A Question of Genocide Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire

by Suny, Ronald Grigor; Göçek, Fatma Müge; Naimark, Norman M.

• ISBN13: 9780199930371
• ISBN10: 0199930376
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-12-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

One hundred years after the deportations and mass murder of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and other peoples in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the history of the Armenian genocide is a victim of historical distortion, state-sponsored falsification, and deep divisions between Armenians and Turks. Working together for the first time, Turkish, Armenian, and other scholars present here a compelling reconstruction of what happened and why. This volume gathers the most up-to-date scholarship on Armenian genocide, looking at how the event has been written about in Western and Turkish historiographies; what was happening on the eve of the catastrophe; portraits of the perpetrators; detailed accounts of the massacres; how the event has been perceived in both local and international contexts, including World War I; and reflections on the broader implications of what happened then. The result is a comprehensive work that moves beyond nationalist master narratives and offers a more complete understanding of this tragic event.

Author Biography

Ronald Grigor Suny is the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan. Fatma Müge Göçek is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. Norman M. Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

Preface- Norman M. Naimark
Introduction: Leaving It to the Historians, Ronald Grigor Suny and Fatma Müge Göçek
Part I Historiographies of the Genocide
Ch 1. Writing Genocide: The Fate of the Ottoman Armenians in Western Historiographies, Ronald Grigor Suny
Ch 2. Reading Genocide: Turkish Historiography on the Armenian Ethnic Cleansing, Fatma Müge Göçek

Part II On the Eve of Catastrophe
Ch3. The Silence of the Land: Agrarian Relations, Ethnicity, and Power, Stephan H. Astourian
Ch 4. What was Revolutionary about Armenian Political Parties in the Ottoman Empire?, Gerald J. Libaridian
Ch 5. Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Army and the Ottoman Defeat in the Balkan War of 1912-1913, Fikret Adanir
Ch 6. From Patriotism to Mass Murder: Dr. Mehmed Reshid (1873-1919), Hans-Lukas Kieser

Part III Genocide in International Context
Ch 7. The Politics and Practice of the Russian Occupation of Armenia, 1915-February 1917, Peter Holquist
Ch 8. Germany and the Young Turks: Revolutionaries into Statesmen, Eric D. Weitz
Ch 9. Who Still Talked about the Extermination of the Armenians? German Talk and German Silences, Margaret Lavinia Anderson

Part IV Genocide in Local Context
Ch 10. Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide, Aram Arkun
Ch 11. The Ottoman Treatment of the Assyrians, David Gaunt
Ch 12. The First World War and the Development of the Armenian Genocide, Donald Bloxham
Ch 13. Pouring a People into the Desert: The "Definitive Solution" of the Unionists to the Armenian Question, Fuat Dündar

PART V Continuities
Ch 14. "Turkey for the Turks": Demographic Engineering in Eastern Anatolia, 1914-1945, Ugur Umit Ungör
Ch 15. Renewal and Silence: Unionist Policies After World War I, Erik Jan Zürcher