Suchergebnisse

The concept of demographic engineering has been of great importance to the understanding of state violence towards ethnic minority groups. The application of this concept to understand the similarities and differences of repressive policies towards ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and (Ottoman) Turkey, however, is so far lacking in the debate. This article tackles this issue by investigating the similarities and differences of the origin, formation, and implementation of state violence towards ethnic minority groups in the form of mass internal resettlement programs launched by these two regimes in the first half of the twentieth century. This comparative survey shows that, in pursuit of very different ideological ends, both states exhibited a large degree of similarities in the political techniques they used to pursue forced internal population settlements in practice. These practical similarities have serious implications for our understanding of the possible causes and nature of demographic engineering.