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Drawing on theories of nationalism, two recent books by Dilek Güven and Ülkü Ağır engage with the September Pogrom in Istanbul on the 6th and the 7th of September 1955. To explain the pogrom's emergence from its historical background both studies discuss the role of Young Turkish ideology, ethnic violence in the course of Turkish nation building, and the development of minority politics throughout the Turkish Republic. On the basis of interviews and archival materials, Dilek Güven meticulously reconstructs the course of events, the actors, their motives and the context. Ülkü Ağır analyses the Turkish press discourse in the pogrom's preparatory phase focusing on the Greek Orthodox community. Critically discussing the two studies, this article scrutinises current conceptualisations of collective violence in research devoted to post-Genocidal Turkey.

AbstractThe article is the result of an empirical research project that integrates historical, sociological and socio-psychological perspectives. The study is focused on the institution of religious leaders—dedes, the experts of oral tradition in Dersim, Eastern Anatolia. It attempts to trace back political obliteration strategies applied to these main agents of memory, by investigating their meaning and role for the maintenance of cultural identity. It analyses autobiographical memories of violence and persecution in narratives of dedes, especially in regard to their coping patterns and perceptions of history.

Dersim, eine abgeschiedene Bergregion, bot bis zum Ende des Osmanischen Reichs Fliehenden Schutz vor Verfolgungen, wovon die orale Tradition zeugt. Seit den Erfahrungen von moderner Gewalt und Genozid jedoch sind die Erinnerungserzählungen der Nachkommen armenischer Überlebender und Aleviten durch den hegemonialen Leugnungsdiskurs der Türkei geprägt. Der Band untersucht Grenzen und Möglichkeiten des Überlieferns von Erinnerungen an Gewalt sowie von subalternen Vergangenheiten

Turkey has gone through significant transformations over the last century-from the Ottoman Empire and Young Turk era to the Republic of today-but throughout it has demonstrated troubling continuities in its encouragement and deployment of mass violence. In particular, the construction of a Muslim-Turkish identity has been achieved in part by designating "internal enemies" at whom public hatred can be directed. This volume provides a wide range of case studies and historiographical reflections on the alarming recurrence of such violence in Turkish history, as atrocities against varied ethnic-religious groups from the nineteenth century to today have propelled the nation's very sense of itself