2016/12/01 by Özlem Belçim Galip · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Turkey's Politics and Society #Islamic Studies and History #Balkans: History, Politics, Society
paper · doi:10.1093/hgs/dcw063
openalex publication_date 2016/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Kurds were among the main perpetrators of violence against Christian minorities in the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republican periods, most notably during the Armenian Genocide. Themselves denied basic national and cultural rights since the foundation of the Republic in 1923, however, many Kurds have come in recent decades to empathize with the Armenian experience and to advocate acknowledging the Genocide. Not only have Kurdish political figures apologized on behalf of perpetrator-ancestors, but dozens of Kurdish novels have represented the experience of the Armenians by privileging “real” historical events and biographies. The incorporation of the Armenian Genocide into Kurdish novels frames social memory and reflects evolving Kurdish politics. To explore this mobilization of “history” and “memory,” this article analyzes five novels in the Kurmanji dialect of Turkish Kurdistan.