mass harm has been negated or acknowledged.” LOIS PRESSER, author of Inside Story: How Narratives Drive Mass Harm “Savelsberg has done a brilliant job in this unique work that for the first time analyzes the Armenian genocide from the vantage point of knowledge construction. A must-read for all interested in collective violence, social movements, and sociology of knowledge.” FATMA MÜGE GÖÇEK, author of Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009
"Consequences of Denial" seeks to provide some awareness and understanding of the horrendous tragedy of the Armenian genocide. This book illuminates the little known fact that over two million ...innocent Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Empire between 1894 and 1922; a genocide that has been, and continues to be, denied by successive Turkish governments. In this book, the author demonstrates the need not only for remembrance, but first and foremost for the acknowledgement of genocides, from government level downwards. Only by taking adequate steps at personal, group, national and international levels to acknowledge such massacres, and the trauma they create, can humankind attempt to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. By documenting the psychological effects of the forgotten Armenian genocide and by linking these effects to crossgenerational trauma and processes of response and denial, this book aims to shed light from a psychoanalytic perspective on an insufficiently researched aspect of this genocide.
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University ...Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the University of Minnesota. Learn more at the TOME website, available at openmonographs.org.
How do victims and perpetrators generate conflicting knowledge about genocide? Using a sociology of knowledge approach, Savelsberg answers this question for the Armenian genocide committed in the context of the First World War. Focusing on Armenians and Turks, he examines strategies of silencing, denial, and acknowledgment in everyday interaction, public rituals, law, and politics. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic accounts, documents, and eyewitness testimony, Savelsberg illuminates the social processes that drive dueling versions of history. He reveals counterproductive consequences of denial in an age of human rights hegemony, with implications for populist disinformation campaigns against overwhelming evidence.
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