CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Korkmaz, Aysenur |
|---|---|
| Title | 'Twenty-five Percent Armenian': Oral History Accounts of the Descendants of Islamized Armenians in Turkey |
| Summary | This thesis project seeks to develop a critical understanding on the identity formation and transformation of the descendants of Armenian survivors whose grandparents were Islamized in the vilayets (provinces) of Bitlis and Diyarbakır, during the Hamidian Massacres (1894-97) and the Armenian Genocide (1915-16). Drawing upon oral history interviews conducted with the descendants from Diyarbakır, Batman and Sasun, it explores the family stories of the descendants of Islamized Armenians who blur the lines between religious, national, political and cultural identities in contemporary Turkey. After a brief historical introduction to the Hamidian Massacres and the Armenian Genocide in the vilayets of Bitlis and Diyarbakır, it focuses on postmemories of survivor towards Ottoman and Kurdish perpetration and rescue. How the descendants narrate the physical extermination of their ancestors by the Ottoman state and Kurdish tribes, and the cultural extermination through forced Islamization and Kurdification in the post-genocide era. Do the perpetration and rescue stories shape descendants’ identity narratives? Do they create a group identity for the descendants? Through both questions, this thesis explores how descendants’ self-identification processes are shaped by their family stories of perpetration, victimhood, rescue and survival. It argues that the collective traumatic memories transmitted to the descendants do not constitute a common group identity based on these concepts. The study also explores the religious, national, cultural, political identity choices of the descendants who were born to various different contexts in contemporary Turkey. Considering that some descendants choose to ‘go back’ to Christianity, while some others combine Islam, Kurdishness, Socialism, Feminism or other cultural components of their identities with Armenian national identity, it argues that though the descendants of Islamized Armenians share the common postmemories, they do not constitute a homogenous and well-bounded group. Through, a comparative analysis of the narratives of descendants from urban areas (Diyarbakır) and relatively rural areas (Batman’s villages and Sasun), this thesis highlights the spatial nuances of descendants’ journeys in defining themselves. It shows how descendants from urban areas claim ‘dentity with an essentialist discourse, whereas some descendants of rural areas do not feel a need to do so. Keywords: The Armenian Genocide, Hamidian massacres, Islamized Armenians, Turkey, genocide survivors, perpetration, victimhood, survival, rescue, identity, self-identification, collective identity, essentialism, social constructivism, postmemory, life story interviews. |
| Supervisor | Kovacs, Andras; Krstic, Tijana |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/korkmaz_aysenur.pdf |
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