The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950The 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 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 it 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 an epicenter of Young Turk population policies and the theatre of unprecedented levels of mass violence. |
Contents
1 | |
8 | |
2 Genocide of Christians 191516 | 55 |
3 Deportations of Kurds 191634 | 107 |
4 Culture and Education in the Eastern Provinces | 170 |
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Common terms and phrases
According Anatolia Ankara argued Armenian army authorities Balkan became become changed chapter Christians civilization conducted continued culture deported destruction developed DH.ŞFR district Diyarbekir province east eastern provinces elites engineering established ethnic example existing forced formation genocide Gökalp governor identity important internal Interview Istanbul July June Kemal Kemalist killed Kurdish Kurds language Late later living London major March Mardin mass massacres memory Ministry Muslims Mustafa names nationalist needed November official organized Ottoman Empire party People’s House persecution political population policies published regime region relations remained Reshid resistance sent settled settlement settlers Sheikh social society Studies Syriac taken Talaat territory town tribes Turkey Turkification Turkish nation University Press victims village violence women World wrote York Young Turk