State of the Art International Conference Explores Historiography, Sources, and Future Directions

Christine Pambukyan
Staff Writer

On Friday, October 2 and Saturday, October 3, 2020, six scholars participated in an international conference organized by Professor Barlow Der Mugrdechian and Dr. Ümit Kurt, titled “The State of the Art of the Early Turkish Republic Period: Historiography, Sources, and Future Directions.” Those who were interested were able to register online in advance for access to the live Zoom lectures or view the conference through the Armenian Studies YouTube channel on Friday at 7:00 PM and on Saturday from 10:00 AM to noon.

University of California, Berkeley history Professor Dr. Christine M. Philliou began the international conference with a keynote address. Dr. Philliou walked the audience through how a “naive historian” would research the establishment of the early Turkish Republic. She began by presenting questions that one would have if they had no knowledge of the Armenian Genocide, World War I, the Turkish revolution, and whatever else came before and after the formation of the early Turkish Republic. She also mentioned how general the documentation of the events available for the period of 1923 and 1928 is and the boundaries researchers of the topic face; including interpreting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s foundational speech Nutuk, the revisions of Nutuk by Ataturk’s followers in the 1940’s and by historians in the 1980’s, the movement for genocide recognition by Armenians and a few Turkish scholars, and the efforts of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) Coalition in the early 2000’s. In all, Dr. Phillou’s keynote served as a great introduction to the topics presented throughout the panel.

Next, Dr. Christopher Shek-lian, director of the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center, presented, “Armenian and the Problem Space of Secularism in the Early Turkish Republic.” Dr. Sheklian described how the transition to secularism in the early Turkish Republic established the relations between the Armenians and Turkey up until today. He emphasizes that secularism is central to understanding the social, political, and economic development of the Early Turkish Republic, especially after the development of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) coalition, which used secularism as a dominant force in Turkish politics. As a result, secularism evolved away from the millet system and produced the category of religion as a form of ideology. Dr. Sheklian added that the Armenian Church, due to the role of Armenian clergymen in the Ottoman Empire as political spokesmen, now had both a political and social status; different from how we view religion today. He ends his lecture with an introduction to vakifs (foundations), asserting that they were a friction point for the Turkish republic due to their blurred boundaries between religion and politics.

Erdem Ilter (UCLA) concluded the first evening session with his lecture titled, “The Ottoman Imperial Legacy on Turkish Nation Building: An Analysis of the General Inspectorates (1895-1945).” Ilter presented an outline of his soon-to-be complete dissertation covering the period of the formation of the early Turkish Republic beginning in 1895 and ending in 1952. He focused primarily on the construction of the state, based on the relations between the Ottoman Turks, the Armenians, and the Kurds during the Hamidian and Young Turk Periods.

On Saturday morning, Dr. Talin Suciyan, from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, began the second session with her lecture, “The Amorphous/Abstracted Peasant of Ottoman and Turkish Historiography.” In her lecture, Dr. Suciyan discussed how the secondary Turkish publications eliminated the use of the term “reaya,” or “peasant,” as a method of erasing Armenian history from their literature and to conceal how central Armenian peasants were to the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the early Turkish Republic. She explained that the term, “reaya,” a distinguishing category in the early Turkish Republic, refers to the non-Muslim, taxpaying subjects, who were permanent hereditary tenants attached to the soil within the Ottoman Empire.

Dr. Suciyan argued that deleting the term eliminates Armenians and peasants from the Turkish historiography and the only way to compare this erasure of the Armenian population in Turkey today is to look at the Armenian Administrative Records, particularly those from real estate from the 1930’s. She then concluded by describing how the Turkish Republic collected personal information from its citizens, implying that records were used to spy on them. This reinforces the idea that the removal of the term for categorizing the Armenians is solely to eliminate any record or knowledge of the Armenian people and other non-Muslim inhabitants from their lands and history.

Following Dr. Suciyan, Dr. Ümit Kurt from the Polonsky Academy in Van Leer Institute of Jerusalem, spoke on “History of a Local Republican Entrepreneur in New Turkey: Cemil Alevli.” In his lecture, Dr. Kurt walked through the biography of Cemil Alevli, an entrepreneur, capitalist, and urban member of the bourgeoisie of Aintab, to illustrate the active and direct involvement of local elites, also known as the Aintab gentry, in the destruction of Armenian homes and mass migration of the Armenians. He then added that the confiscation and liquidation of Armenian wealth from the massacres of 1895 up to the 1940’s was a source of wealth for Muslims in the Republic of Turkey. In fact, Dr. Kurt explained that Cemil Alevli’s source of wealth came from Armenians, including land, buildings, and the knowledge of carpet and textile making. He then asserted that after the war, keys to Armenian homes and medallions were given away as prizes to Turkish elites. Dr. Kurt concluded with a quote from one of the recipients: “We save Aintab and all we get is two keys and a medallion?”

Finally, Dr. Ari Şekeryan, a Manoogian Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, concluded the international conference with his lecture titled, “The ‘loyal citizens’ of the Republic: The Armenian Community During the First Years of the Republic of Turkey (1923-1928).” During his lecture, Dr. Şekeryan describes how the remaining Armenian and non-Muslim population were treated in the early Turkish Republic, despite their loyalty to the nation. He explained that after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne and the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Armenian leadership based in Istanbul moved to create closer relations with the Turkish government in Erzurum. They were tired of the constant wars lasting from 1912 to 1922; many intellectuals lost their lives to wars and genocide; thousands of refugees were displaced to Syria, Greece, and Lebanon; and many Armenians that were left in Istanbul emigrated to the United States of America and Europe in 1922, eventually resulting in a feeling of betrayal and need to establish good connection with Turkish leadership and integrate into Turkish society.

Dr. Şekeryan then explained how the Armenians went about proving their loyalty to the Turkish Republic. One example he presented was when Armenian businessmen forced Patriarch Zaven to unofficially resign to appease the Turkish National Movement leadership who viewed him as a traitor, replacing him with Bishop Kevork Aslanian as locum-tenens. He then presented the hardships and struggles Armenians and non-Muslims faced when they remained in Turkey. Dr. Şekeryan explained that non-Muslim schools were forced to hire unqualified Turkish language, geography, and history teaching staff, often having to pay them four times the salary of the qualified Armenian or non-Muslim teachers. He then added that there was a travel ban in Istanbul, preventing Armenians from claiming their lands in Anatolia, continuing business travels, or returning home. Dr. Şekeryan concluded his lecture by describing the anti-Armenian publications of nationalistic Turkish newspapers and how this led to killings and hate crimes against Armenians who remained loyal out of necessity and fear.

At the end of each session of the conference, viewers were able to ask the panelists questions through the question-and-answer function on Zoom. Recordings of this international conference, along with other lectures of this semester can be found on the Armenian Studies YouTube channel at bit.ly/armenianstudiesyoutube.