From the Ot to Man Em Pire to Post-1923

From the Ot to man Em pire to Post-1923 The Catastrophe as Seen by the Angel of History DENIZ YONUCU and TALIN SUCIYAN abstract The au thor of The Ar me nians in Modern Turkey, his to rian Talin Suciyan, puts the Ar me nian geno cide sur vi vors at the center of her re search to pro vide a new perspec tive on the his tory of the Turk ish Republic. Suciyan an a lyzes the ex pe ri ences and lives of its Ar me nian pop u la tion sev eral de cades afterthegenocide.Inthisinterview,DenizYonucuspeakswithSuciyanonherresearchandinnovative anthrohistorical ap proach to un der stand ing the paths that led to the an ni hi la tion of Ar me nians, the effectsofthegenocideinmodernTurkey,andtheimportanceoffocusingattentionontheexperiences ofsurvivorsaftercatastrophicexperiencesofgenocides.Thesur vi vor as de scribed in this in ter view is nei ther a wretched of the earth, who is forced to live a tor tured life, nor a sub al tern whose voice can not ac quire speech. The sur vi vor in stead is an ex is tence whose past, present and future is constantly de nied, and there fore robbed from her. keywords sur vi vor, Angel of History, Ot to man History, Ar me nians in postgeno cide Turkey, de nial hab i tus A Klee paint ing named ‘An ge lus Novus’ shows an an gel looking as though he is about to move away from some thing he is fixedly con tem plat ing. His eyes are star ing, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pic tures the an gel of his to ry. His face is turned to ward the past. Where we per ceive a chain of events, he sees one sin gle ca tas tro phe which keeps pil ing wreck age and hurls it at his feet. The an gel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. —Walter Ben ja min, “On the Concept of History,” the sis 9. Historian Talin Suciyan’s first book, The Ar me nians in Modern Turkey: Post-geno cide Society, Politics, and History, was orig i nally published in En glish in 2015 and later published in Turk ish by Aras Publishing in 2018.1 From ar chi val doc u ments and a large num ber of nev er-uti lized Ar me nian and Turkish primary sources—in clud ing mem oirs and di a ries—Suciyan ar gues that the Ar me nian geno cide did not end: CRITICAL TIMES | 3:2 | AUGUST 2020 DOI 10.1215/26410478-8517751 | © 2020 Deniz Yonucu and Talin Suciyan This is an open ac cess ar ti cle dis trib uted un der the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 300 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/2/300/829128/300yonucu.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 it con tin ues to day. Her book sheds light on how and in what forms the ef ects of the geno cide man i fest them selves in mod ern Turkey, how this ter ri ble atroc ity has been em braced by the Turk ish rul ing elites to this day, and what it means to be an Ar me nian in Turkey from an anthrohistorical per spec tive. In one of his best-known es says from the Nazi era, “On the Concept of His- tory,” Walter Ben ja min ar gues that “the tra di tion of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emer gen cy’ in which we live is not the ex cep tion but the rule.”2 In or der to un der stand our so ci e ty, we need to fo cus our at ten tion on the ex pe ri ences of the oppressed as well as those of the sur vi vors, who have suf ered the darkest forms of hu man-made ca tas tro phes. Ben ja min could not sur vive the Holocaust. His leg acy urges us to look deeply at the thresh old be tween life and death where, as we elab- o rate in this in ter view, the sur vi vor has been condemned to ex ist. The sur vi vor as de scribed in this in ter view is nei ther the wretched of the earth, who is forced to live a tor tured life, nor the sub al tern whose voice, put in Rancièrian terms, can not ac quire speech and re mains as noise. The sur vi vor is in stead an ex is tence whose past, pres ent, and fu ture is con stantly de nied, and there fore robbed from her. Putting the Ar me nian geno cide sur vi vors at the cen ter of her re search in The Ar me nians in Modern Turkey, Suciyan pro vi des a new per spec tive on the his tory of the Turk ish Republic and an a lyzes the ex pe ri ences and lives of its Ar me nian pop u- la tion sev eral de cades af er the geno cide. The his tory of the Ar me nians in Turkey is the his tory of Turkey. As Suciyan aptly dem on strates, this his tory is not an ex cep- tion to Turk ish his tory but rather is cen tral to it. Her sec ond book man u script, ti tled Either Save Us from This Misery or Order Our Death (Ya Derdimize Derman Ya Katlimize Ferman): Tanzimat of the Provinces, fo cuses on the sur viv ing ar chives of the an ni hi lat ed. There she shows how the Tanzimat pro ject (1839–76), cel e brated in Turk ish and Ot to man main stream his to ri og ra phy as the mile stone of Ot to man mod ern i za tion and cen tral i za tion, turned its Ar me nian pop u la tion into out casts. We spoke with Suciyan on her re search and in no va tive anthrohistorical ap proach in or der to bet ter un der stand not only the prac tices of the Ot to man and Turk ish rul ing elites but also their com plic ity with cer tain seg ments of the non-Ar me nian pop u la tion. The in ter view took place in her of ce at the Ludwig Maximilian Uni- versity of Munich, where she teaches Ot to man and Turk ish his to ry. Deniz Yonucu: Talin, draw ing on ar chi val doc u ments, re ports from eyewitnesses, and oral his tory nar ra tives, your book dem on strates how Ar me nians from var i ous class, re gion al, and po lit i cal back grounds were left with the hor rific re al ity of the geno cide in the de cades that followed it. You also show how Turk ish rul ing elites and lo cal pop u la tions have main- tained this ca tas tro phe through denialism to date. These doc u ments and re ports give proper an swers to the seem ingly par a dox i cal ques tion, “How come Turk ish rul ing elites, who un til very re cently claimed there was a rad i cal rup ture be tween the Ot to man Em pire and Turk ish YONUCU and SUCIYAN | FROM THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE TO POST-1923 | 301 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/2/300/829128/300yonucu.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 Republic, none the less deny the Em pire’s big gest crime?” The ev i dence clearly shows that the Turk ish rul ing elites have con tin ued to view Ar me nians as the en e mies of and po ten tial threats to the Turk ish na tion-state and have acted ac cord ing ly. For ex am ple, a de ci sion by the Cabinet of Turkey brought the re mains of Talaat Pasha (one of the prin ci pal or ga niz ers of the Ar me nian geno cide) from a Berlin cem e tery to Istanbul for a grand reburial in 1943. This is a sym bolic event that il lus trates the way in which the geno cide was appropriated by post-Ot to man Turk ish rul ing elites. Your book, there fore, de picts not only what you call the “de nial hab i tus” but also the con tin u a tion of the an ti-Ar me nian prac tices and pol i cies through out the twen ti eth cen tu ry. Can you elab o rate on that? Talin Suciyan: Persistent an ti-Armenianism is in her ent to the hab i tus of deni al. We have not looked at the re sults of 1915 to de ter mine how much the Republic was influ enced by it. How is it that we just ac cept that this cat a strophic event, which ir rev o ca bly influ enced the en tire re gion and all its eth nic groups, be came es sen- tially trace less in the years that followed? A large sec tion of the lit er a ture ei ther denies, fails to ob serve, or de lib er ately re jects a dif er ent writ ing of the his to ry.

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