This paper examines the September 6-7, 1955 Pogrom in Istanbul. It explores the pathways to repair and redress what happened in 1955 for the survivors, their descendants, and the people of Turkey. I take an intersectional approach to the pogrom by considering a reparations model based on the 1921 Tulsa Massacres in the US. Through analyzing Tulsa’s model as applied to 1955, I offer a roadmap for repair and a way of thinking of other historical incidents with lasting effects. The 1955 pogrom targeted non-Muslim minorities in Istanbul who had stayed in post-independence Turkey: the Armenians, who survived the Genocide; the Jews, and the Constantinopolitan Greek Orthodox, who were allowed to stay in Istanbul as part of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. On that fateful night, 100,000 Turkish civilians spread across Istanbul, shattering glass windows and destroying over 4000 Armenian, Jewish, and Greek Orthodox businesses, as well as homes, schools, and religious sites. At least thirty-seven minorities were killed, over 1000 were injured, and over 200 women were raped. It was later revealed that the Turkish government had planned and orchestrated the event. The horrors of 1955 continue to occupy the survivors and their descendants. Having been forced out of Turkey, members of the Greek Orthodox community now turn to the UN’s Commission on Minority Rights for redress. As recently as December 2023, they demanded the Turkish government to allow their children to repatriate to Turkey, and, importantly, they cited both 1955 (and 1964 deportations) as the reasons for their displacement. Their numbers dwindled from 120,000 in 1927 to less than 2000 today. Subsequently, the paper analyzes and applies reparations strategies from Tulsa, where, in 1921, white mobs burned shops and murdered members of the black community, effectively destroying its thriving business center. The Tulsa reparation strategies include centering the voices of survivors and their demands for justice first, participating in a multi-pronged, multi-stakeholder process, engaging in placemaking as peacemaking, and challenging underlying worldviews that persist beyond the incident. While these massacres are very different, I suggest that applying this model might begin a ‘peacebuilding process’ in the Turkish context of the 1955 victims. This paper draws on sociological research on riots, theories on repair and reparations as they intersect with trauma and healing theories, historiography, and ethnographic research on those who stayed behind in Turkey. While focusing on Turkey, the paper has important repercussions for Palestinian, Armenian, Assyrian, and Balkan Muslim contexts.

Paul Rowe (2007) coined the term ‘neo-millet’ to describe church-state relations in post-1952 Egypt (2007) arguing that it allows the state to deal with minority religious groups through representation by the church leadership (331). Scholars have applied and developed this concept to state-patriarch relations in the Egyptian and Iraqi contexts where there is one dominant Christian denomination (Tadros 2013; Monier 2020). This paper accesses the applicability of the term to the case study of Syria which has numerous Christian denominations and is home to three patriarchs. Under the Baathist regime, the Syrian state has traditionally been seen as integrating minorities including Christians, using the ideology of Syrian nationalism ‘kulna suriyyin’ (Migliorino 2007). However, this study suggests that a dual approach was used by the regime to include Christians not just through state nationalism but also through relationships with church hierarchies. It was the latter that proved prominent when the regime’s survival was challenged by the Syrian Uprising. The paper will focus primarily upon President’s Bashar al-Assad first decade in power but will also provide some insight into the response of church leaders to the Syrian Uprising. The discussion starts by critically engaging the neo-millet term and the contestations around the millet concept (Sharkey 2017; Monier 2022; Tas 2014). It then provides background to the Syrian context before exploring the ways in which a neo-millet system can be seen as operating in Syria in the 2000-2010 period. This is achieved by examining attitudes and positions of the church leaders, state officials, Christian communities and wider society. The analysis focuses on the three components of the millet approach – autonomy, recognition and protection – to determine whether the neo-millet concept is applicable to Syria. Finally, the paper will discuss the impact of a neo-millet approach on church-state-societal relations in Syria and offer an explanation for the support provided by church leaders to the embattled regime during the Syrian Uprising and subsequent civil war. The data is gathered from interview material and participant observation collected in Syria between 2008 and 2010 as well as speeches and statements of church and state officials.

This paper examines the different ways in which the Syrian Druze community – an ethno-religious minority – reacted to the popular uprisings and the ensuing civil war in Syria between the years 2011 and 2023. Drawing from literature on sectarianism, minorities under authoritarian regimes, and Druze religious and cultural practices, this study also explores the possible motives behind Druze responses and it attempts to understand the community's attitude and relationship towards the regime. Using data collected from a wide range of local and international news sources, this paper reveals a variety of responses of the Druze, ranging from backing the opposition or maintaining neutrality to supporting the regime in combat. By mapping out these various reactions, this study critically challenges the prevailing narrative of monolithic minority support for authoritarian regimes in conflict zones and illustrates a diversity of survival strategies employed by ethno-religious groups in armed conflicts. Ultimately, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between ethno-religious identity, political allegiance, and survival strategies, prompting a reevaluation of dynamics between minorities and an authoritarian regime.

This paper is about the modern state, and creativity, resiliency, and community-building after atrocity. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork with people who were displaced from communities in and around the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in the most recent Yezidi / Êzidî genocide attempt, by the Islamic State between 2014 and 2017. During the attempt, members of the Islamic State engaged in killing, abducting, sexually abusing, and enslaving their enemies, especially members of the Êzidî community and faith. Interlocutors spoke to me from their current homes in an IDP camp, in a village near the camp, and in nearby towns. In this paper, I focus on state sovereignty and its various layers and constituencies. Displaced interlocutors told me about living in difficult and cramped physical conditions, with local disputes over camp governance and resources, with fear for their missing family members, and exasperation with the “international community” which had not intervened when the genocide attempt was at its most feverish. I argue in this paper that their predicaments both exemplify and lay bare the claims of the modern state. A modern state is supposed to envelop the inhabitants of its territories with benevolent sovereignty, mainly bureaucracy that orders daily life and legitimized specters of violence that hold non-state violence at bay and allow for a good life. Using Weber’s idea of “the office, not the person,” I suggest that one of the difficulties in these zones is that while one waits for offices to act, persons go ahead and create new social orders. These persons receive, and create, legitimacy for themselves through kinship networks based on patrilineal descent. Thus the action of one member of a patrilineage may be amplified through their network and become more compelling than if done by only one person without a network. The result is a state system that is impressively diverse in the number of bureaucratic and police-like possibilities it offers, but is experienced by my interlocutors as shifting, episodic, and unreliable by displaced people waiting for justice.

Since independence successive Iraqi regimes have struggled to assert control over the Kurdish nationalists dominating the country’s northern corridor. But in addition to the Kurdish first order minority, northern Iraq also contains smaller Yazidi, Shabak, and Christian second order, or, “local” minorities. A measure of communal autonomy is often their preferred political goal. But the lack of political power and a foreign protector means these second order minorities must pick sides between the Iraqi central government and the Kurdish nationalists controlling the KRG. Kurdish nationalists have thus been quick to capitalize on the anxieties of second order minority communities to further their own statehood ambitions, particularly since the fall of the Ba’ath regime and the emergence of the KRG as an officially recognized political entity in Iraq. This project explores how the Kurdistan Regional Government has used second order minorities as proxies, political spoilers, and pawns to further statehood ambitions from the 2003 US invasion until the 2017 Kurdistan Referendum on Independence. Relying on ethnographic field work conducted in Iraq along with existing primary and secondary sources, it argues that the KRG used legislation, bureaucracy, political party and militia recruitment, security fears, and economic and other types of political inducements to manipulate the loyalties and identities of its minority communities. The goal was to consolidate the grip on key areas of the disputed territories and secure statehood even though many of these tactics “loosened” what it meant to be a “Kurd” and the very notion of a “Kurdish state.” This study suggests several reasons for more scholarly attention devoted to analyzing interactions between first and second order minorities, particularly in the Middle East. First order minorities are in a comparatively enhanced position to make claims for autonomy or statehood. Focusing on how such groups treat their minorities provides valuable insight into the legitimacy of these statehood claims as well when counter mobilization takes place. It can also help scholars gain an intricate understanding of how violence, assimilation, displacement, and inducements shape state and nation building. Finally, analyzing interactions between first and second order minorities offers critical insights into how and why separatist movements and the identity and homeland claims they make evolve.