The war period between 1912 and 1923 proved to be transformative for the Asia Minor Orthodox Christian population of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Orthodox Christians, or else, Rhomioi/Rum (Romans), needed to balance between Ottoman loyalism and Greek and Turkish nationalisms during a highly fluid period. Since the draft became mandatory for all, in 1908, the Orthodox Christian male population had limited options: either to enlist or to desert, with really few being able to pay their way out, and many more willing to falsify their papers or to migrate abroad. For the majority of the Orthodox Christian population, the draft was seen as unprecedented and oppressive state intervention, especially during a war period. For those identifying themselves as Greeks, the draft was also seen as highly undesirable. Based on the understudied collections of the Center of Asia Minor Studies and on published and unpublished memoirs, diaries, and letters the paper examines Rhomioi/Rum citizen soldiers’ responses to the war and the draft. During the war period and the mobilization of the whole Ottoman society many Rhomioi/Rum fought under the Ottoman banners, and some of them – mostly Turkish-speaking Cappadocians – continue serving in various positions even under the Turkish Nationalist banners. However, the post-1915 demonization of the Christian minorities, by the Young Turks, meant that most of the Christians were disarmed and sent to labor battalions, where probably excursion, hunger, and death awaited them, with really few surviving the process. Even, less were the lucky ones that were used as skillful workers, and, thus, avoided the labor battalions. In these circumstances, most Rhomioi/Rum continue to prefer desertion, instead of enlistment. Many deserted and tried to make it to a non-belligerent country. Others joined local militias, that aimed to protect their communities by the Ottoman or the nationalist army or the different gangs, of various ethnicities, that were fighting each other over control over power and resources, as the Ottoman state had lost control of its regions and new local actors emerged.

After a series of pogroms that targeted the entire Armenian population living in the Cilicia region (the many provinces and villages of Adana, Mersin, Tarsus, and Iskenderun) and which left thirty thousand Ottoman Armenians dead in April 1909, Halide Edib who was the most prominent woman writer of Ottoman Turks, wrote an article condemning the massacres. The article, entitled “Those Who Died, and Those Who Killed,” was published in Tanin on May 18. Eight days after Edib’s article, an appreciation letter was published in Tanin, written by an Armenian woman and addressed to Halide Edib (May 26). The writer who signed the letter as Madam Srpuhi Makaryân was expressing her gratitude to “this Turkish woman who mourned for and with Armenians.” Meanwhile, the Constantinople Patriarchate assigned a Commission to investigate the aftermath of the massacres and to aid the stricken. Zabel Yesayan, the most celebrated woman writer of the Armenian community journeyed to Adana as part of this commission in June 1909. The three months she spent in Cilicia changed the course of her life as well as her writing completely. When she published her witnessing to the Catastrophe in a book titled Among the Ruins, she was calling on her Turkish and Armenian compatriots, especially women to respond to the massacres, to mourn together. Cilicia Massacre was the second series of large-scale massacres of Armenians to break out in the Ottoman Empire and is often referred to as a “rehearsal” for the 1915 Genocide. Focusing on women’s accounts of the Cilicia Massacre, this paper examines the possibilities and impossibilities of mourning the unmourned that are revealed in Halide Edib’s, Srpuhi Makaryân’s and Zabel Yesayan’s writings seven years before the Genocide. These three women who wrote about the “common Ottoman fatherland,” “equal citizenship,” “reconciliation” in the aftermath of the Cilicia massacre addressed Ottoman women as the source and possibility for collective mourning. While deploying gender strategically in their writings to make a public call for peace, they were also looking for ways to start a dialogue between “those who died, and those who killed.” Could the victim and the perpetrator “mourn together”? What is the historical meaning of this feminist call for collective mourning in the wake of the Cilicia massacre and right before the 1915 Genocide?

This paper focuses on the perceptions of Iraqi Yezidis of their Kurdish neighbors and Kurdish identity. Considering before and after the establishment of Kurdish safe zone, post-Saddam rule and the aftermath of ISIS attacks in 2014 as four historical episodes which heavily influenced Yezidi self-perceptions of ethnic identity, the paper emphasizes intra-community differences in the embracement as well as the denial of a common descent with Kurds. The paper engages in an analysis of historical and contemporary documents (i.e. reports by international associations and local organizations) to study Yezidi self-perceptions on ethnic identity and Yezidi perceptions of Kurdish identity. It also utilizes dozens of face-to-face interviews the author has conducted in May-June 2018 in Iraqi Kurdistan among Yezidis, including religious and political leaders, displaced persons, survivors of ISIS genocidal attacks, activists, social workers, professionals, as well as Kurdish authorities. These interviews develop a comprehensive view of the Yezidi population with regards to social caste, economic class, gender, age and geographical location. The main argument of the paper is that Yezidi perceptions and narratives on Kurdish identity could be largely traced to varying communal reactions to its own precarious existence as a historically persecuted, subaltern group and to different strategies employed in its search for protection and safety.