Lerna Ekmekcioglu

Recovering Armenia

The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Lerna Ekmekcioglu is Associate Professor of History and Women's Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 240
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. Januar 2016
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 228mm x 151mm x 17mm
• Gewicht: 334g
• ISBN-13: 9780804797061
• ISBN-10: 0804797064
• Artikelnr.: 42794081

Autorenporträt

Lerna Ekmekcioglu is Associate Professor of History and Women's Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Afterlife of Armenians in Post-Genocide Turkey, an
Introduction
chapter abstract
The introduction introduces the protagonist of the story, Hayganush Mark,
the Constantinopolitan Armenian woman who published the main primary source
of the book, Hay Gin (Armenian Woman), a feminist biweekly, from 1919 to
1933 in Istanbul. The chapter clarifies the research questions that drove
the writing of this book and explains what kind of a route was taken to
answer them. The analytical core of the chapter revolves around the
historical explanation of why and how a gendered way of organizing social
relations was fundamental for Armenians as they adjusted to the multiple
catastrophes that befell them from the World War I into the mid-1930s.
1The Re-Birth of a Nation
chapter abstract
The story takes place in Allies' occupied Constantinople from late 1918 to
late 1922. During this time Armenian leadership aimed to cede territory
from the defeated Ottoman Empire and declare independence. Their goal was
to unite the Eastern and Western parts of the Armenian ancestral lands. The
chapter looks at the ways in which this goal was enmeshed with a broader
agenda called National Revival or Restoration. Post-genocide Armenians
mobilized to prove "the Turk" wrong and exist as a community, as a nation,
and as a state. They have imagined these agendas in familial and gendered
terms whereby children, most of them orphaned, represented the future.
2Can Feminists Revive a Nation?
chapter abstract
Armenians of Constantinople experienced the war years different from their
counterparts in other parts of the Empire. They were not massacred or
deported en masse. Therefore in the aftermath of the war, they were the
ones who helped the survivors through various relief organizations. Elite,
intellectual women of the Ottoman capital were very active in these
endeavors and they also contributed to all other kinds of National
Revival-related causes, such as fundraising, lobbying, and propaganda. In
return, they asked to have a say in the decision making bodies of their
community. This chapter focuses on the ways in which feminists formulated
their arguments for the inseparability of the women's cause from the
national cause. They established a Women's Association and began publishing
a feminist fortnightly called Hay Gin (Armenian Woman)
3An Exodus and its Aftermath
chapter abstract
This chapter focuses on one single year, from late 1922 to late 1923 when
it became obvious that Armenians failed in their territorial goals. As a
result of the Turkish War of Independence which was led by Mustafa Kemal,
Ottoman Muslims drew the occupation forces out and forced the Allies to
renegotiate a peace treaty. In the fall of 1922, after the Symrna
Catastrophe (Kemalist takeover of Western Anatolia from occupying Greeks),
Armenians (and Greeks) in Constantinople fled the city in panic, in
anticipation of Kemalist entry to the city which could unleash violence
against Christians whom Kemalists and the Muslim majority accused of
collaboration with the enemy. Most people that we encountered in the first
and second chapters of the book leave the city during this time. The
remaining become an officially recognized minority in Turkey according to
the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne.
4A Tamed Minority
chapter abstract
The chapter looks at the communal survival strategies that Turkish
Armenians crafted in order to stay put and remain safe in a place where
they were unwanted by the state and by the majority. Armenians performed
loyalty to the state and in returned hoped to receive freedom of religion
and traditions. This formulation was gendered. Because women represented
and were seen as the transmitters of tradition, they were assigned the task
of ensuring the continuation of Armenianness in Turkey. The ways in which
Armenians adapted to the new Turkey's conditions rested on an age-old
relationship between the Ottoman state and its non-Muslims (dhimmis). But
Turkey was very different from the former Empire, especially after the
secularization and westernization reforms that the Kemalist Republic passed
in the 1920s and 30s. Armenians welcomed these developments. This
new-but-old state-minority relationship is termed "secular dhimmitude," a
consciously paradoxical term.
5Can Armenian Feminism Survive the new Turkey?
chapter abstract
The ways in which the Turkish state discriminated against Armenians and the
legacies of the recent, violent past, pushed the community into an
enclave-like existence. As Armenians turned in on themselves they cherished
domesticity, conservatism, and status quo. The chapter follows the Hay Gin
journal to see how both the nationalist and feminist discourses changed in
its pages. Because the editor of the journal, unlike most of her peers, did
not leave Turkey, her case provides an emblematic case of what Armenians
had to do in order to survive the new Turkey. Feminists were faced with a
dilemma. On the one hand, they wanted to continue the Armenian tradition.
On the other hand, their liberal progressive ideas that demanded gender
equality required a change in the hierarchical order of the community. The
chapter analyzes how Hayganush Mark, Hay Gin's editor tried to resolve
these challenges.
Conclusion: When History Became Destiny, a Conclusion
chapter abstract
The chapter summarizes main points of the book. It briefly discusses its
interventions into the historiography. The last part narrates how young
Armenian women in early 2000s Istanbul resurged an interest in the history
of Turkish Armenian feminism.