The acceleration of the Ottoman Empire’s “modernization” project during the so-called Long Nineteenth Century had a direct impact on the practice of architecture in the Empire; it led to the establishment of new institutions and professionalization practices which had a discriminatory effect on non-Muslim communities due to the nationalist tendencies in these reformations. Specifically the violence and massacres against the Armenians, and therefore the discrimination against and the displacement of the Armenian architects, builders, and citizens form the focus of this project. My paper confronts this contested modernization process in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman world, by focusing on the works and lives of a number of actors, including Armenian architects, builders and their migration and property rights, during the transformation from the Empire to the Nation-state. By discussing cosmopolitanism, labor and the nationalization of architectural narrative at the turn of the twentieth century, I aim to show that the history of modernism and modern architecture in Turkey needs to be (re)written to include a history of migrations and different forms of displacements. Therefore, my paper places Turkey and the Armenian architects into focus in order to reveal the agency of the Armenian architects (who constituted the majority in the construction sector until the reformation period in the late nineteenth century) and citizens in the Ottoman and Turkish urban environments, and to highlight the role that displacement —of people, objects and ideas— has played in forever connecting the Turkish state, the Armenian architects and their ever-present absence. I am going to analyze the contested history of these non-Muslim builders, citizens, and their property rights —an integral part of citizenship rights— to demonstrate how confiscations and dispossession are an essential part of understanding the afterlife of buildings. The concept of displacement here becomes both an analytical framework, and the object of analysis. It will also help transcend the limitations of the single-sited research and the over-determined periodization of the empire vs. nation-state. How do property rights influence the way we discuss history of architecture in Turkey? How do issues of authorship, migration, and dispossession complicate the ways in which we understand the influence of Armenian architects and builders when we read the urban landscape of Turkey? My research focuses on the displacement of the property rights and the confiscation laws, to question the production and destruction of space in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey