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On (Not) Being (Able to Be) an Armenian in Turkey
Abstract by Ms. Melissa Bilal On Session 061  (Turkish Armenians after 1915)

On Sunday, November 22 at 2:00 pm

2009 Annual Meeting

Abstract
In this paper I argue that the subject position of “Armenian from Turkey” is marked by an impossibility within the context where the very possibility of such an existence has been erased by violence. I show that the state’s policy of silencing the Armenian presence and the annihilation of that presence in Anatolia, along with the violent acts committed to secure this position throughout decades, hinder a full and coherent imagination of the “Armenian identity” in Turkey. I argue that displacement and loss are two interrelated experiences shaping the Armenian belonging in Turkey. Not only being displaced from one’s homeland, but also being detached from the means to reproduce the essential elements of a social life to live within without being cut of from one’s history and culture marks the displacement at home. This displacement is immediately coupled with a sense of loss which results from the very impossibility of talking about the loss, i.e. the Armenian Genocide. In my paper, I trace the accounts of young generation Armenians living in Istanbul narrating their relation to their family’s survival stories. The impossibility of reproducing those stories in the public in their totality and without being questioned for their truth value, creates a gap in their narrative of the self and their presence in Turkey as an Armenian.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries