The making of modern Turkey : nation and state in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 / Uğur Ümit Üngör.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Üngör, Uğur Ümit, 1980-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnic relations.

History.

Turkey--History--1918-1960.

Turkey.

Turkey--History--Mehmed V, 1909-1918.

Turkey--Politics and government--1918-1960.

Politics and government.

Turkey--Politics and government--1909-1918.

Turkey--Ethnic relations--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

xviii, 303 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Summary:

The eastern provinces of the Ottoman, Empire used to be a multi-ethnic region where Armenians, Kurds, Syriacs, Turks, and Arabs lived together in the same villages and cities. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and rise of the nation state violently altered this situation. Nationalist elites intervened in heterogeneous populations that they identified as objects of knowledge, management, and change. These often violent processes of state formation destroyed historical regions and emptied multicultural cities, clearing the way for modern nation states.

The Making of Modern Turkey highlights how the Young Turk regime, from 1913 to 1950, subjected Eastern Turkey to various forms of nationalist population policies aimed at ethnically homogenizing the region and incorporating in the Turkish nation state. It examines how the regime utilized technologies of social engineering, such as physical destruction, deportation, spatial planning, forced assimilation, and memory politics, to increase ethnic and cultural homogeneity within the nation state. Drawing on secret files and unexamined records, Ugur Ümit Üngör demonstrates that concerns of state security, ethnocultural identity, and national purity were behind these policies. The eastern provinces, the heartland of Armenian and Kurdish life, became and epicentre of Young Turk population policies and the theatre of unprecedented levels of mass violence. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Nationalism and Population Politics in the Late Ottoman Empire 8

An introduction to Diyarbekir 8

The advent of nationalism 25

The discovery of society and population policies 33

Violence, victimization, and vengeance 42

Discussion 51

2 Genocide of Christians, 1915-16 55

War and persecution 55

'Burn, destroy, kill': the persecution becomes genocidal 71

Centre and periphery: widening and narrowing scopes of persecution 86

Discussion 100

3 Deportations of Kurds, 1916-34 107

1916: phase one 108

1925: phase two 122

1934: phase three 148

Discussion 166

4 Culture and Education in the Eastern Provinces 170

The Young Turk cultural revolution 170

The nation in the province: culture and education in Diyarbekir 186

The boarding school for Kurdish girls 204

Discussion 212

5 The Calm after the Storm: The Politics of Memory 218

Silencing the violence: the organization of oblivion 218

Damnatio memoriae: destruction and construction of memory 224

Memory politics in Diyarbekir 232

Toponymical changes 240

Discussion 245

Conclusion 251.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [265]-296) and index.

ISBN:

9780199603602

019960360X

OCLC:

732286833