Former Ottomans and Contemporary Communities: Explorations in Reconciliation, Part I
Panel 105, 2009 Annual Meeting
On Monday, November 23 at 8:30 am
Panel Description
The proposed two part panel brings together ten papers that deal with reconciliation among some of the communities that
were part of the former Ottoman Empire, including the need for or breakthroughs in communication and dialogue,
justice, politics, and closure.
We begin with theoretical approaches and then move to contemporary cases that highlight the histories of conflict
and reconciliation that focus on Kurds, Greeks, Bulgarians and Armenians.
PART ONE: The first paper (1) addresses the current language being used in post-conflict, post-genocide
contexts, including that used in feminist scholarship on peace building. Paper 2 is a discussion of NOUR, the
musical group whose work is presented as a strategy for reconciliation.
Specific communities begin with (3) Kurdish separatism and the notions of nation and individual autonomy, critiquing
the idea every nation must form its own territorial state.
Paper 4 is a study of history as public claim vs belonging to historians, based on a conflict in two recent debates
regarding the Ottoman past in Greece and Bulgaria. Paper 5 shows how silences are broken between Greeks and Turks
through family and social connections, but also how these voices are often discredited through personalized attacks,
leading to a “genealogization” of identities with Fascist implications. Paper 6 entiled Right now and always - black holes and spirals is a personal reflection on reconciling within oneself as an ethnic Armenian born and raised in Turkey.
PART TWO:The Armenian context is introduced by Paper 7 through an examination of Anne Ancelin-Schutzenberger's psycogenealogy and Bert Hellinger's Systemic Constellation in a therapy session bringing Armenians and Turks together. The next three papers present examples of literary-anthropology: Thus, Paper 8 is on how interviews with thirty "grandchildren" who have Armenian grandparents suggest that familial history is cracking silences in Turkish and Armenian historiographies; Paper 9 shows how books on the Armenian Catastrophe are chosen for translation/publication in Turkey and their contribution to confronting the Catastrophe in Turkish society; and Paper 10 analyzes how memoirs, films and novels of Armenians who travel “back” to Anatolia may enlarge Turkish and Armenian memory by recognizing common ghosts. The final paper, Paper 11 brings us to the immediate present with the current controversial “Apology Campaign” instigated by some Turkish intellectuals and the response in the Armenian Diaspora; it includes the possibilities of apology in the larger context of reconciliation.
Over the last two decades, the relationship between individuals and history has been going through a reconfiguration in Turkey's public domain: on the one hand, an increasing personalization of geography through familial attributes and memories became an anchor for self-identification in contemporary Turkey, traceable through family history and personal narratives in the public domain. Numerous documentary genres (e.g.,documentary novels and films, memoirs, or family histories) have circulated publicly, inviting their audiences to engage their stories not only as “eyewitness accounts” to past obscured ruptures, but also to discover the plurality of individuals' backgrounds, beyond Turkish national identity. On the other hand, this relationship between the individual and history seems to be reinterpreted as a genealogy of “purity” among some ultra-nationalist milieus, who not only seek to find “non-Turkish” family members of some public figures to “discredit” them, but also use this interpretation to (re)articulate a rhetoric of purity—based on “tracing” family backgrounds: as those who are “Turk soylular” [the Turkish-originated] and those who are not.
This paper will explore these dynamics among some circles visible in the public domain in Turkey with examples from mostly (but not confined to) Greco-Turkish ruptures. More specifically, it will consider different personifications of history in Turkey and address the incommensurability between different interpretations of the relationship between the individuals and history as a core issue for reconciliation: tracing family histories as a personal claim to one’s identity; tracing genealogies to generate “purism” or make “discrediting” claims based on family backgrounds; but also, questions will be raised about the possible legacies of an understanding that national history reveals the “true character” of a nation that configures a different relationship between individuals and history.
Music and arts have been at the center of the endeavor of creating alternative spaces of coexistence in conflict ridden regions of the world, such is the case with Barenboim-Said foundation and West-Eastern orchestra made of Israeli, Arab and Spanish musicians for example. Despite the fact that nationalist historiographies have mostly been processes of writing the other off of history, musical and dramatic traditions have been silent reminders of a cross cultural and unifying space. This presentation will try to situate the experience of a polyglot musical band making music for/among several diasporas of post-Ottoman world and how polyglot music -albeit in a limited way- allows people of different and sometimes antagonistic nationalities to come together and interact in a concert hall, perhaps as a first step of imagining a post-conflict civic space. Emphasis will be placed on how musical practice can complete, post-nationalize and compete with existing dominant narratives of national historiographies. Part anthropological experience, part ethnomusicology project, part political imagination in the process of transitioning regimes, the presentation will also include visual and musical excerpts from a documentary produced by University of Minnesota and Minnesota PBS, TPT about the band’s music and the politics of making polyglot music in a multi-ethnic diasporic setting
In 2007, a political as well as academic conflict triggered by a sixth-grade history textbook tormented public opinion in Greece. The point of contention was the effort made by the authors to ignore long standing stereotypes dominating national historiography and adopt more moderate views with respect to the Greek experience under the Ottoman rule (15th – 19th c.), such as for instance the belief that the Ottomans prohibited education and thus Christian youth had to attend ‘secret schools’. This was partly a result of professional historical documentation that has contributed to the revision of certain well-established ideas but also an attempt to promote a narrative that does not convey hostility but rather human understanding.
Almost parallel to that a similar scandal broke out in Bulgaria. A project with the title: ‘The Image of the Islamic Enemy - the Past and Present of Anti-Islamic stereotypes in Bulgaria as exemplified by the Myth of the Batak Massacre’ which included an exhibition in Berlin and a conference in Bulgaria triggered an uproar in the media but also among many historians for presumably wishing to distort history. The Batak Massacre, an event regarded quintessential of the Bulgarian sufferings under the Ottoman rule, took place in 1876, in the midst of the April uprising, that led to the Bulgarian autonomy and has been always portrayed as the most heroic moment in modern Bulgarian history.
In both cases, the uproar saw vociferous protests against what was considered to be the de-nationalisation of the younger generations coupled with accusations launched by a large range in the political spectrum that it was all part of an imperialist project coordinated by abroad and which took the form of aGreek-Turkish or Bulgarian-Turkish rapprochement respectively. This paper will address the more particular issue of the role of professional historians many among whom were labeled as traitors during those crises as well as the role of scholarly accounts in a process of reconciliation with a nation’s historical past.
