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Dissertation Defense - Gul Mescioglu Gur
Conflict, History, and Minority Memory: The Case of the Greek-Orthodox Minorities in Istanbul and the Turkish-Muslim Minorities in Western Thrace
Monday, March 27, 2017
1:30pm - 3:30pm
Metropolitan Building 5183
Committee:
Prof. Karina Korostelina (Chair)
Prof. Dan Rothbart
Prof. Steven Barnes
Abstract:
The construction of nations and nation-building processes are significant areas of study in the social sciences because of their potential to result in ethnic, religious, language-based, and racial conflicts. After the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), the compulsory exchange of more than two million Greeks and Turks was carried out on the basis of religion and intended to create homogeneous nation-states and reduce the presence of minorities in both states. This study seeks to advance the understanding of how the identity of national minorities who were excluded from this population exchange are formed, re-formed, and transformed over time. To explore this, minorities’ historical memories and narratives of traumatic conflict history and the related policies created and implemented over time will be analyzed. While much of the literature is focused on diplomacy, politics, law, and religious issues in the context of minorities in Greece and Turkey within the policy of reciprocity, it is not clear how those different aspects of minority issues actually influence the identity formation of minorities. This study is intended to illuminate the meaning of nation, national identity, belongingness, and homeland for minorities, investigate the reproduction and transmission of social memories between generations and the influence of policies concerning minorities, and understand how minorities position themselves in relation to those policies and their past and how this whole process helps in constructing their identities. The research will utilize semi-structured interviews with officials, community leaders, and minority-majority populations, focus groups, and observations, as well as desk research, to uncover the influence and interaction of historical conflict memories and narratives as well as the perceptions of minorities, majorities, and the state regarding minority identity formation.