Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-19T06:55:37.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Palimpsests of Violence: Ruination and the Afterlives of Genocide in Anatolia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2022

Anoush Tamar Suni
Anoush Tamar Suni*
Affiliation:
Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: anoush.suni@northwestern.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Before the 1915 Genocide of Ottoman Armenians, the region of Van, in contemporary southeastern Turkey, held hundreds of active Armenian churches and monasteries. After the destruction of the Armenian community, these ruined structures took on new afterlives as they became part of the evolving environments and communities around them. These ruined spaces play a role in the everyday lives of the people who live among them and shape their historical understandings and relationships with the local history and geography. I interrogate the afterlives of one abandoned monastery and examine how local Kurds imagine, narrate, and enact the politics of the past and the present through that space of material ruin. I demonstrate how the history of the Armenian Genocide and ongoing state violence against the Kurdish community are intricately linked, highlight the continuation of violence over the past century, and deconstruct notions of ahistorical victims and perpetrators. This article builds on a critical approach to ruins as it traces how histories of destruction and spaces of material ruin are revisited and reinterpreted by those whose lives continue to be shaped by processes of ruination. It demonstrates how ruins created through violent histories become spaces for articulating alternative senses of history and crafting possible futures.

Keywords

ruinationmaterialityviolencetemporalityafterlivespalimpsestsgenocidepolitics of memoryTurkeyKurdistan
Type
Victims and Unforgiveness
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 192 - 218
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akkum, Gulisor. 2013. Kurdish Leaders Apologize for 1915 During Monument Inauguration in Diyarbakir. Armenian Weekly, 12 Sept. At: https://armenianweekly.com/2013/09/12/kurdish-leaders-apologize-for-genocide-during-monument-inauguration-in-diyarbakir/.Google Scholar
Al-Rustom, Hakem. 2015. Rethinking the ‘Post-Ottoman’: Anatolian Armenians as an Ethnographic Perspective. In Altorki, Soraya, ed., A Companion to the Anthropology of the Middle East. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 452–79.Google Scholar
Apter, Andrew and Derby, Lauren. 2010. Activating the Past: History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Ashkhadank Weekly . 1911. No. 10, 20 Mar.Google Scholar
Aslan, Senem. 2007. ‘Citizen, Speak Turkish!’: A Nation in the Making. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 13, 2: 245–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bachmann, Walter. 1913. Kirchen und moscheen in Armenien und Kurdistan. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 2002. The Arcades Project. Tiedemann, Rolf, ed., Eiland, Howard and McLaughlin, Kevin, trans. Cambridge: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Biner, Zerrin Özlem. 2010. Acts of Defacement, Memory of Loss: Ghostly Effects of the ‘Armenian Crisis’ in Mardin, Southeastern Turkey. History & Memory 22, 2: 68–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biner, Zerrin Özlem. 2020. States of Dispossession: Violence and Precarious Coexistence in Southeast Turkey. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boghosian, H. B. 1942. Hadjini Enthanour Badmutyune Yev Sherchaga Kozan-Daghi Hye Kyughere. Los Angeles: Bozart Press.Google Scholar
Bookchin, Debbie. 2018. How My Father’s Ideas Helped the Kurds Create a New Democracy. New York Review of Books, 15 June. At: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/15/how-my-fathers-ideas-helped-the-kurds-create-a-new-democracy/.Google Scholar
Bruinessen, Martin van. 1992. Agha, Shaikh, and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. 1991. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Çelik, Adnan and Dinç, Namık Kemal. 2015. Yüz Yıllık Ah! Toplumsal Hafızanın İzinde 1915 Diyarbekir. Istanbul: İsmail Beşikci Vakfı.Google Scholar
Çeper, Ramazan. 2020. Kürt Mitolojisi Sözlüğü. Ankara: Aryen Yayınları.Google Scholar
Çetin, Fethiye. 2004. Anneannem. Istanbul: Metis Yayınları.Google Scholar
Cheterian, Vicken. 2015. Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks and a Century of Genocide. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Danforth, Nick. 2013. An Imprisoned Nationalist Reads Benedict Anderson. Dissent Magazine, 7 Mar. At: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/an-imprisoned-nationalist-reads-benedict-anderson (last accessed 8 June 2022).Google Scholar
Darıcı, Haydar. 2011. Politics of Privacy: Forced Migration and the Spatial Struggle of the Kurdish Youth. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 13, 4: 457–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darıcı, Haydar and Hakyemez, Serra. 2019. Neither Civilian nor Combatant: Weaponised Spaces and Spatialised Bodies in Cizre. In Bargu, Banu, ed., Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory: Democracy, Violence and Resistance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 71–95.Google Scholar
Dawdy, Shannon Lee. 2010. Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity. Current Anthropology 51, 6: 761–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derderian, Dzovinar. 2014. Mapping the Fatherland: Artzvi Vaspurakan’s Reforms through the Memory of the Past. In Tachjian, Vahé, ed., Ottoman Armenians: Life, Culture, Society. Vol. 1. Berlin: Houshamadyan, 144–69.Google Scholar
Derince, Mehmet Şerif. 2013. A Break or Continuity? Turkey’s Politics of Kurdish Language in the New Millennium. Dialectical Anthropology 37, 1: 145–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deringil, Selim. 2009. ‘The Armenian Question Is Finally Closed’: Mass Conversions of Armenians in Anatolia during the Hamidian Massacres of 1895–1897. Comparative Studies in Society and History 51, 2: 344–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Waal, Thomas. 2015. Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Enzinna, Wes. 2015. A Dream of Secular Utopia in ISIS’ Backyard. New York Times, 24 Nov. At: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-utopia-in-hell.html.Google Scholar
Galip, Özlem Belçim. 2016. The Politics of Remembering: Representation of the Armenian Genocide in Kurdish Novels. Holocaust and Genocide Studies 30, 3: 458–87.Google Scholar
Gambetti, Zeynep and Jongerden, Joost. 2011. The Spatial (Re)Production of the Kurdish Issue: Multiple and Contradicting Trajectories—Introduction. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 13, 4: 375–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Göçek, Fatma Müge. 2015. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gordillo, Gastón R. 2014. Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Graeber, David. 2014. Why Is the World Ignoring the Revolutionary Kurds in Syria? Guardian, 8 Oct. At: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/why-world-ignoring-revolutionary-kurds-syria-isis.Google Scholar
Hakyemez, Serra. 2017. Turkey’s Failed Peace Process with the Kurds: A Different Explanation. Middle East Briefs, no. 111. At: https://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/middle-east-briefs/pdfs/101-200/meb111.pdf.Google Scholar
Hamelink, Wendelmoet. 2016. The Sung Home: Narrative, Morality, and the Kurdish Nation. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Harootunian, Harry. 2019. The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and Its Unaccounted Lives. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hoogasian Villa, Susie and Matossian, Mary Allerton Kilbourne. 1982. Armenian Village Life before 1914. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Houshamadyan: A Project to Reconstruct Ottoman Armenian Town and Village Life. Houshamadyan. At: https://www.houshamadyan.org/en/home.html (last accessed 30 Apr.2022).Google Scholar
Hovannisian, Richard G. 1998. Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Hovannisian, Richard G. 2000. Armenian Van/Vaspurakan. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers.Google Scholar
Jamison, Kelda. 2016. Hefty Dictionaries in Incomprehensible Tongues: Commensurating Code and Language Community in Turkey. Anthropological Quarterly 89, 1: 31–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jongerden, Joost. 2007. The Settlement Issue in Turkey and the Kurds. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karayan, Sarkis Y. 2000. Demography of Van Province, 1844–1914. In Hovannisian, Richard G., ed., Armenian Van/Vaspurakan. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 195–208.Google Scholar
Keshishian, Varty. 2015. Hadjin—Folk Medicine. Houshamadyan, Beugekian, Simon, trans. 15 Dec. At: https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayet-of-adana/hadjin/local-characteristics/popular-medicine.html.Google Scholar
Kevorkian, Raymond. 2011. The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History. London: I. B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Kevorkian, Raymond and Paboudjian, Paul. 2012. 1915 Öncesinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Ermeniler. Saris, Mayda, trans. Istanbul: Aras.Google Scholar
Klein, Janet. 2016. The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kurt, Ümit. 2021. The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lalayan, Yervand. 1910. Vaspurakani Nshanavor Vankere. Azgagrakan Handes 20: 197–212.Google Scholar
Lalayan, Yervand. 1916. Vaspurakan-Havatq. Azgagrakan Handes 26: 195–210.Google Scholar
Leupold, David. 2019. ‘Fatally Tied Together’: The Intertwined History of Kurds and Armenians in the 20th Century. Iran and the Caucasus 23, 4: 390–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leupold, David. 2020. Embattled Dreamlands: The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lynch, Harry Finnis Blosse. 1901. Armenia, Travels and Studies. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.Google Scholar
McDowall, David. 2004. A Modern History of the Kurds. London: I. B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Napolitano, Valentina. 2015. Anthropology and Traces. Anthropological Theory 15, 1: 47–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2012. The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Navaro, Yael. 2017. Remnants. Society for Cultural Anthropology Theorizing the Contemporary Editor’s Forum. Fieldsights, 24 Oct. At: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/remnants?msclkid=f7f1de4ac88c11ecbc2e27d766508098.Google Scholar
Navaro, Yael. 2020. The Aftermath of Mass Violence: A Negative Methodology. Annual Review of Anthropology 49, 1: 161–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oskean, Hamazasp. 1940, 1947. Vasbouragan-Vani Vankere. Vols. 1 & 3. Vienna: Mkhitarian Press.Google Scholar
Ozsoy, Hisyar. 2013. Introduction: The Kurds’ Ordeal with Turkey in a Transforming Middle East. Dialectical Anthropology 37, 1: 103–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panossian, Razmik. 2006. The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Parla, Ayşe and Özgül, Ceren. 2016. Property, Dispossession, and Citizenship in Turkey; or, The History of the Gezi Uprising Starts in the Surp Hagop Armenian Cemetery. Public Culture 28, 3 (80): 617–53.Google Scholar
Radikal. 2014. Öcalan’dan Ermenilere mektup: Bize yardımcı olun. Radikal, 30 Jan. At: http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/ocalandan-ermenilere-mektup-bize-yardimci-olun-1173285/.Google Scholar
Schäfers, Marlene. 2015. Being Sick of Politics: The Production of Dengbêjî as Kurdish Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Turkey. European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey 20 (Mar.), https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/pdf/5200.Google Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Bourgois, Philippe. 2004. Introduction: Making Sense of Violence. In Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Bourgois, Philippe, eds., Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology. Malden: Blackwell, 1–27.Google Scholar
Sinclair, T. A. 1989. Eastern Turkey : An Architectural & Archaeological Survey , Volume II. London: Pindar Press.Google Scholar
Slyomovics, Susan. 1998. The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Sruandzteantsʻ, Garegin. 1982. Erker. Vol. 2. Erevan: Haykakan SSH GA Hratarakchʻutʻyun.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. 2013. Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Suny, Ronald Grigor. 2015. “ They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Suny, Ronald Grigor. 2018. The Hamidian Massacres, 1894–1897: Disinterring a Buried History. Études Arméniennes Contemporaines 11 (Oct.): 125–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tambar, Kabir. 2016. Brotherhood in Dispossession: State Violence and the Ethics of Expectation in Turkey. Cultural Anthropology 31, 1: 30–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tatoyan, Robert. 2018. Kaza of Van—Churches and Monasteries. Houshamadyan, Beugekian, Simon, trans. 9 Dec. At: https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayet-of-van/kaza-of-van/religion/churches-and-monasteries-1.html.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. 2015. The Mastery of Non-Mastery. Public Seminar, 7 Aug. At: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-mastery-of-non-mastery.Google Scholar
Thierry, Jean Michel. 1989. Monuments Arméniens du Vaspurakan. Paris: Librarie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner.Google Scholar
Üngör, Uğur Ümit and Polatel, Mehmet. 2011. Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Ghazaru, Vans Srboyn. 1900. Hamarot Vark Srbots. Hamaṛōt Varkʻ Srbotsʻ Ev Kusanatsʻ Arewmtean Ekeghetsʻwoy. Venetik: Vans Srboyn Ghazaru.Google Scholar
Von Bieberstein, Alice. 2017. Treasure/Fetish/Gift: Hunting for ‘Armenian Gold’ in Post-Genocide Turkish Kurdistan. Subjectivity 10, 2: 170–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watenpaugh, Heghnar Zeitlian. 2017. Survivor Objects: Cultural Heritage in and out of the Middle East. International Journal of Middle East Studies 49, 4: 752–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Worth, Robert F. 2016. Behind the Barricades of Turkey’s Hidden War. New York Times, 24 May.Google Scholar
Yegen, Mesut. 2009. ‘Prospective-Turks’ or ‘Pseudo-Citizens:’ Kurds in Turkey. Middle East Journal 63, 4: 597–615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar