Elizabeth Angell, (Independent Scholar)
“Inventing Hatay: Diversity and History in the Sanjak of Alexandretta”
This paper examines the post-Ottoman transformation of the Sanjakof Alexandretta from part of Mandate Syria into the short-lived independent republicof Hatay, and then the eighty-second province of the Republic of Turkey. When the region's status came before the League of Nations as a matter ofdispute in 1936, local Turkish nationalists and the Turkish state embarked upona political-ideological project designed redefine the Sanjak as part of aTurkish Anatolian homeland. Drawing on Turkish sources and the diplomaticpapers of colonial powers, I analyze the process by which Turkish nationalists(as well as European colonial officials) sought to map the extremelyheterogeneous population of the Sanjak into new categories defined by thenation-state ideal and the concept of "minorities." I arguethat their rhetoric reflected the early Kemalist state's contradictory attitudetowards diversity, both in the creation of different categories of belonging,and in the paradoxical insistence on (forced) assimilation as a viable routeinto the national community. The academic establishment of the new TurkishRepublic played a key role in this process. Scholars and politiciansstrove to make the Sanjak's population legible to the Kemalist state byrenaming it "Hatay," and declaring its inhabitants--in particular,the Arabic-speaking Alawite or Nusayri community--to be "HittiteTurks." I suggest that the invention of Hatay was part of thebroader process of defining and negotiating the terms of membership in theTurkish nation in this period. I will also briefly discuss post-1939developments in Hatay, in the context of the Turkish state's fraught relationshipswith diversity and national historiography.
Kabir Tambar (University of Chicago)
“Politics, Theology, Alevism”
One common manner of distinguishing the Ottoman empire fromthe Turkish republic is by reference to the constitutional doctrine of secularism. As one of the six arrows of Kemalism, secularism is often thought to be aproduct of the republican revolution. Recent scholarship argues against thishistorical narrative, both because it fails to acknowledge the continuities ofgovernance that cut across this transition (Meeker 2002) and because it failsto acknowledge that secularism only became a constitutional principle in 1937rather than in the first years of the republic (Davison 1998). Secularismthus points to both a longer and a shorter trajectory than the Empire-to-Nationnarrative would suggest. Nonetheless, this narrative of the rupturebetween an Islamic Ottoman empire and a secular Turkish republic continues tofind political currency, and no where so strongly as among Turkey's largestreligious minority, the Alevi. The narrative of secular rupture grounds Alevicriticism of their past oppression and their continued discrimination. Secularism, in other words, not only functions as a crucial if inaccuratecrux of Turkish national historiography; it also functions as a language ofcriticism through which Alevis can make demands on the state. At theintersection of national historiography and political criticism, secularismoperates as an organizing trope in the production of an Alevi politics ofdifference. This paper explores how narratives of a secular rupturing ofimperial governance mediate ideas of oppression and liberation that shapecontemporary Alevi identity. I argue that the politics of secularismcomes to be entangled in efforts to define a theology of Alevism. Throughthe concept of secularism, Alevis inscribe themselves into the narratives ofthe nation, as they make claims to religious difference. Secularism, Isuggest, contributes not merely to an ideological distortion of Turkishhistory, but also to the political and theological limits of Aleviself-understanding.
İlker Cörüt (Boğaziçi University)
“A Critical Survey of Recent Literature on Non-MuslimMinorities in Ottoman-Turkish Historiography”
The decline of nation-states and of the teleology of themodern with the rise of globalization has made it possible to conceive of thepast as a source of alternative historical trajectories rather than merely as aroute to the present. In accordance with this new conceptualization of past andpresent, nation-state and nationalism are no longer seen as the results of thenatural-rational evolution of macro political-social organizations but more ashistorical accidents that have led to many tragic ethnic confrontations andmassacres. In such a context, there is a growing literature based on thecritique of nation-states’ discriminatory politics towards minority groups.Concomitantly, the empires that preceded many of today’s nation-states draw theattention of many historians as alternatives to nation-states, and are assumedto have been capable of providing multi-cultural settings in whichdifferent ethnic-religious groups tolerated each other and co-existedpeacefully. We can find the reflections of this general tendency inOttoman-Turkish historiography, which tells about the tragic experiences ofminority groups (Greeks, Armenians, Jews) after the emergence of Turkishnationalism and the foundation of theTurkish Republic.
This literature contributes to the critique of Turkishnationalism by giving voice to the oppressed experiences of minority groups andhistoricizing the nationalist ideology, it cannot radicalize its critique sinceit is characterized by multiculturalism that desocializes the process of theformation of ethnic identities and the nationalist ideology.
This paper aims to make a critical analysis of recentliterature on non-Muslim minorities in Ottoman-Turkish historiography byemphasizing the political implications of the multiculturalist epistemology ofthese studies in the recent political climate of Turkey that witnesses a risingaggressive racist-fascist movement.
Ozan Aksoy (Graduate Center, CUNY)
“Blindspots in Music Scholarship of the Ottoman Era andTurkish Republic”
This paper is going to discuss changes in the definition ofwhat constitutes "our" music in the course of the transition periodfrom Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic (TR). I will demonstrate that there hasnot been a substantial transformation even though the official cultural policyof TR and the Turanists pursued an aggressive homogenization policy. The firstscholars who visited Turkey, like Bartok, Reinhard, and Melikoff, were made tobelieve that the Republic had “modernized” and thus improved in the musicallife of Turkey based on a musical reformation (i.e. Westernization). Thosescholars were led astray by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Turkish Radioand Television (TRT), both of which aimed to guide them to visit only theTurkish or Turkmen villages, limiting the recordings only to them, excludingKurds, Armenians, Alevis, and so on.
The alternative scholarship has been limited to aninsistence on the theory that the emergence of an ill-guided transition from amulti-national empire into a modern republic resulted in an unfortunatedeformation and degeneration in musics in Turkey. The tension between the Sacred& Secular, Ottoman & Turkish, Sark & Garb, Alaturka & Alafranga,Arabesk & Nonarabesk, NonTurkish & Turkish and the appropriation of thelatter in all cases by official cultural policy, that was also shared by manyscholars, have led to significant blind spots in music scholarship. Just as thelack of attention to the Armenian Ashugs (wandering minstrels) in the Alevirepertoire, there are many other blind spots in the music scholarship historyof the Ottoman and Turkish Republic that this paper is going to address.
Öznur Akkuş (Independent Scholar)
“Strategies and memory in the aftermath of Genocide: TheArmenians of Dersim”
This paper focuses on the case of survivors of the Armenian Genocide in Tunceli (formerly Dersim).
Deprived from their social and religious institutions which had enabled the Armenian language and religion to survive, they were instead given (and had to adopt) a "Turkish/Muslim" identity and consequently melted into the Kurdish Muslim population, which was the majority group in the region. Although the Armenians of Tunceli met the same fate as the Kurds in 1936, rural exodus, and particularly emigration to France, distinguished the Armenians from the locals, as many of theirs descendants used diverse strategies to reunite with their co-religionists in Turkey or France.
Based on testimonies gathered from that Armenian population, this papers aims to document various life trajectories and the conditions under which have they emerged by asking:
How can we understand the conversion or Turkification of those "forgotten"Armenians? What are the strategies used by those "anonymous Armenians" to join their co-religionists Armenians in other parts of Turkey or France? What is their assertion of being part of the Armenian community based on? How do they perceive themselves? How are they perceived? Is "collective memory" an appropriate expression to designate the memory of for those Armenians? And finally, who are the agents that transmit this memory?
Kadir Üstün (Columbia University)
“Rethinking the Origins of Ottoman and TurkishModernization”
My proposed paper will attempt to reveal and challenge someof the common assumptions about Ottoman/Turkish modernization through a studyof the changes that took place during the reign of Selim III, known as Nizam-ıCedid (the New Order), 1789-1807. It will also try to offer an alternativeconception of Nizam-ı Cedid in light of the recent revisioniststudies.
Our understanding of Nizam-ı Cedid has beenshaped by historians of various time periods (Ottoman, Republican, andcontemporary) and of various convictions such as westernist, nationalist,republican, Marxist, religious etc. Interestingly, this variety is rarelyreflected when one studies the history of Nizam-ı Cedid. The commonthread in these studies is that they present Nizam-ı Cedid as thebeginning of a long trajectory of modernization. According to the so-calledmodernization paradigm, a conflict between tradition and modernity becameunavoidable in the Ottoman Empire thanks to the military, political, economic,and ideological advances of the Europeans accomplished in the 18thcentury and earlier. The struggle between the religious-minded conservative ulemawith their janissary allies and the reform-minded enlightened bureaucraticelite would eventually yield a victory for the forces of progress and modernitywith the birth of the new Turkish Republic.
The historiography as such suffers from eurocentricism inits emphasis of Western superiority, a teleological approach for imagining anunbroken chain of efforts at modernization, Orientalist dichotomies namelytradition versus modernity, and an elitist view for neglecting the significanceof the popular resistance against the Nizam-ı Cedid by thecommunity at large.
I will first try to present a picture of the “reality on theground”; heavy toll of the Austro-Russian wars on the empire, burdening of thepopulation with heavy taxes to finance Nizam-ı Cedid, thedisturbance of the balance between military and social groups. Then, I will tryto reach an alternative understanding of Nizam-ı Cedid through ananalysis of the terms “order” and “discipline” which are widely used in thearchival documents of the time. Such an analysis, I hope, will allow us to saymore about the “rationale” of the new measures and to examine whether theyamount to the “beginnings of modernization” or they reflect a different realityemancipated from the bounds of modernization paradigm.
Mehmet Döşemeci (Columbia University)
“Talking Turkey about Europe: The EEC and the TurkishSocio-imaginary”
In the past 15 years, Turkish-EU relations have served asthe quintessential site for official, lay, and academic discussions on Turkey’sliminal engagement with Western modernity. Over this time, this site hasbeen structured by a set of stipulations that must be fulfilled before Turkscan ‘become fully European’. For this reason, Turkish integration withthe EU has fostered, if not birthed, many of the assumptions over Turkey’s‘backwardness’, ‘Easternness’, and ‘belated modernity’. Yet, despite theapparent complicity of Turkish-EU relations in disseminating such narrativesthe earlier history of Turkey’s integration into the then EEC stands as anoverlooked platform; one redolent of a very different story.
This paper discusses how Turks spoke about integration withthe EEC from 1968 to 1980 and how through this they understoodthemselves. The usual narrative of EEC-Turkish relations jumps over thesedozen years, a period marked by a mutual souring of relations, seeing it as athorn in the teleology of integration. Yet, for many Turks in the 1970’s,the EEC served as a sounding board through which they imagined Turkey, itsstate, its culture, and its people. I argue how these new understandingsof Turkey were made possible by a correlative shift in Turkey’s experience ofmodernity: a shift from modernity truncated as modernization theory, wheremodernity itself was both spatially (Western world) and temporally (as Turkey’sfuture) external to Turkey, to an experience of modernity proper as theconscious capacity of society for radical self-alteration. I will examinehow the various postures Turks took towards the EEC in this period(re)conceived the Turkish project in different ways. I argue that thesenew conceptualizations illuminated some of the contradictions in Ataturk’svision for modern Turkey, contradictions that paralleled and underscored thoseof the project of modernity itself.
Zeynep Gönen (SUNY Binghamton)
“Punishment, policing and regulation in Turkey, from thelate nineteenth century to the present.”
There is no more commonplace illustration of the need for‘modernization’ of ‘traditional’ societal practices than the ‘archaic’ penal systemsin the peripheral countries, such as Turkey. Arbitrary practices of thepolice, torture, and unhygienic and overcrowded institutions since the lateOttoman period to the present day Turkey have justified the narrative ofTurkey’s ‘failed’ modernity and the need to ‘modernize’ its institutions.Similar readings of penal institutions and of nature of societies in theperiphery are abundant. Especially with Foucault’s intervention, the inquiriesof penal institutions almost inevitably reflected on the condition and themeaning of modernity. The elements of punishment delineated in the Westernhistoriography were imprinted as the modern form, allowing for an investigationof those elements elsewhere. The problems of modernization paradigm thus werereincarnated in such formulations.
In this paper, through a conceptualization of modernity as aglobal phenomenon, I will argue those different modes of punishment (depictedas ‘humanitarian’ vs. ‘traditional’ methods) together constitute modernpunishment situated within the world-historical relations. By concentrating onpenal institutions and practices during late Ottoman Empire and neoliberalperiod in Turkey, I will argue that so-called ‘traditional’ practices wereintegral elements of global capitalist modernity and formative of modernizationprojects in peripheral societies. I will demonstrate how the‘modernizing’ regimes in Ottoman-Turkey have in fact relied on and replenishedthose very ‘archaic’ and authoritarian forms of penalty for regulating and managingthe populations. Such institutions and abuses are not simply signs of ‘failure’of the peripheral societies, but the techniques employed in the constitution ofmodern capitalist order. A comparative reading with both Western andnon-Western geographies, moreover, will help refute understanding Turkish penalsystem as an oddity in its violent techniques, but recognize similarexperiences and practices elsewhere, in an effort to conceptualize modernpunishment as a contradictory and relational category.
Nurçin İleri (Boğaziçi University)
“The Illumination of the Istanbul Streets at the Turn ofthe Century”
In the late nineteenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire spent aparticular effort in order to keep order in the streets and socialize andbeautify the streets as well. This paper aims to underline the importance ofthe illumination of the streets in the context of socialization and regulationof the streets in Ottoman society and specifically in Istanbul. The purposes ofstreet lighting may be introduced as protection from accidents, prevention ofcrime, increase of comfort and convenience, increase of attractiveness as well.However, taking into consideration modern governmental policies of the Ottomanstate in the late nineteenth century, we should consider on the meanings ofillumination from different historiographic perspectives. The Istanbulmunicipality spent a particular effort to keep the night hours under theircontrol through the illumination of the streets. In the scope of keepingsecurity and preventing crime rates, this control mechanism also strengthen theauthority and legitimize the power of the government in the public life ofOttoman society.
This paper intends to scrutinize the institutionaldevelopment of the illumination of the streets with coal gas and how theIstanbul government conveyed the necessity of the illumination of the streets,which is even today, constitute big problems and discussions. However, what ismore important for this study is questioning how the Ottoman people reactedagainst the street lighting and what the illumination of the streets changed indaily lives of the Istanbul people.
“Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Confrontation orAccommodation?”
The ‘secularization thesis’ and much of the secularizationliterature involve the assumption of conflict between religion and state.Similarly, much of the literature on the Turkish modernization holds theassumption that secularism is based on the conflict between the (secular) stateand Islam, seeing this process simply in dichotomous terms such asEnlightenment vs. obscurantism, progress vs. reaction (Berkes, Engin, Lewis, Tunayaetc.). However, recent studies have shown that the church-state separation is notso clear neither in the West nor in the non-Western world. The application intheory and practice of the concept of secularism the Muslim world in particularhas also been widely criticized. Similarly, the most recent trend in theliterature on Ottoman-Turkish modernization emphasizes ‘Islamization’ as wellas secularization (Kara, Mardin etc.). Building on these latest trends, Iexamine the views of two leading figures -one intellectual, the otherpolitician- in the secularization of Turkey: Ziya Gökalp, the prominentideologue of secularism, and Ataturk, the champion of secularism and the mostimportant political actor in Turkish modernization. By analyzing the views ofthe leading representatives of secularism, I aim to show that the relationshipbetween Islam and secularism was, even for secularists, one of accommodation,rather than confrontation, in the first quarter of the 20th century.My method is the Foucauldian discourse analysis that conceptualizes discourseas constitutive and constructive of social relations and identities, and of theinterdependency of discursive practices. The analysis of these texts from thisperspective can give important clues about the nature of the secularizationprocess in Turkey, which, I argue, was dominated by an Islamic discourse-widely employed, even by secularists- from 1839 up until 1924 –when variousradical reforms started by Ataturk to further secularize the state. I contendthat this discursive strategy -that was inclusive of Islam- was adopted for legitimationpurposes in a Muslim society, because Islam was too powerful to challengeopenly. Therefore, Turkey’s experience presents an alternative path tosecularization, rather than simply being a variant of the secularism;for this process involves a re-definition of the role of Islam in the publicsphere, rather than an open conflict with it in Turkey.
Nada Moumtaz (Graduate Center, CUNY)
“Interrogating law and private property: the Ottoman LandCode (1858) and the Lebanese Real Estate Property Code (1930) in a comparativeperspective.”
Unlike the Turkish Republic, which came into being (more orless) directly after the Ottoman empire, the Lebanese Republic first existed in1922, and up to 1943, as the French Mandate of Greater Lebanon. Thenarratives of continuity with the Ottoman empire have hence beendoubly-silenced, by national myths and the colonial encounter.
In an attempt to examine continuities as well as discursivebreaks between Ottoman and Republican Lebanon as to practices and conceptionsof property, this paper brings together the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 (and itsvarious addenda) and the Lebanese-under-French-Mandate Real-Estate PropertyCode of 1930, which still forms the backbone of the present code. Building on Maine and Hohfeld, this paper avoids the use of the distinctionprivate/ public, and attempts to think of property as a bundle of rights,privileges, powers, immunities, duties and liabilities. With such anapproach, the paper can examine in new light the work of the Ottoman and Frenchcodes in relation to the debate of privatization of miri land. It arguesthat, in both codes, the presence of a multiplicity of rights, that can be heldby different hands, provides proof that the “exclusive and absolute privateproperty” is more a hegemonic conception than a legal reality. It showsthe presence of claims and restraints imposed on property owners byothers. Finally, the paper brings out the changes in the underlyingconceptions of the “good” on the basis of which the Ottoman and French stateswere making these claims and restrictions were made.
Faik Umut Őzsu (University of Toronto, Faculty ofLaw)
“‘Receiving’ the Swiss Civil Code: The Socio-LegalReconfiguration of ‘Womankind’ in Early Republican Turkey”
It has long been recognized that Kemalist ideology adopted implicitlygendered models for the conceptualization of relations between state andsociety: while the former was generally associated with the positivisticprogressivism of the “masculine” West, the latter was typically affiliated withthe fatalistic parochialism of the “feminine” East. In addition to this,however, is a second, and far more invasive, sense in which gender can be saidto have underpinned the normative infrastructure of Kemalism. This concerns themanner in which the competing claims of “modernity” and “tradition” werebrought to bear upon the process of fashioning the “emancipated butrespectable” woman of the Republic, the everyday embodiment of theintelligentsia’s vision of a territorially delimited, economicallyself-sufficient, and ethno-linguistically homogeneous nation-state that wouldbe capable of retaining its hold on indigenous customs while securing its placein what Woodrow Wilson referred to as the “family of civilized nations”. Aftercanvassing both modes of gendered identity, I will provide a brief discussionof the Turkish Civil Code of 1926, a contextually nuanced “translation” of theSwiss Civil Code of 1907. My principal objective here will be to demonstratenot only that the 1926 code, when considered as a totality, may be regarded asa carefully crafted hybrid of the Ottoman (or, more precisely, Hanafi Islamic)and Swiss (or, more broadly construed, Western) legal traditions, but that itsmost celebrated and operationally salient provisions may themselves beunderstood as rough-and-ready compromises between what Ziya Gökalp, chieftheoretician of Turkish nationalism, called the opposing demands of “culture” (hars)and “civilization” (medeniyet). Tying the two components of the papertogether, I will conclude by arguing that neither the existence of textualdiscrepancies between the Turkish and Swiss codes nor the presence of variouslags and lacunae in the former’s implementation record can be explained in theabsence of a broader account of the mechanisms through which genderedidentities came to be reconfigured as part of the Kemalists’ drive to constructa re-galvanized nation on the back of a restructured state.
Saneta DeVuono Powell (University of California atBerkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law)
“Solutions in the Source”
The development of water law in western nations has beenpredicated on the notion of water being an infinite resource, allowing for itto be conceptualized as private property. However, as the scarcity of cleanwater has increased, western law has struggled over conceptualization of wateras a commodity and a common good. This paper looks at the development of waterlaw in the Middle East1 and suggests that many of the "new"conceptions of how to deal with the laws of water in "western"jurisprudence mimic the manner in which the jurisprudence of water developed inthe Middle East starting in the 9th century B.C.
Charting the creation of a highly developed framework forwater allocation formally codified by the Ottoman Empire, incorporated Bedouinpractices, Talmudic law and shari'a in addition to other local customs, thispaper suggests that recent developments in western water law (like equitableutilization and the public trust doctrine) are neither new nor necessarilysecular. What is striking about this "new" legal conception of waterin the west is that its only reference to the Middle East is to suggest thatthe region should consider adopting these western principles, ignoring the factthat the Middle East has a long and well documented history of regional wateruse based on common goods theories. These concepts were formally codified bythe Ottoman Empire with the Mejelle code, which represented an administrativesynthesis of local practices into one system lasting until the end of World WarI (when the region was partitioned by the allies with little regard fornatural water resources). Ultimately, this paper suggests that the realities ofwater problems worldwide require regional solutions that pre-date the modernnotion of nation state and that current nation states are not equipped to solveon their own.
Ceren Özgül (Graduate Center, CUNY)
“Legal Conversions: Thinking about Violence, Religion andLegal Reform in the 19th Century Ottoman Empire”
Taking as its historical point of departure the cases ofconversion of Ottoman Armenians to Islam in the 19th Century, this paperaddresses the implications of the modern Ottoman State's efforts to secularizethe legal realm and redefine the terms of state's sovereignty over itssubjects. It proposes that conversion, initiated by state violence,
was a tool to establish the terms of belonging and loyaltyto the "modern" state. The unity of "modern community" isconstructed through the means of both secular law and state violence by theemerging modern Ottoman State as a religiously homogeneous one even though thestate is becoming "secular." This paper emphasizes the strongrelationship between the legal reform and religion rather than (mis)recognizingthe reform as a complete separation between religion and state. The seemingly"controversial" character of the act of conversion is not due to thefailure of a modernizing state to secularize its laws but drives its force fromthe bureaucratic reform of the Ottoman Law. Violence and legal reform were twocomplementary tools that the modern state uses to create the loyal citizen andmaintain its sovereignty. In this sense, a new importance was assigned toreligion in establishing the "loyal majority."
“Bridging the Gulf: Creating a New Ottoman Historiographyof the Emirates of the Persian Gulf: The Case of Qatar”
Perhaps among the biggest Ottoman historiographical “blindspots” is the Persian Gulf. Other than a brief focus on Ottoman connectionsto Kuwait after the 1990 Iraqi invasion, this hasn’t been an active field ofinquiry in Arabic, English or Turkish. For over a century, Englishlanguage Gulf historiography ascribed centrality to Britain and its steadilyincreasing interests in the region, with Gulf history being mapped throughBritish archives. Arabic language Gulf historiography, which emerged inthe last 30 years, followed this model. And revisiting an Ottoman Gulfhas been all but ignored in the Turkish language historiography.
There is, however, a small group of scholars who haveemerged since 1997 and put the Gulf back into the Ottoman map. Thisdevelopment has important historiographic implications, not only because itintroduces “balance” in the region, but also due to those who use Ottoman archival material on the Gulf, an extremelyrich and untapped resource has been introduced. Yet the exploration of anOttoman Gulf has brought a dynamic to the surface: nationalistichistoriography. The Ottoman period and Ottoman records now serve asarenas for reinforcing preexisting historiographic trends or for reviving oldclaims. Those few Arabic works on the Ottoman period often serve thepurpose of justifying the long-term leadership of ruling families or a nationalraison d'etre. The handful of Turkish works denounces the old Britishclaims in the region, and British archive-based historiography, within the larger framework ofproving Ottoman sovereignty.
While an overview of these Gulf historiographicaldevelopments will be addressed in the paper, the specific archival andnationalistic strategies will be demonstrated through an analysis of Qatarihistoriography. A disaggregation of issues of “sovereignty” and questionsabout local agency can be explored from within a critical view of the locationof Qatar in the new Ottoman historiography.
Sanem Güvenç-Salgırlı (SUNY Binghamton)
“Which State, Which Modernity? Specters of Nationalism in Turkish Historiography since the 1990s”
The main object of this paper is the recent scholarship onOttoman Empire and Early Republican Turkey, which is formed from the late 1970sonwards. Discussions on how the Ottoman Empire modernized or westernized innineteenth and twentieth centuries had dominated discussions of the earlierperiods of 1950s, 60s and 70s. The novel element in the current scholarship isthe diminished importance attributed to the Early Republican period as theculmination of modernity, and to the subsequent perception of Mustafa Kemal Ataturkas the sole creator of that moment. Yet, the irony in this situation is thatdisenchantment with this particular historical moment did not result in aparallel demystification of the idea of state. In other words, questioning thefoundations of the nation-state did not lead into leaving state-centeredmentality behind. Despite its strong rejection, newly growing literature on thehistory of modernization is as much state-centered as its predecessors. Thisbecomes apparent in its aim to locate the origin of modernization tonineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, and change the primary actor from earlyRepublican to Ottoman state elite. The specter of nationalism haunts thescholarship through the unproblematized perception of modernization, whichsimplifies the matter into a choice between a nostalgic idea of a multiculturalOttoman Empire, and the homogenous and monolithic nationhood of the Republicanperiod.
Seçil Yılmaz (Boğaziçi University)
“Neo-Conservative Memory in Exhibition: Miniatürk”
“Miniatürk: Showcase of Turkey”, presents a clearmodel for the post-1980s exhibition projects in the sense of both its physicalconstruction and the content of the narration. Both the former and latterserved as the basis of experiences that were quite distinctive than museums inthe modern sense. Basically, focused on the role of reviving the dead memoriesof the cultural and social geography where the initial modernization practiceswere bodily represented during the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, the Miniaturk exhibition complex situated on the shore of theGolden Horn, as a tool of a nostalgic remembrance through the contents itcovers with the aura of a fairy tale.
In this study, first of all, it is aimed to analyze thenarration in the body of the Miniaturk as an “exhibitionary complex” as arecent example of a neo-conservative approach. The selected miniature pieces,the organization of the collection as well as the location of the exhibitionarea will be problematized in terms of uncovering the meaning of Ottomanheritage and its existence within the political context of post-1980s “neo-Ottomanism”.Second, the transformation of time and space notions will be matter of analysisin order to deconstruct the changing representation strategies of memory andgeography in effect with the frames of a nation and the meaning of the borders.In this sense, the organizational strategies in the “exhibitionary complex”such as the narration extending beyond the walls and following a less linearnarration as well as categories created through the marketing strategies of“togetherness” and “existence at the same time” will be analyzed so as tore-frame the approaches to representation of “Golden Age” of Ottoman Empire inthe context of post-1980s.
Onur Özgöde (Columbia University)
“How to Put an Elephant into a Black Box: Problematizationof the Past & Struggle over the Classification of 1915”
I am particularly interested inthe ways in which historical expertise and production of historical discoursein the representation of Armenian Genocide. I believe an approach throughexpertise gets away from questions such as “Is the past repressed bynationalist historiography?" or "Should we face our past?" Iwould rather argue these questions represent a wide range of discursive strategiesthat can be named modes of historical discourses. By treating enunciation ofsuch statements as discursive tactics, we can come to an understanding how thepast is utilized, in the present, towards projects actors are engaged with. Inthis respect, I would like to analyze how different actors, in the struggleover the classification of the events of 1915, constructed alliances andproduced discourses that made these alliances possible. I would like to situateOttoman historiography within this framework of analysis.
I would suggest that such anapproach, following Michel Foucault’s archeology, problematizes oppositions,such as truth versus falsity or recognition versus denial, through itsrecognition of the contingency of the present upon struggles over classification.This critical project of writing the history of the present can only bepossible by trying to understand how the possibility of truth and falsehoodemerges at the intersection of power and knowledge. I will investigate thisjuncture through tracing the history of the concept of “genocide” by discussingthe very possibility of the categorization of the events of 1915 as ahistorical fact. Through a genealogical tracing of this field of historicalexpertise and the networks that transcends this field, I would like to show how“Armenian genocide”, as a discursive object, transformed into a signifiercaptious enough to open up new possibilities of future in Turkey.
Semi Ertan (University of Michigan)
“An Armenian at the Parliament in the early RepublicanPeriod: Berç Türker-Keresteciyan (1870-1949)”
This study aims at contributing to an overview of theprocess of transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish nation-state inthe life story of an Armenian personality (Berç Türker-Keresteciyan). While hiselection as a deputy among the minorities in the single party era seemed to bealready promising, the period he lived through consolidated the suggestion tostudy his life story. As an extension of the general and large questions forthe conduct of this research, the major concern for me was to contribute to thelimits and possibilities of different destinations for the non-Muslim subjectsof the Ottoman Empire in the process of transition to a nation state. Thisquestion was reduced in this study to a single spectacle of how therelationship or connection of an Armenian individual would be transformed tohis community constituted by religious belongingness, to the state and to thesociety in general in his life story including serious ruptures in terms ofthese surroundings. The single spectacle of a life story may help us inunderstanding different aspects of the voyage of non-Muslims from the empire tothe nation state.
Christian Sassmannshausen (Free University Berlin)
"Studying Urban Networks and Family Strategies inLate Ottoman Tripoli (Lebanon)"
Ottoman and Turkish studies have recently begun to challengecolonial discourses on the Ottoman Empire pivoting on ‘decline’, failedmodernization, and linear historiographical narratives of its successor states.Despite these revisionist tendencies, the research agenda is still narrow inits scope; predominantly étatist, elite-biased, and focused on urban centres(Istanbul, Cairo etc.), it largely neglects the peripheries of the empire. The usageof terms such as “class” and “strata” have tended to obscure rather thanilluminate the particular dynamics of Ottoman society.
In my research project on late Ottoman Tripoli (Lebanon), Iattempt to offer new approaches for studying urban societies. My micro-historicalstudy is primarily based on local sources (Islamic Court Records (sijillāt),a detailed quarter census (daftar al-mukhtār), family documents, andmaterial culture). Studying a “provincial” society on a micro-level emphasizesthe importance of local agency in the understanding of centre-peripheryrelations.
By focusing on social markers and social distinction within Tripolitaniansociety, I analyse social order beyond notions of class and strata. I adaptPierre Bourdieu’s theory of differentiated forms of capital as well as hisconcepts of “field” and “habitus” and apply them to late Ottoman Tripoli. Indoing so, I elucidate how social distinction and different forms of capitalwere used to accumulate and reproduce status and power. Consumption patternsthus play a major role in my analysis of social order. I examine how theseforms of distinction were translated and used by social actors negotiating overpower and resources within different networks (i.e. debt relationships,marriage patterns, sufi and educational networks, legal guardianship, alimonyrelations). I argue that the cohesion and self-perception of different socialgroups was shaped by consumption patterns and the networks in which they wereembedded. Finally, I locate and display these networks within the urban space.To challenge dichotomies such as 'tradition and modernity', I argue that thesenetworks remained after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Burak Gürel (Boğaziçi University/Yale University)
“Reassessing the suppressed alternatives: AntisystemicPolitical Movements in Iran and Turkey (1920-22)”
This paper criticizes the difference/gap between thehistorical accounts regarding the anti-systemic political movements in Iran andTurkey after the October Revolution of 1917 and those in Europe in the sameperiod. While those social scientists dealing with European history emphasizedthe political crisis in Europe of 1920s as stemming from the working classradicalization as well as the rise of revolutionary political movements, the sameera in the Middle East has been understood as a chain of consecutive eventswhich inevitably led to the formation of nation states under the leadership ofthe national ruling elites. The paper argues that this gap arises from anevolutionist assumption which draws a parallelism between the degree ofeconomic development and the possibility of anti-capitalist/anti-systemicupsurge. The paper aims to counter this teleology by appealing to the cases ofanti-systemic political alternatives in Iran and Turkey in the early 1920s. Byreferring to the combined and uneven capitalist development in both countries,it follows the traces of permanent political instability which paved the way toconstitutional revolutions in the first decade of 20th century and then foreignoccupation and resistance in the second decade in Iran and Turkey. It addressesthe communist parties in both countries which were founded in 1920, and theirinvolvement in the wars of national liberation and the feeling of insecurityand panic among the political elites representing the ruling class in Iran andTurkey. Thus, the paper argues that relative consolidation of the ruling classpower run by the national leaders like Reza Khan in Iran and Mustafa Kemal inTurkey became possible only at the expense of the suppression of therevolutionary coalition of Mirza Kuchik Khan and the Communist Party of Iran inIran in 1921, as well as the destruction of the leadership of the CommunistParty of Turkey in the same year, 1921.
Şahan Savaş Karataşlı (Johns HopkinsUniversity)
“Two Faces of Anti-imperialism, Two faces of Kemalism:Anti-imperialist Social Movements in the Early Republican Period (1923-1945)”
One of the blind-spots in the late Ottoman and early TurkishRepublic historiography is unquestionably the Turkish Independence War. This war is widely recognized as an anti-imperialist war which resultedin the establishment of the “modern” Turkish Republic, which widely used“anti-imperialism” as one of its main ideological foundations. Thediscourse of “anti-imperialism” is reflected on almost every political actionand reforms of the “modern” Kemalist state.
This paper questions this claim of “anti-imperialism” in theTurkish independence war and analyzes its effects during the early RepublicanPeriod. There is a dual hypothesis this paper puts forward. Firstof all, this paper argues that different classes and different segments of thesociety and state perceive and interpret anti-imperialism differently; whichmakes it very problematic to classify the Independence War and thepost-independence processes as anti-imperialist. And secondly, this paperargues that a particular anti-imperialism discourse is used by the Turkishstate to justify some of its aggressive policies against the minorities andother nations in the territory of the new state, i.e. Armenians, Greeks andKurdish nation, against the communist uprising and against the Islamicinsurgence in the early Republican Period.
In the course of this analysis, this paper utilizes archivaldata from historical American newspapers such as New York Times, ChicagoTribune, Christian Science Monitor, and Los Angeles Times between 1900 to 1945for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. In addition a large spectrumof local journals and newspapers of the era is surveyed and contrasted with theforeign newspaper findings. The historical data is analyzed bothqualitatively and quantitatively. The findings urge the social scientiststo make redefinitions and more critical analyses of concepts such as“anti-imperialism”, “sovereignty” and “independence” which are useduncritically especially in the Ottoman and early Republican historiography. Furthermore the analysis establishes critical links with the relations ofsocial movements in the early republican period and the Kemalist state.
Bedross Der Matossian (Columbia University)
“The Taboo within the Taboo: The Fate of the 'ArmenianCapital' in the End of the Ottoman Empire."
One of the marginalized topics in the historiography of the OttomanEmpire in general and that of the Armenian Genocide in particularis the fate of the “Armenian economy” during World War I.Historians always intend to highlight the great achievements thatArmenians had made in the field of economy in the Ottoman Empire assarrafs, bankers, merchants and industrialists. However, when ascholar starts examining or questioning the fate of the “Armeniancapital” in the Empire, his intentions immediately become suspector labeled as nationalistic in nature with a sharp politicalagenda. During World War I, a systematic confiscation of theArmenian private, ecclesiastical and community property took placethat involved the Ottoman government with its various ministries aswell as provincial and local authorities. This confiscation processended with the appropriation of the “Armenian capital” during therepublican period.
The paper is a preliminary attempt to discuss the mechanism of thisconfiscation/appropriation continuum from the historicalperspective, and will provide some answers regarding the fate of“Armenian capital” as an important component of the economicdimension in the extermination process of the Armenians. It willmainly concentrate on legality and the confiscation process. Inaddition, the movement of “Armenian capital” from the OttomanEmpire to the Republican era does not only demonstrate a historicalcontinuity, but also sheds light on capital movements duringdifferent political regimes and the role that this capital plays inthe creation of new economic classes.
Sabrina Peric (Harvard University)
“Subterranean encounters: geological landscapes andthe political life of the Western Balkans”
This story begins beneath the soil where bones and metalsmeet: Omarska. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Omarska was the site of the largestconcentration camp during the war in the 1990s. Thousands of men were killed atthe camp, which was built on the site of an iron mine. After the war, the Omarskamines remained inactive until 2004 when the state
sold its steel industry to Arcelor Mittal, the world’slargest steel conglomerate. When Mittal restarted extraction, Omarska campsurvivors demanded a stop to mining activity so that mass graves could belocated.
Those opposed to these protests insisted that the regionwould suffer economic collapse if Mittal stopped the extraction processes.Arguments over the uncovering of mass graves have fallen squarely along‘ethnic’ lines with Mittal’s mainly Serb-identified management squaring offagainst the mostly Bosniak and Croat-identified camp survivors.
If bones and metals have come to acquire a particularmeaning in Bosnia today, it is that bones are linked to the past, to new andold graves, to ancestors and to ethnoterritorial claims; metals, on the otherhand, are linked to the future, to ‘development’ and to ‘European’ belonging.These things under the soil however are more than icons of a contemporarytension over the past(s) and future(s). They also index a particular history ofthings meeting under the soil. Since the discovery of silver in the Balkans,political arrangements negotiated over the extraction of metals (and theprotection of graves) have invoked particular socio-religiousreconfigurations—from the Mehmed II’s ahd-nama for Franciscan Friars, curatorsof Bosnia’s mines, to today’s corporate takeover of Omarska, firmly based in aparticular ethnoreligious politics.
As a researcher interested in the issues of sovereignty overBosnian soil and the world of meaning surrounding resource extraction, how canI incorporate a historical perspective into this complex problem, whichunderstands subterranean objects to be both at the center of contemporarydebates and belonging to a geological temporality? Is examination of the longuedurée crucial to understanding things under the soil, the people that circulatearound them historically and current ethnographic moments? In a region where‘history’ itself is hotly contested and appropriated for violent purposes(archives themselves being a primary target during the recent war), ‘geologic’temporalities appear to have much in common with the nationalist conception of‘origins’—can anthropological tools be applied to untangling histories rifewith ideological tensions? In my paper, I will discuss one aspect of my projectthat attempts to a.) discuss Islamic-Catholic encounters from the early Ottomanempire onwards by following Bosnian Franciscan texts—which claim to be bothethnography and history—through Bosnia’s primary resource landscape and b.) throughthese texts, invite Balkan anthropology to reflect critically on itsrelationship to the field site and the archive.
Mary N. Taylor (Graduate Center, CUNY)
“Silences and Amplifications on the Turkic Past inHungary”
This paper explores the questions of silences andamplifications in the recognition of Ottoman and Turkic “cultural elements” inthe northernmost reaches of the former Ottoman Empire. Using the Hungariancase as a starting point, the paper explores the tendencies to amplify thepresence of Turkic elements in expressive culture, while silencing those in thesocial and political realms. The Hungarian case cannot be used easily towardgeneralization, as the central part of the country was only under Ottomancontrol for 150 years, and was the last frontier and borderland with theHabsburg Empire. Yet, there is no question that this situation itself producedlasting results on the political economy and expressive culture of this region(effecting both the ‘second serfdom as well as the rise of the “new style” ofHungarian folk art). While Hungarians share with Bulgarians, for example, anational mythology emphasizing (at some times more than others) a nomadichorseman past shared with Turkic groups, some other features Hungary may sharewith formerly Ottoman territories, for example the evolution of patterns ofreligious/ethnic/national distinction, may be features of the bureaucratictechnologies of both empires. Using the Hungarian case as a point ofcomparison, the paper explores these issues.
Leyla Amzi (Columbia University)
“Identity and Migration in the Late Ottoman Period: The Case of Bosnian Muslims 1878 – 1914”
The war in Bosnia Herzegovina from 1992-95 broughtinternational attention to the Balkans, often defined as the crossroads ofreligions and fault line of civilizations. The conflict itself is blamed ontensions that come with ethnic and religious diversity, together with thehistory of Ottoman rule that stifled development and enlightenment. IndigenousMuslim population in the heart of Europe, seen as an anomaly, was rendered anation-less identity rooted in the Ottoman millet system: to this day, theMuslims in Bosnia are a religious group, while others are defined as belongingto ethic-based nations. In the context of European history, however, theoccurring conflicts can be seen as a continuity, rather than rupture, of thenation-state building project that started in the nineteenth century. Thispaper expands on contemporary critical studies of nationalism through the studyof the Bosnian Muslims and their relationship with the Ottoman Empire in theperiod of the Austro-Hungarian occupation and annexation, from 1878 to WWI. Asthe Austrian administration upheld the social status quo, the relationship ofthe population, both Muslim and Orthodox, with the Ottoman Empire remaineduninterrupted on many levels. In spite of that, the main consequence of theHabsburg occupation was migration of Muslims to the Ottoman Empire. Thepopulation that remained in Bosnia negotiated their status between the twoempires, affecting the image they projected of themselves while getting caughtin the processes of ethnic and national differentiation occurring in centraland southern Europe at the time. While the Bosnian religious authoritiesadvocated against emigration, having in mind the importance of the territorialdimension of the community; their Ottoman counterparts insisted that Muslimsfrom the lost Ottoman lands should migrate and settle in the Ottoman Empire.The difference in these positions that affected policies and actions of the Ottomangovernment is examined in the context of particular political, social anddemographic circumstances in the Ottoman Empire.
“Demystifying state formation, Facing the Past in Israeland Turkey: Reconfigurations of Nakba and Medz Yeghern”
When Israeli high school students started class in September1999, they
would realize that their textbooks regarding 20th CenturyHistory has been considerably revised to include competing narratives, somequestioning the myth of Israeli state formation. Such textbook revision neveroccurred in Turkey indeed, if anything, textbooks and supplements became evenmore radical in their defense of the pre-formative and formative years. Theopening of the Israeli state archives in late 80s and the fact that all"New Historians" have been trained abroad contributed to suchparadigmatic shift.
What does indeed a partial change in historical approach -orthe lack thereof- mean in the Israeli and Turkish contexts? Why suchnarratives were able to penetrate the public discourse much earlier in Israel?Does a paradigm change in state formation narratives tell anything about thedepth of civil society in a given setting? This paper will try to be acomparative precursor to answer these questions. I will revisit Post-Zionismand Post-Nationalism debate in Israel and Turkey problematizing the lack ofcertain modes of thinking in the rather limited Turkish experience.
Banu Karaca (Graduate Center, CUNY)
“Aestheticizing Reconciliation: Between Empathy andResponsibility”
In the last few years a growing number scholars and publicintellectuals from Turkey have advocated in different shapes and forms therecognition of the Armenian genocide. Given the resistances within Turkey toaddress this issue politically (apart from denial), many of them haveproposed an empathetic approach; one that – to use a widely employed phrase –allows to recognize and mourn together the human suffering surrounding theevents of 1915. At the heart of this call for highlighting ‘the human element’is the notion that an empathetic engagement with the genocide – in this caseexpressed through collective mourning – will pave the way first for anemotional and then a political understanding thereof and thus presents animportant step towards reconciliation.
Interestingly, this call for empathy exhibits manystructural and discursive parallels to recent developments in the presentationof the past and present ‘cultural diversity’ (i.e. multiculturalism) ofAnatolia. Although diametrically opposed in intention to the state-sanctionedversion of a pristine “cultural mosaic” the discussion around different notionsof reconciling with the past have similarly focused on aesthetic and culturalproduction as a preferred vehicle to address otherwise difficult politicalissues.
In this paper I would like to raise the question if thistransfer from the realm of individual and the aesthetic experience to thepolitical is indeed and necessarily the case. I would like to point to some ofthe paradoxes and pitfalls that these propositions might entail by asking: Howis the relationship between empathy and responsibility actually framed in thesediscourses? What is the correlation between the aesthetic (or the aestheticized)and the political? What does the notion of reconciliation imply when putforward by different sets of actors? And finally, how can art act as a criticalforce in a reconciliation process when it is ultimately framed in a way thatcements and stabilizes existing power differentials and thus might ultimatelylead to gross divergences between intention and perception?
“Selective Reconciliation: Where do the IstanbulArmenians fit in?”
The way the minorities are treated in Turkey in theaftermath of 1915 and throughout the republican era is a well documentedhistory and has only found its way to Turkish intellectual circles startingfrom 1990s. However, it is impossible to say that these mis-treatements have ageneral recognition in Turkish society. But is it in any way possible totalk about the reconciliation of 1915 when the latter events still stayunrecognized? How are the Istanbul Armenians used and abused forreconciliation efforts?
This paper argues that without a discussion ofthe more recent events that happened during the Republic, a politicaldiscussion of the Armenian genocide is not sincere. In relation to this, italso tries to explain how and why some of the Armenians are labeled as"good" and thus are being involved in this reconciliation processwhile others are labeled "bad" and are systematically excluded fromit.
Khatchig Mouradian (Haigazian University, Beirut/Editor,The Armenian Weekly, Boston)
An Earth Shaking Storm’ in Spring: A Review of ArmenianGenocide Memorial Day Editorials in Armenian-Language Political Newspapers
What terminology have Armenians used to describe thegreatest tragedy in their millennial history? Has there been any noticeablechange in this regard from the 1920s to the present? What are the factorsbehind these changes? How was the term tseghaspanutyun (genocide, in Armenian)incorporated into this discourse? To what extent was there a uniformity at anygiven moment in the way the official newspapers of the various Armenianpolitical factions - Dashnaks, Hunchakians, Ramkavars and Communists - madesense of this calamity and interpreted its significance to their respectivereadership? How should we account for the differences in the terminology andthe tone of their editorials published every year on April 24, the ArmenianMartyrs' Commemoration Day?
This paper will attempt to answer these question by making achronological and cross-sectional comparison of the editorials marking April 24annually in four Armenian-language political newspapers published in Beirut andBoston—two of the most vibrant Armenian Diasporan communities—from 1915 to thepresent.