Trends in Syrian Studies in a time of internal war

This issue, Vol 16, No 1, of Syria Studies explores the impact of Syria’s internal war on research and analysis of Syria in the more the more than decade beginning soon after the outbreak of the Syrian uprising. Contributors write from the perspective of their own research and positionality as researchers from/of Syria. They explore such questions as: How do we conduct research amidst protracted war? What constitutes ‘the field’ when access to the country is virtually impossible for many of us? How are our research questions and methods shaped by the current state of protracted war? Abboud argues that the post-2011 period represents a new, fourth period that will shape Syrian state formation. Ghada Atrash’s essay forefronts how “epistemic activism” can disrupt knowledge production. Rula Jabbour examines the utility of  Strategic Studies for iunderstanding the Syrian conflict. Sumaya Malas considers how the “post-conflict” framework discourages researchers from pursuing projects until conflicts are perceived to be over. Rimun Murad assesses the emergence of the war novel as a consequence of the conflict. Christa Salamandra’s reflection on ethnography on understanding Damascene elites. Uğur Ümit Üngör asks how the Syrian conflict has affected the conduct of wider international politics. Fadi Skeiker personal testimony centres on theatre as a practice of citizenship and social justice. Alexa Firat examines visual narratives of the conflict

Commemorating the Armenian Genocide: The Politics of Memory and National Identity

Turkey's long-standing denial of the annihilation of about one million Armenians, between 1915 and 1917, is well documented. Over the past five decades, however, the nation state has come under increasing pressure from a range of internal and external sites, not only to acknowledge these grave historical atrocities, but also to name them as 'genocide' (a term coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944, on the basis of the annihilation of the Armenians and the Holocaust, which has become a cornerstone of international legal language surrounding crimes against humanity). I begin by rehearsing the official denialist state narratives which are in play immediately following the terrible events of 1915-17 and have continued almost unchallenged in the public sphere until the 1990's, when fuelled by tectonic shifts in Turkish politics and a serious crisis of national identity, critical- revisionist strands of history-writing began to challenge the Turkish official narrative. During the past two decades, there has been a proliferation of individual and collective initiatives advocating a coming to memory of the genocide at a wide range of sites: history-writing, the Law, Civic discourses, fiction, and public commemorations, among others. While I trace the longer trajectory of these counter-memories, the major aim of my dissertation is to provide a "thick description" of commemorative events which concentrates on the post-1980 period and documents and analyzes, for the first time, very recent commemorations of the Armenian genocide in Turkey. I suggest that challenges provoked by an ongoing commitment to the denialist ethos resulted in strategies such as a discourse of "shared pain" which unwittingly mute the transformative potential of these commemorations. In the end, they operate in an in- between space of transgression and containment that reminds us of the immense complexity of the coming to memory of national "difficult pasts"

A nation of orphans : silence and memory in twentieth-century Turkey

Defence date: 28 May 2018Examining Board: Prof. Alexander Etkind (EUI) ; Prof. emerita Luisa Passerini (EUI) ; Prof. emeritus Jay Winter (Yale University) ; Prof. Hülya Adak (Sabanci University)Written during the centenary of the Armenian genocide, A Nation of Orphans focuses on the personal narratives of individuals who were touched, in one painful way or another, by the Armenian genocide of 1915 – individuals of different genders, social backgrounds, classes and ages. They range from orphans to school directors and presidents, from fathers to daughters and grandchildren, from genocide victims to perpetrators and bystanders. Engaging different modes of historical analysis, my thesis aspires to avoid two recent trends in Genocide Studies: a one-sided focus on either the perpetrators or the victims, and obsessive revolving around the notion of denial. Over the course of four chapters, A Nation of Orphans looks at how Turkey remembered the First World War and the Armenian genocide – what was spoken about but not said, and what was said but not spoken about. My central argument is that silence swept Turkey’s memorial landscape after the Great War. The Turkish silence about the Armenian genocide is both unique and characteristic of the silence that followed the Great War. An ideological break with the past, which was solicited by the republican political regime in the years following the war, and the legacy of the genocide have shaped modern Turkey. I make an effort to understand how silence would indeed become the language of the newly founded republic and how individuals dealt with this predicament of silence: how they came to identify themselves in this liminal situation between speech and silence, between remembering and forgetting, and how they nevertheless found ways of telling their personal stories

War-torn Ecologies, An-Archic Fragments:Reflections from the Middle East

War-torn Ecologies, An-Archic Fragments: Reflections from the Middle East identifies a conceptual intersection between war, affect, and ecology from the Middle East. It creates a counter archive of texts by ethnographers and artists, and enables divergent worlds to share a conversation through the crevices of mass violence across species. Delving into vital encounters with mulberry trees, wild medicinal plants, jinns, and goats, as well as bleaker experiences with toxic war materials like landmines, this volume expands an ecological sensorium that works through displacement, memory, endurance, and praxis.Foreword by Françoise VergèsWar-torn Ecologies: Human and More-​​than-​Human Intersections of Ethnography and the Arts | UMUT YILDIRIM | 1-25Mulberry Affects: Ecology, Memory, and Aesthetics on the Shores of the Tigris River in the Wake of Genocide | UMUT YILDIRIM | 27-66Who’s Afraid of Ideology? | MARWA ARSANIOS | 67-83Note the Ghosts: Among the More-than-Living in Iraq | KALI RUBAII | 85-103Great Sand: Grains of Occupation and Representation | NADINE HATTOM | 105-120Hide Your Water from the Sun: A Performance for Spirited Waters | JUMANA EMIL ABBOUD | 121-138Of Goats and Bombs: How to Live (and Die) in an Explosive Landscape | MUNIRA KHAYYAT | 139-166ReferencesNotes on the ContributorsIndexWar-torn Ecologies, An-Archic Fragments: Reflections from the Middle East, ed. by Umut Yıldırım, Cultural Inquiry, 27 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023) <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-27

Forming the Modern Turkish Village: Nation Building and Modernization in Rural Turkey during the Early Republic

During the early republican period, architectural interventions in rural Turkey took the form of social engineering as part of the state's modernization and nationalization policies. Özge Sezer demonstrates how the state's particular programs had a powerful effect on rural life in the countryside. She examines the regime's goals and strategies for controlling the rural people through development projects and demographic shaping to create a strong Turkish identity and a loyal citizenry. The book outlines the implementation of new rural settlements, particularly following the 1934 Settlement Law, with a geographic focus on two cities - Izmir and Elazig - with varied socio-economic and ethnic standing in the state program

Forming the Modern Turkish Village

During the early republican period, architectural interventions in rural Turkey took the form of social engineering as part of the state's modernization and nationalization policies. Özge Sezer demonstrates how the state's particular programs had a powerful effect on rural life in the countryside. She examines the regime's goals and strategies for controlling the rural people through development projects and demographic shaping to create a strong Turkish identity and a loyal citizenry. The book outlines the implementation of new rural settlements, particularly following the 1934 Settlement Law, with a geographic focus on two cities - Izmir and Elazig - with varied socio-economic and ethnic standing in the state program

In/visible Colonization: On Infrastructure, surveillance and destruction in northern Kurdistan

Ev tez li ser teknîka desthilatdariya dewleta Tirk a kolonyalîst li Bakurê Kurdistanê ye. Herêmên kurdî yên li welêt bi dehsalan di bin ala ewlekariya dewletê de rastî rewşa awarte ya demdirêj tên. Li ser pêkanînên wekî çêkirina bendavên hîdroelektrîkê (HES), şewatên daristana yên sîstematîk ên bi piştgiriya dewletê û avakirina baregehên leşkerî /nûqteyên kontrolê yên bi ewlekariya bilind (Kalekol), ez nîşan didim ku mînaka taybet a kolonyalîzmê li Bakurê Kurdistanê çawa nijadperestiya sazûmanî, kontrolkirina nifûsê û wêrankirina ekolojîk bi awayên tevlihev bi kar tîne. Ji ber vê yekê, ev lêkolîn bi giranî li ser pêvajoya kolonîzekirina mekan a li erdnîgariya Kurd disekine.Diese Dissertation befasst sich mit den türkischen Kolonialtechniken der Gouvernementalität in und über Nordkurdistan. Unter dem Deckmantel der Staatssicherheit sind die kurdischen Gebiete des Landes seit Jahrzehnten einer ausgeweiteten Notstandsregelung ausgesetzt. Anhand von Praktiken wie dem Bau von Wasserkraftwerken (HPP), systematischen und staatlich geförderten Waldbränden und dem Bau von militärischen Hochsicherheitshauptquartieren/Kontrollpunkten (Kalekol) zeige ich auf, wie spezifischen Beispiele der Kolonialität in Nordkurdistan auf komplexe Weise institutionellen Rassismus, Bevölkerungskontrolle und ökologische Zerstörung miteinander verbinden. Daher konzentriert sich diese Studie hauptsächlich auf den räumlichen Kolonisierungsprozess in der kurdischen Geografie.This dissertation concerns Turkish colonial techniques of governmentality in and over northern Kurdistan. Under the banner of state security, Kurdish areas in the country have been subjected to extended emergency rule for decades. Drawing on practices such as the construction of hydroelectric dams (HPP), systematic state sponsored wildfires and the building of high security military checkpoints (Kalekol), I show how the specific examples of coloniality in northern Kurdistan harness in intricate ways institutional racism, population control and ecological destruction. Therefore, this study mainly focuses on the spatial colonization process of Kurdish geography