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 '.'Whether it is the politics of memory or the histoire croisee of Anatolia or
deep dives into discourses, David Leupold has something important to tell
.us that transcends the embattled dreamlands that are at the center of this
extraordinary book."
From the foreword by Ronald G. Suny, the William H. Sewell Jr.
Distinguished University Professor of History at the
University of Michigan
"A model of interdisciplinary scholarship that helps us understand how the
intricacies of statecraft can be deployed to direct and transform historical
thinking. Leupold brings a rich past back to life in this multi-layered (and
impressively polyglot) study."
Bruce Grant, Professor and Chair of Anthropology,
New York University
Embattled Dreamlands

Embattled Dreamlands explores the complex relationship between competing

~ational myths, imagined boundaries and local memories in the
threefold-contested geography referred to as Eastern Turkey, Western
Armenia or Northern Kurdistan.
Spatially rooted in the shatter zone of the post-Ottoman and post-
Soviet space, it sheds light on the multi-layered memory landscape of the
Lake Van region in Southeastern Turkey, where collective violence
stretches back from the Armenian Genocide to the Kurdish conflict of
today. Based on his fieldwork in Turkey and Armenia, the author
examines how states work to construct and monopolize collective
memory by narrating, silencing, mapping and performing the past, and
how these narratives might help to contribute to and resolve present-day
conflicts.
By looking at how national discourses are constructed and asking hard
questions about why nations are imagined as exclusive and hostile to
others, Embattled Dreamlands provides a unique insight into the develop-
ment of national identity which will provide a great resource for students
and researchers in sociology and history alike .

David Leupold is a 2018- 2019 Manoogian post-doctoral fellow in the

Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan. He focuses his
research on politics of memory in the post-Ottoman and post-Soviet
space.
Embattled Dreamlands
The Politics of Contesting Armenian,
Kurdish and Turkish Memory

David Leupold

I~ ~?io~I!!~~~up
NEW YORK AND LONDON
First published 2020
by Routledge
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Title: Embattled dreamlands/ David Leupold.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge , 2020. I Includes bibliographical
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Identifiers: LCCN 2019052662 (print) I LCCN 2019052663 (ebook) I ISBN
9780367361457 (hardback) I ISBN 9780367361440 (paperback) I ISBN
9780429344152 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethnic conflict-Turkey, Eastern. I Ethnic groups- Turkey,
Eastern. I Armenians-Turkey, Eastern. I Kurds-Turkey, Eastern. I
Turks-Turkey, Eastern. I Collective memory-Turkey, Eastern. I
Nationalism-Turkey, Eastern-History. I Turkey, Eastern-Ethnic
relations. I Turkey, Eastern-History.
C lassification: LCC DS51.E27 L48 2020 (print) I LCC DS51.E27 (ebook)
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Contents

Acknowledgments X
Foreword Xl

Introduction: Fatal Ties: Armenians, Kurds and Turks 1

1 Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects: Circassian and

Armenian Tales 14

2 Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands: Eastern Turkey.

Wes tern Armenia. Northern Kurdistan 31

3 Mirrored Narratives: Remembering as the Nation 70

4 Mnemonic Frontiers, Alien Homelands: The Greater Van

Region, the Residing and the Expelled 125

5 Entwined Narratives: Remembering Beyond the Nation 169

6 Conclusion: Old Nightmares, New Awakenings 224

Index 242
Acknowledgments
My innermost gratitude is due to my mentor, friend and comrade Ronald
Grigor Suny, whose spirited and up-right commitment to the cause of
Armenian-Turkish reconciliation inspired me throughout my work. I further
owe my gratitude to Klaus Eder, who first introduced me to the field of
memory studies, and Silvia von Steinsdorff for their cordial encouragement,
critical feedbacks and dedicated support. I further recognize that without the
doctoral funding by the Hansen foundation and Erasmus Mundus MID as well
as the post-doctoral funding through the Armenian Studies Program of the
University of Michigan the realization of this project would not have been
possible in the first place. During my Erasmus Mundus field work mobility in
Armenia in 2014-2015, Asya Hayrapetyan, Arevik Ohanyan and the staff of
Eurasia International University kindly hosted me at their institution.
Though we parted company, I remember with gratitude my year-long
companion Arpenik Atabekyan for her patience, thought-provoking ideas
and indispensable assistance as a transliterator of my Armenian interviews.
I further thank Avetis Keshishyan, Lusine Kharatyan, Hasmik Knazyan,
Smbat Hakobyan and Lilit Poghosyan for sharing their expertise as
anthropologists and ethnographers and their tremendous help in facilitat- .
ing my access to the field in Armenia and Turkey. I want to express
1
special thanks to Akm Arslan, my generous host in Van and loyal
companion on my field work in the Hakkari region, Manuk Avedikyan,
who accompanied me during my field work in Armenia and Tamar
Khutsishvili, who supported me during my field work in Tbilisi.
The intellectual and thought-provoking exchange with fellow research-
ers such as Heiko Conrad, Lilit Dabagian, Martin Joormann, Nazife
Kosukoglu, Arakel Minassian, Florian Miihlfried, Mehmet Polatel,
Anoush Tamar Suni and Diana Yayloyan fills me with hope that we will
witness the dawn of a new academic environment of critical-minded
young researchers based on comradeship and mutual support rather than
fierce competition and individual ambition. I finally thank Elke Laschka,
my primary school teacher and first mentor, as well as my mother Claudia,
my father Jurgen, my grandmother Evelyne and my grandfather Herbert
for their life-long support.
Foreword
In the last decade or two something exciting, even fundamentally para-
digm-changing, has been happening in Ottoman, post-Ottoman, and
modern "Turkish" studies. In fields where the narrowness and tenden-
tiousness of nationalism have marred serious scholarship, courageous
scholars, both in Turkey and outside, have defied the restrictions of
governments and old understandings to break free of histories limited by
emphasis on one people or another. Whether through the lens of empire,
of entangled histories, or historical sociologies inherently transnational and
comparative, social scientists have asserted that earlier triumphant and
tragic stories of the past cannot be told in isolation from the complex
interactions of imperial settings, state policies of assimilation and discrimi-
nation, and cultural and geographic proximity. Shared territory, common
and disparate cultural understandings, and intersecting historical experi-
ences have demonstrated that the histories of Armenians, Kurds, Turks,
and others are intimately intertwined and inseparable from the actions and
fates of the others. The fraught topography of Anatolia, particularly its
eastern regions, the scene of repeated violence and displacement, demands
storytellers with vision that reaches beyond the fettered gaze of nationalists
and myth-making governments.
David Leupold is a charter member of this new cohort of social scientists
equipped with the languages, analytical skills, and the intellectual determi-
nation to probe deeply and illuminate the dark places that have eluded
earlier investigators. We met in Berlin half a dozen years ago, he an eager
graduate student, I a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin writing
a book on the Armenian Genocide. He impressed me immediately as an
exceptionally bright and creative thinker with great intellectual curiosity,
a grasp oflanguages, and the energy to pursue his ambitious research topic.
What I did not anticipate then was that I had just met someone who would
become a friend and colleague, someone with whom to share interests, gain
insights, and together work toward new understandings of Anatolian,
Caucasian, and (more recently) Soviet experiences.
David's exploration of the interwoven histories and present-day realities
of Kurds, Turks, and Armenians looks at the discursive contests over what
xu Foreword
Armenians see as Western Armenia (historic Armenia), Turks claim as
Eastern Turkey, and the Kurds imagine as Northern Kurdistan. These
disputed geographies are saturated with memories of recurring acts of mass
violence, beginning even before the Arrneman Genoode of 1915-1916
but deeply impregnated with the memories of those events that changed
forever the demography of the region. Because he knows all three of the
relevant languages, as well as Russian, English, and his native German,
David's research is enriched by intimate knowledge of the writings and
understandings of these three peoples. His historical, sociological, and
ethnographic work took him to the Republic of Turkey as well as the
Republic of Armenia. His argument disaggregates the notion that each of
these "nations" is internally homogeneous and indelibly hostile to the
others as he inquires within each of them to show the fractures within and
the connections between those outside. In this book one can see how
perpetrators can become victims, and victims perpetrators, all the while
certain that they have always been in the right and the others have been
wrong.
As a historian who has worked also as a political scientist, I admire
particularly David's methodology. Not only is the work deeply historical,
it is firmly based in fieldwork in both Turkey and Armenia and benefits
from his skills as an interviewer. A gifted oral historian able in several
languages to gain the confidence of his subjects, his extensive interviews
give this book a deep texture and bring out qualities and themes that have
not been explored in other research. In this book he sets out to explore
the contrasting and contested discourses, memories, identities, and narra-
tives of the peoples of the greater Van region (the former Ottoman
provinces of Bitlis and Van) of current day eastern Anatolia, as well as
related peoples in post- Soviet Armenia. While the object of this research
and its findings are multiple, it is driven by an underlying question and
theme: how are memories and narratives constructed in a non-essentialist
way and how might the historic and present- day conflicts be resolved? Hts
argument implies that if identities are fixed and primordialized, if mem-
ories are "real" and not the result of both experience and present- day
settings, and if narratives that legitimize possession of both the past and the
land are singular and tightly bounded, then resolving differences and
conflicts becomes almost impossible. David's work indicates that mem-
ories, narratives, and identities are much more porous and overlapping
than usually assumed, and this fluidity makes reconstruction, if not
complete deconstruction, of exclusivist discourses possible. For this
reason, the payoff for David Leupold's research is not 'only scholarly but
also politically relevant in the present day.
David's research ranges widely: into eastern Anatolian history and
ethnography; into Soviet Armenia; the Karabakh war; and the intricacies
of divisions within each nation. He weaves a broad, interwoven tapestry,
threads of which illuminate other parts of the picture. These varied threads
Foreword xm
ultimately come together in a key location: the historical experiences of
the greater Van region, which have been recorded since ancient times (the
Urartian Empire) and are understood differently not only by the three
major nationalities being discussed - Turks, Kurds, Armenians - but
within those communities themselves. Armenians, for example, from
different regions and different temporalities (the time of the Genocide,
Soviet times, post-Soviet times) experience and understand history and
their relationship to their neighbors differently. Urban Kurds differ from
the muliacir (refugees) from the Caucasus as well as from village Kurds.
David's ethnographies challenge the essentialist claims of nationalists about
the wholeness and harmony within nations and the hard boundaries
between different ethnoreligious groups. He gives us a much more subtle
and complex picture when he disaggregates the various imagined/affective
communities of Armenia, Turkey, and Kurdistan. Rather than essentia-
lized and internally harmonious nations, or fiercely antagonistic contest-
ants, he shows how peoples who have coexisted in this territory for
millennia have often contradictory views of the other.
Imagined geographies collide in the Van region. Western Armenia
bleeds into Northern Kurdistan, and both are assumed by Turks to be
Turkey. Maps betray the overlapping claims to the land. David begins
with the politics of memory, centering around the events of 1915 - the
Armenian Genocide. Kurds were perpetrators of mass killing, encouraged,
permitted, and required by the Ottoman authorities. But over time the
perpetrators became victims, themselves the targets of the Turkish state. As
the popular Kurdish expression puts it to Armenians, "They had you for
breakfast and will have us for lunch." Kurds of various stripes are caught in
a dilemma of whether to recognize what their ancestors did or condoning
it, even justifying it. Older Kurds, conservative Islamic oriented Kurds, are
reported to see the killings as justified in a religious frame , while younger
Kurds, more radical Kurds, buy into the secular, socialist position of the
PKK and condemn the killing, though also claiming that Turks were
responsible for promoting the killings and the real .blame falls on forces
like capitalist modernization.
In this book the intrepid author resurrects and reconstructs lost histories
that some peoples demand be remembered and others desperately want to
forget or repress. Memory is at the center of his approach, and he deftly
distinguishes between four modes of memory politics: narrating, silencing,
mapping, and performing. States work to monopolize collective memory,
by narrating and silencing, performing through the building of monu-
ments or destruction of existing signs of an alien culture, and delineating
legitimate boundaries on the ground, in an attempt to create a unified
grand narrative that supports the national myth and proclaims the national
collective as the only genuine and legitimate collective. For Armenians the
Genocide is fundamental to their unifying identity, as demonstrated in the
Tsitsernakabert monument in Erevan and the adjoining Genocide
xiv Foreword Foreword xv
Museum. Kurds do not have many architectural monuments, aside from David's work moves beyond the constraining frame of the nation. It is
some fortresses and mosques, but some strata deploy certain ·heroes - for free from special pleading for one group or another. It looks at how
example, the Yezidis with the military co~ander Jahan~r Agha - to national discourses are constructed, and he asks hard questions about why
show their closeness to the Armenians and their shared expenences. Other nations are imagined as exclusive and hostile to others. He deploys theory
Kurds, the majority of whom did not originate within the greater Van to open up analytical doors and gives us a conceptually original and
region, share with Armenians the experience of deportation, e.g., the empirically deep account of the fatal ties that bind together and pull apart
refugees from the Caucasus, that separates them from other Kurds but Armenians, Kurds, and Turks. His critical readings, his insightful analyses,
does not bring them closer to Armenians; rather it means that they have and his local knowledge transcend any single discipline and include
a parallel experience that rationalizes their possession of the land on the elements of history, sociology, and anthropology. Whether it is the politics
basis of the injustice they have suffered. Still other Kurds, those more of memory, or the histoire croisee of Anatolia, or deep dives into discourses,
recently displaced by Turkish state violence from Hakkari province, David Leupold has something important to tell us that transcends the
experience their expulsion in the idiom of the radical PKK (Partiya embattled dreamlands that are at the center of this extraordinary book.
Karkeren Kurdistan€, Kurdish Workers' Party), which in some ways is
similar to that of the Y ezidis of Armenia. David's overall point is that non- Ronald Grigor Suny
national collectivities have their own narratives and memories that under- William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History
mine the idea of a single national memory or narrative. For example, Professor of Political Science
Vanetsis (Armenians with ancestral connections to the city of Van) do not The University of Michigan
speak only of the Genocide but also of their "self-defense" of the town
against the Turks. Emeritus Professor of History and Political Science
One of the most interesting contrasts between narratives that David The University of Chicago
documents is the difference between the Islamic national narrative and the
Kurdish national narrative. The former holds that peoples of different
ethnicities but with a shared religion make up the most authentic collec-
tivity, a multi-ethnic nation bound together by common faith, while the
latter eschews religion and argues that language and culture bind Kurds
together as a nation. The Islamic national narrative, which is close to the
Turkish national narrative, sees 1915 as a moment of solidarity of Kurds
and Turks against infidel Armenians, while the Kurdish national narrative
sees 1915 as the precursor of what will soon befall the Kurds in the next
100 years. Both Kurds and Armenians are the victims of the Turks.
In many ways this is a very courageous manuscript. The author does not
shy away from looking hard at what confounds the more heroic arid
laudatory elements in the national narratives. He talks frankly about how
victims become perpetrators. He tells the often avoided story of certain
Armenian heroes, like Andranik Ozanian and Garegin Nzhdeh, who in fact
carried out atrocities and/ or were later allied with fascists. The preferred
version of the past that relates how some Kurds saved Armenians is
complicated by noting that Kurds sometimes enslaved Armenian survivors.
The honesty of his account will not sit well with those who cling to the
nationalist narratives. Yet, there is also a progressive optimism in this work.
Looking forward into the future, the book suggests that cohabitation
potentially brings these seemingly conflictual cultures into a relationship
with open possibilities. There are shared memories of relatively harmonious
cohabitation in times past.
Introduction
Fatal Ties: Armenians, Kurds and Turks

The year 2015 in April. Dislocated and marginalized lies what had been the
Old City of Van, as a sea of debris at the feet of the castle in the abandoned
outskirts of the New City. With the exception of Muslim sites of worship
such as the Ulu Cami and Kizil Minareli Cami, the old center of the city
formerly known as Sahestan has been left to decay and dissolve in the self-
oblivious web oftin1e. The city, which had been at the ne:in1s of the political
struggle of Ottoman Armenians a century ago and formed, in the eyes of
some, the imaginary capital of a nascent "Westem Armenia" , now lies
disfigured along the swampy coastline of Lake Van. Emptied of its former
Armenian populations during what was known to contemporary observers as
a "crime against humanity", and to posterity as the first genocide of the 20ili
century, the city today harbors a majority Kurdish population, while being
located in the southeastern part of Turkey.
In 1928, tlurteen years after the genocide which was met in Van wiili fierce
resistance by its Armenian residents, the Soviet-Armenian writer Gurgen
Mahari, in his less-known biographic work Mankutyun ("Childhood", 1928),
embarks on an inuginary travel to what has become, in his words, a merradz
kaghak, a "perished city" or literally, a "deceased city". "My uncle resurfaces
from witlun ilie blue veil of history, standing on the ruins of ilie perished
city", 1 writes Mahari in a cryptic sequence at the end of the novel. What
follows is ilie fictitious dialogue with his deceased fan1ily members who are
eternally chained to the ruins of the perished city. Mahari's monologue echoes
the words of the fictitious narrator in Chris Marker's experimental film Sans
Soleil: "Who said iliat time heals all wounds?" he asks, continuing:

it would be better to say that time heals everything - except wounds.

With time, ilie hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the
desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already
ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound,
disembodied. 2

Few words could describe the sea of debris at the feet of the Van Castle
better than "disembodied wound". And indeed, the stones scattered around
2 Introduction
what had been Old Van did outlast the desiring body ofMahari, who died in
Yerevan in 1969, sharing the fate of tens 9f thousands of'Van's former
Ottoman Armenian residents forced into an exile from which they would
not return. Simultaneously, speaking with the words of famous genocide
scholar Ronald Grigor Suny, as "Western Armenia bleeds into Northern
Kurdistan",3 the "disembodied wound" of a century ago inflames again,
producing a cicatrized landscape of violence, scarred with new territorial
contestations that continue to shake the region until this day. Spatially rooted
in the shatter zone of the post-Ottoman and post-Soviet space, the greater
Van region 4 in eastern Turkey emerges, to those who visit it, as an embattled
dreamland where competing imaginaries of homeland stretch back continu-
ously from the Armenian Genocide (1915) of the past to the Kurdish conflict
(1984-today) of the present.
While most contemporary literature investigates the Armenian Ques-
tion of the past and the Kurdish question of the present as two events that
merely coincided in the same space, this work instead sets out to explore
their interdependence. Understanding Kurds and Armenians as two people
fatally tied together across a temporal and spatial scale, it sets out to
identify opposing historical trajectories. On the one hand, a line of
continuity can be identified, revolving around the notion of shared
victirnhood at the hand of the Turkish state: "They had them [the
Armenians] for breakfast and us for lunch", goes a famous saying among
the Kurdish residents of the region. The underlying argument is based on
the idea that, after the Armenian Genocide, it was the Kurds who were (in
their eyes) subjected to similar violence by the Turkish state.
And indeed, civil Kurdish populations died in tens of thousands when the
Turkish state waged its costly military campaigns against what they saw as
illegitimate cells of resistance - from violent suppression of the Dersim
rebellion in 1937 to the shelling of Kurdish-populated cities like Cizre and
Yiiksekova in 2015. In the case of the latter, the parallels become even more
apparent - in September 2015, a video emerged showing Turkish sold~ers
addressing the resisting Kurdish population with, "You are all Armenians"
(hepiniz Ennenisiniz). The critical-minded Cumhuriyet newspaper columnist
Aydm Erdogan sees in the violence of today the blueprint of the Armenian
Genocide: both Armenians and Kurds were regarded as harmful elements to
the survival of the Turkish nation, accused of treason and collaboration with
external enemies. 5 Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, even goes
one step further, arguably overstretching the analogy: while the Armenians
were subjected to genocide only once, Kurds were "always held at the brink
6
of cultural genocide" (kulturel soykmmm e}iginde). ' "official histories". Path-breaking works such as Benedict Anderson's
On the other hand, an opposing historical trajectory drives a wedge
between Kurds and Armenians, and complicates the story of shared
victimhood: while Kurds had inhabited the region alongside Syriacs and
Armenians in the pre-1915 period, it was only after the genocidal policies
of W odd War I that a remaining Kurdish population emerged as
Introduction 3
a crushing majority. Ironically, the very policies of the Young Turks to
eliminate Armenians concentrated the remaining Kurdish population as
a critical majority and, in this sense, unintentionally elicited the demand
for incorporation of the region into an imagined Northern Kurdistan. In
simpler terms, there would be no prospect and vision of a Northern
Kurdistan in Kars and Van without the genocide. Even more, Kurds
became partners in crime with the Young Turks in 1915. Whether
agitated by local religious leaders who promised paradise to those who
kill more than seven Armenians, or entirely mundane motives such as
economic gain, historian Frrat Aydmkaya's words seem to ring true:
"Without Kurdish complicity (i}tirak) Armenians would have been
removed from Turkey but not from the Kurdish periphery". 7
Both examples show illustratively the fatal ties that continue to link
together the residing and those expelled a century ago. For the current
residents - a crushing majority of Kurdish-speaking Muslims alongside
Alevis and Turks - it is an estranging place of origin, a scarred geography
cluttered with the ruins of those expelled (and murdered) more than
a century ago. For those whose descendants were expelled to "Caucasian
Armenia" - Armenians, Y ezidis and Syriacs - it remains an illusionary
place, a realm of nostalgia and refuge from present-day hardship. Yet,
imaginaries of a homeland lost (Armenians), found (Turks) and denied
(Kurds) transcend the private realm of personal nostalgia, and inform
powerful political narratives that advance and contest territorial claims. As
I will show in this book, the mass atrocities perpetrated against the non-
Muslim populations of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 are utilized in
different national contexts today to sustain, through mutually exclusive
interpretations of the past, the national collectives of Turks, Armenians
and Kurds, and to inform antagonistic territorial imaginaries: Eastern
Turkey - Western Armenia - Northern Kurdistan.
Over the last few decades, the way state and society negotiate these
competing interpretations of the past - that is, the politics of memory -
has elicited widespread interest among sociologists, political scientists,
historians, anthropologists and philologists. Maurice Halbwachs, who is
regarded by many as the "father of memory studies", touched upon the
issue of public memorialization of historical events as early as the late
1920s and 1930s in works like Les cadres sociaux de la memoire (1939) and
La memoire collective (1925). 8 Towards the end of the 20th century, an
increasing amount of academic research started to critically engage with
the nation-state more vocally, and questioned the purported objectivity of
Imagined Communities (1991) and Pierre Nora's Realms ef Memory: Rethink-
ing the French Past (1998) paved the way for a critical engagement with
artifacts of public memory and the spatial rooting of collective memory.9
In his work, Anderson identifies cenotaphs and tombs of unknown
soldiers as "arresting emblems of the modern culture of nationalism", and
4 Introduction
explores their role in underpinning a particularly "national" interpretation
10 ' argues that "one of the main endeavors of Atatiirk, while seeking to create
of the past. .
During the same period, questions around the role of_ n:iemory, both
during and after W odd War II, were studied in a more sophisticated manner
in further research, as reflected in James E. Young's article The Counter-
Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today (1992) and George
L. Mosse's monograph Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World
Wars (1990). The latter deals with the myth of martyrdom and, in a more
general sense, public memorialization of wartime experiences as a mobilizing
force during conflict.11 Engagement with memory as a resource of different
social and political actors - that is, exploring the "politics of memory" -
elicited new interest among scholars. The resulting explorations into the
crafting, fabrication and suppression of narratives of the past transcended
both academic disciplines and communities.
Given the peculiar historical context of the Holocaust and its aftermath,
it is hardly surprising to see that critical engagement with the genocidal
legacy of Nazi Germany would propel cutting-edge scholarship at the
intersection of memory and violence. Unlike Anglo-American scholarship,
German scholarship juxtaposes politics of memory with a different notion,
geschichtspolitik, which literally translates as "politics of history". Likewise
different from the more state-centered approach reflected in the French
terms politique publique de l'histoire or politique publique de la memoire, the
notion of geschichtspolitik is characterized by a more integrative approach
that recognizes the role of both state and non-state actors in shaping public
memory. 12 In addition to social scientists, prominent scholars from the
humanities also joined the debate, such as historian Reinhart Koselleck,
who declared geschichtspolitik a "suspicious word" (verddchtige vokabe0, as it
implied galvanizing a multitude of historical experiences into the singular
body of a national collective of memory: 13
History cannot be politicized. Whoever deems himself capable of
1
14
doing so has already fallen victim to his own ideology.
A further dimension of politics of memory rather peculiar to German
literature can be found in works dealing with vergangenheitspolitik ("politics
concerning the past"). Vergangenheitspolitik is widely employed as a more
normative term, and thus largely overlaps with research conducted in the
field of transitional justice. 15 Ultimately, through translation of selected
works written by leading scholars from Germany, such as Aleida and Jan
Assmann, the notion of "politics of history" entered both the Polish
(polityka historyczna) and Russian (istoricheskaya politika) scholarly discourse. 16
With regard to the Turkish case, arguably one of the earliest references
to politics of memory in the republican period (1923-now) ~an be found
in the introductory chapter of Dogan Avc1oglu's 1979 historical work
Turklerin Tarihi ("The History of the Turks"). In his work, which is
Introduction 5
informed by a blend of Kemalist national and Marxist socialist ideas, he
a nation was to give his nation a history" . 17 In this regard, A vc10glu
borrows from the early writings of Friedrich Engels the notion of "nations
without history" (geschichtslose volker), and argues that only through the
construction of a national history "embedded in the evolutionary history
of human civilization" could Turkey overcome her backwardness and join
the rank of W estem nations. 18 Avnoglu sees in the Kemalist project, to
which he professes his outright sympathy throughout his work, an
endeavor to challenge a deeply rooted tradition in Wes tern historiography
of constructing the Turkish people as the antipode of W estem civilization,
by characterizing them as an Asian (non-European) and Muslim (non-
Christian) people. Simultaneously, he advocates a critical approach to
history, rooted in a sound analysis of socio-economic factors, and
a profound skepticism towards mystified accounts of Ottoman conquest
and bygone glory:
These histories [early Ottoman historiography] exclude not only the
Turks but all people. Instead of people there are sultans. What was
written was not history, but a eulogy [to the rulers] .19
What is remarkable in this context is that, unlike other national writers in late
1970s Turkey, Avnoglu did not employ an essentialist notion of the Turkish
nation as the nation of the Turks. Instead, he understands the Republic of
Turkey not in continuity with historical Turkic empires, but as a "first
Turkish state", populated by people who can claim their ancestry to both
"the conquerors [e.g. Seljuk Turks] and the conquered [e.g. Christian
populations of Anatolia]" alike.20 Yet it was only due to the sociologist and
geographer ilhan Tekeli and his work Tarih Yaz1m1 Ozerine Du;unmek
("Thinking about History Writing", 1998) that the politics of memory has
been explored in Turkey as a sociological phenomenon. 21 Particularly from
the 2000s onwards, a new wave of critical-minded scholars, such as Salih
Ozbaran, Ahmet Ozcan, Oktay Ozel and Esra Ozyiirek, have engaged not
only critically with the Turkish nation-state, but have simultaneously ques-
tioned its foundational narrative, that is, "National Turkish History". 22 More
recent works in Turkey that follow a critical-constructivist approach to the
nation-state are Ugur Omit Ongor's Modern Turkiye'nin i~as1 ("The Con-
struction of Modem Turkey", 2016) and Bii~ra Ersanh's iktidar ve Tarih -
Turkiye'de "Resmf Tarih " Tezinin Olu;umu 1929-1937 ("Rulership and
History-The Formation of'Official History' in Turkey 1929-1937", 2015).
Regarding the Armenian case, literature specifically dealing with politics
of memory is relatively scarce. Nora C. Dudwick's dissertation on
Memory, identity and politics in Armenia (1994) constitutes an exception to
this rule, exploring the relationship between the national past, collective
memory, and political practice based on 22 months of ethnographic
6 Introduction
23 ·
fieldwork in Armenia between September 1987 and June 1991. This
exceptional study is complemented by other works by Levon Abraham-
yan, Edmund Herzig, Manna Kurkchiyan, Harutyun Marutyan and
Ronald G. Suny. Marutyan, particularly, contributed to our understanding
of memory and its evolution in post-socialist Armenia through works such
as Hishoghutyan dern Azgayin Ynknutyan Karrutsvatskum: Tesakan Hartsa-
drumner ("The Role of Memory in the Construction of National Identity:
Theoretical Considerations", 2006) and The Memory of Genocide and the
24
Karabagh Movement (2011). Furthermore, Kim Ghalachyan's pictorial
work Par,ki Hushardzanner ("Memorials of Glory", 1986) provides an
illustrative insight into war memorials and national cemeteries in Soviet
Armenia. The study of monuments and memorials is further complemen-
ted by Hranush Kharatyan-Araqelyan's article, On some Features of Arme-
nian-Turkish Joint Memories of the Past (2011), which - contrary to what its
title suggests - provides mainly an overview of how memory on the
genocide is inscribed in the landscape of present-day Armenia through
public and private memorial sites. 25
However, two-fold comparative approaches on Armenian and Turkish
politics of memory are relatively scarce. Thomas De Waal's "Great
Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide" (2015)
constitutes a rare monograph on the subject, approaching the issue of
conflicting memories from a journalist's perspective. 26 De Waal's work is
complemented by a few other articles that touch upon politics of memory
within the narrower framework of international relations and stalled
Armenian-Turkish reconciliation efforts. 27 In the absence of a sovereign
Kurdish nation-state, there is very little research focusing on the politics of
memory of Kurdish organizations. A rare example of research dealing
explicitly with state-led politics of memory is Sherko Kirmanj's article
Kurdish History Textbooks: Building a Nation-State within a Nation-State
(2014) - albeit not dealing with the Kurdish populations of Turkey, but
the Kurdish autonomous region in lraq. 28 Newly .~merging research, s1-1ch
as the works of Aras Ramazan (2014) and Hi~yar Ozsoy (2010) do explore
the topic of Kurdish politics of memory in Turkey, yet at least partially
portray it as a passive response to Turkish state violence, rather than an
active ~rocess of forging a national narrative with its own ideological
2
thrust. Thus, in spite of an increasing interest in the topic of memory
and memory politics among scholars working at the nexus of the Arme-
nian, Kurdish and Turkish community, current academic literature lacks
any comprehensive study that explores, in comparative foerspective, competing
Turkish, Armenian and Kurdish politics of memory. 0
In addition to this, important theoretical questions remain. Over the last
decades, leading scholars in the vibrant field of critical memory studies
such as Paul Connerton, Cathy Carut, Marianne Hirsch,' Jan-Werner
Muller and Jeffrey K. Ollick have substantially enriched our theoretical
understanding of memory and its politicization - on the relationship
Introduction 7
between memory and the body, collective memory and collectives of
memory, inter-generational transmission and memory, violence and trau-
matic memory, as well as memory and amnesia. In spite of this, the
intertwined processes that characterize the field of contestation between
top-down politics of memory and bottom-up counter memory are still in
31
need of further elucidation. There is a wide consensus in memory
studies that politics of memory do substantially shape "collective
memory" - that is, the multitude of collectives sustained by shared
imaginaries of the past. Yet, we continue to lack a more systematic
understanding regarding the underlying mechanisms at work. For instance,
there are few available insights from field work that allow us to understand
to what extent homogenizing national politics of memory actually succeed
or fail in establishing their narratives in fiercely contested geographies.
· Drawing from my extensive empirical material compiled over five years
in both Turkey and Armenia, this work sets out to disentangle these
processes. It seeks to unveil how top-down efforts by state and state-like
actors to establish their monopoly on the past can be challenged both, on
a horizontal level, by competing regimes of memory and, on a vertical
level, in bottom-up direction from within the local space. In this sense,
this book wants to be read as an investigation into the limits of memory
politics and its goal of forging a unitary and hegemonic narration on the
past.
My book is divided into five thematic chapters. It offers a novel perspective
and analytical framework for the study of collective memory in a threefold
contested geography. Chapters 1 and 2 explore collective violence and forced
population displacement as the essential precondition in the formation of
demographically homogeneous nation-states. They do so by reconstructing
the intertwined historical pathways of the Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish
national movements, highlighting aspects of cooperation and conflict. Chap-
ter 3 de-masks Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish "national history" as mirrored
images of one another and reveals that, while "national histories" are far from
being self-evident and uncontested, states and state,,.like organizations are
compelled to employ vast resources to reproduce their interpretation. Chap-
ters 4 and 5 introduce the extended greater Van region as an exemplary,
trilaterally embattled geography located at the very nexus of Turkish, Arme-
nian and Kurdish national imagiriaries, and argue that factors ingrained in
space, such as story-telling, moveable and immovable artifacts, rituals and
linguistic landscapes, favor the emergence of counter-narratives. The book
concludes with a discussion of memory as a multi-collective phenomenon
capable of bridging memory in the Van Lake area across the divide of the
currently residing and the expelled.
The book commences with "Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects"
(Chapter 1), which suggests the reading of collective violence and forced
population displacement as essential prerequisites in the formation of demo-
graphically homogeneous nation-states. While populated by a heterogeneous
8 Introduction
mix ofboth Muslim (Arabs, Kurds, Turks, etc.) and non-Muslim populations
(Armenians, Syriacs, Y ezidis, etc.) until the early 20th century, policies of
systematic persecution and, ·ultimately, genocide against the empire's Arme-
nian and Syriac populations turned the region into an almost exclusively
Muslim-populated geography. Based on a thorough reading of archive
material as well as secondary sources, this chapter seeks to capture the
complex interaction of different motives, ranging from questions of German-
Ottoman war interests and personal vengeance among high-ranking members
of the Young Turkish regime (both within ittihad ve terraki and te}kilat-i
mahsusa), to questions of socio-economic opportunism and religious fanati-
cism in the Kurdish-populated periphery. Not as a singular act of unprece-
dented "Turkish barbarity", but instead seen in the wider context of
preceding acts of mass expulsion and massacre, it establishes a dialogue
between the Armenian Genocide (1915) and previous acts of mass expulsion
and massacre committed by Tsarist Russia against a mix of indigenous
Muslim populations of the Northern Caucasus (1864-1867), known as the
Circassians. While recognizing a distinct difference in terms of scope and
systematization, this chapter argues that in both cases, an increasingly degen-
erating political environment triggered a fatal process of dehumanization and
immoral rationalization in which populations are divided up, based on their
linguistic and religious markers, into loyal and disloyal collectives.
"Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands" (Chapter 2) explores the inter-
twined historical pathways of the Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish national
movements, and highlights aspects of cooperation and conflict. It seeks to
reconstruct the historical evolution of the three movements from the
shared goal of imperial reform to the competing quest for a national
homeland. The quest for "Western Armenia" takes the reader from early
constitutional writings of Perso-Armenian merchants in distant India and
loosely organized Armenian solidarity organizations to internationally-
operating revolutionary parties such as the Social-Democrat Hnchakian
party (1887) and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (1890) • The
1
quest for "Eastern Turkey" unfolds as a history from Ottoman reformism
to pan-Turkist and, later, territorially confined nationalism - the latter
reflected in the Union for the Defence of Law in Anatolia and Rumelia
(1919). Finally, the quest for "Northern Kurdistan" is a story of early
clergy-led uprisings against central authority and short-lived Kurdish
independence under Xoyban (1927-1930); secularization and politicization
of the movement under the impact of affirmative policies for Kurdish
culture in Soviet Armenia (Radio Yerevan, Rja T.iz.i) and fully-fledged
guerilla warfare with the emergence of the Kurdisli Workers' Party (PKK).
Linking the three historical trajectories together, this chapter argues that
the removal of Arnenian populations during W odd War I created
a highly ambivalent situation on the ground: while it b~tally eradicated
the demographic basis for an Armenian homeland in the Eastern Pro-
vinces, the unintended consequence was a concentration of the remaining
Introduction 9
Kurdish population, and resulting demands for the liberation of the region
now as a "Kurdish homeland" .
"Mirrored Narratives" (Chapter 3) delves deep into antagonistic politics
of memory and the crafting of Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish "national
history" as mutually exclusive interpretations of the past. The chapter
proposes four distinct analytical dimensions for the study of politics of
memory: narrating, silencing, mapping/renaming and performing. The act
of narrating (1) is elucidated through a comparative analysis of historical
textbooks and other sources that provide a canonized form of the national
narrative. This section reveals how all three narratives stand in reciprocal
relationship to each other as they narrate their histories as opposing mirror
images of one another. In line with their particular socio-historical con-
texts, specific myths are identified that permeate and reinforce their
narratives: the antemurale christianitatis, or border-guard, myth (Armenian),
the leitkultur myth (Turkish) and, finally, the force majeure myth (Kurdish).
Based on this, narrating is complemented by strategic silencing (2) of
"shameful" aspects of one's own past, which, in return, might appear at
the core of past narrations by "the other". After having discussed the
production of "national history" through strategic narrating and silencing,
the chapter turns in its second half to the domain of performing (3), i.e .
the act of actually inscribing one's narrative into the body of citizens
through performing public rituals of commemoration. In the last section
of this chapter, mapping (4) is introduced as an ultimate stage of formali-
zation, when the narrative propagated by national history is fixed and
inscribed into the landscape. This chapter argues that, as "national
histories" are far from being self-evident and uncontested, states and state-
like organizations are compelled to employ vast resources to reproduce
and inscribe their respective narratives into both the collective memory of
their populations and the geographical landscape.
"Mnemonic Frontiers, Alien Homelands" (Chapter 4) introduces the
reader to the main site of this research: the greater Van region -
a trilaterally contested geography located at the nexus where competing
Turkish, Armenian and Kurdish national narratives collide. Against the
homogenizing and mutually exclusive nature of the national narrative,
this chapter turns to the local space in search for counter-narratives that
allow us to bridge memory across the fault line that continues to divide
those whose descendants were expelled to present-day Armenia
a century ago, and those who live around the greater Van region in
present-day Turkey. In order to retrace expelled and residing populations,
the first part of this chapter provides a thorough reconstruction of the
demographic structure of the region before and after 1915, as well as
a meticulous localization of the descendants of the expelled populations
(Armenian and Yezidi Kurds) in present-day Armenia. In order to
provide a framework for the in-depth reconstruction of local counter-
narratives in the subsequent chapter, the second part of this chapter
10 Introduction
engages in a profound discussion on memory and space . Two ways of
conceptualizing the local space are prqposed: "mnemonic frontier" and
"alien homeland"_ While the first suggests the existence of spatial factors
that favor the emergence of counter-narratives (story-telling, moveable
and immovable artifacts, rituals, linguistic landscapes), the latter proposes
an understanding of the local space as both homeland and foreign land
of the "disappeared other".
"Entwined Narratives" (Chapter 5) introduces the reader to a novel
approach in memory studies - multi-collective memory - arguing in favor
of emancipating the notion of "collective memory" from being subjected
to the "national collective". In contrast to public memory propagated by
the nation-state, individual accounts on the past are not primarily shaped
by the experience of being "Armenian", "Turkish" or "Kurdish" (national
collective). Instead, they are informed by a mix of other non-national
collective affiliations that form competing prisms through which indivi-
duals envisage the past: being local or newcomer (locality), old or young
(temporality), descendants ofland owners or field workers (genealogy and
class), objectors or conformists (weltanschauung). Exploring the relationship
between memory and genealogy (1), it first discusses the collective of the
family /kin, in order to reveal conflicting myths of the "old homeland"
among the residing and the expelled. Moving on to the relationship
between memory and locality (2), it shows how the collective of the
fellow-dwellers produces sui generis narrative elements based on the
divide between urban and rural (the residing) as well as settled and migrant
populations (the expelled), respectively. With regard to the relationship
between memory and temporality (3) it discusses the collective of the
generation and the evolution of memory along the temporal axis, reveal-
ing changing collective perceptions of self and other.
Finally, envisaging the complex relationship between memory and
ideology (4) the section concludes with the collective of the fellow-
minded. It explores how starkly different weltschanschauungen (worl4views),
ranging from Sufi humanism to Mesopotamian regionalism and Socialist
internationalism, inform and alternate narrations on the past, linking the
narrator to a multitude of collectives different from the nation-state.
Questioning the exclusively national rooting of collective memory, re-
envisioning the past is explored as a multi-collective phenomenon that
might be, at least partially, capable of bridging memory of the greater Van
region across the divide of the currently residing and the expelled.
Notes
1 Translation fron1 Armenian by the author. Gurgen Mahari, Mankutyun C'{ er-
evan: 1928), 61, www.abcd.am/abcd/bookview_v2_4.php?p_id_text=6950#.
XLhffjBKi70.
2 Chris Walker, Sans Solei/, French experimental film, 1983.
Introduction 11
3 Ronald Grigor Suny, personal correspondence, January 31, 2019.
4 Tentatively corresponding with the Ottoman provinces Van and Bitlis.
5 Erdogan Aydm. "Ermeniler ne ya~andi. Sorumlulugu nerede aranmah?" m
Utanr ve Onur, edited by Aydm <;:ubukr;:u, Nevzat Onaran, C. Hakki Zarir;:
and Onur Oztiirk (Istanbul: Evrensel Basm Publishers, 2015), 22.
6 Abdullah Ocalan, "Ortadoguda Y~arni Dogru Tanimlamak-II", komiinar, accessed
June 4, 2019, www.komunar.net/tr/index.php?sys=nuce&dw=nivis&id=1041.
7 Frrat Aydinkaya, "1880'den 1915'e: Kiirt- Ermeni Hinterlandindaki Kisrni
Soykmm ve Soykmmdaki Kiirt i~tiraki Ozerine", in Utanr ve Onur, edited by
Aydin <;:ubukr;:u, Nevzat Onaran, C. Hakki Zari<;: and Onur Oztiirk (Istanbul:
Evrensel Basm Publishers, 2015), 107.
8 Maurice Halbwachs, La memoire collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1950) and Maurice Halbwachs, Les Cadres Sociaux De La Memoire
(Paris: F. Akan, 1925).
9 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Refkctions on the Origin and Spread
ef Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983) and Pierre Nora, Realms ef Memory:
Rethinking the French Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
10 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 9.
11 George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory ef the World Wars
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
12 Stefan Troebst, "Geschichtspolitik", Docupedia - Begrijfe, Methoden ,md Debat-
ten der zeithistorischen Forschung, accessed June 7, 2019, https:/ /docupedia.de/
zg/ Geschichtspolitik#cite_note-40.
13 Reinhart Koselleck, "Gebrochene Erinnerung? Deutsche und polnische Ver-
gangenheiten", in ]ahrbuch der Deutschen Akademie fur Sprache und Dicht1mg
2000 (Gottingen: Wallstein, 2001), 19.
14 Reinhart Koselleck, "Der 8. Mai zwischen Erinnerung und Geschichte", in
Vom Sinn und Unsinn der Geschichte. Aufsiitze und Vortriige aus vier Jahrzehnten,
edited by Carsten Dutt (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010), 262.
15 Claus Offe, "Rechtswege der Vergangenheitspolitik: Disqualifizierung,
Bestrafung, Restitution", in Der Tunnel am Ende des Lichts. Erkundungen der
politischen Traniformation im Neuen Osten (Frankfurt am Main: Can1pus Verlag,
1994), 187-229 and Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Anfiinge der Bun-
desrepublik 1md die NS-Vergangenheit (Miinchen: C. H. Beck, 1996).
16 Aleida Assmann, Der Lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur 1md
Geschichtspolitik (Bonn: Bundeszentrale fur Politische Bildung, 2006) , Aleida
Assmann, Geschichte im Gediichtnis. Von der individuellen E,fahrung zur offentlichen
Inszenierung (Miinchen: C.H. Beck, 2007), Harald Welzer, Das kommunikative
Gediichtnis. Eine Theorie der Erinnerung (Miinchen: C. H. Beck, 2005).
17 Dogan Avc1oglu, Tijrklerin Tarihi (Istanbul: Tekin Y aymevi, 1979), 7.
18 Ibid. On a critical assessment of Engels' notion of "nations without history"
see also Roman Rosdolsky, Zur nationalen Frage. Friedrich Engels und das
Problem der "geschichtslosen Volker" (West Berlin: Verlag Olle & Wolter, 1979).
19 Ibid., 15.
20 Ibid., 35 and 41.
21 ilhan Tekeli, Tarih Bilinci ve Genrlik: KarJilajttnnalz Avrupa ve Tiirkiye Arajtzr-
nzasz (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yaymlari, 1998), ilhan Tekeli, Tarih Yazzmz
Uzerine Diijiinmek (Ankara: Dost Kitabevi, 1998).
22 Salih Ozbaran, Tarih, Tarihri ve Toplum (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yaymlan,
2_007), Salih Ozbaran, GiJdiimlu Tarih (Cem Yaymevi: istanbul, 2003), Salih
Ozbaran, Germiji Giincelle~tirmek: __ Tarihfi !mgesinden Medya Sozdiliigiine (Istan-
bul: Tarihr;:i Kitabevi, 2011), Ozcan Ozcan, TIJrkiye'de Popa/er Tarihrilik
1908-1960 (Ankara: Tiirk Tarih Kurum, 2011), Oktay Ozel, DiJn Sanctst:
12 Introduction Introduction 13
Turkiye'de Gefmi; A/gm ve Akademik Tarihfilik (Istanbul: Kitap Yaymevi, 2009), (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), Levon Abrahanuan, Armenian
Esra Ozyiirek, The Politics ef. Public Memory in Turkey (Syracuse: Syracuse Identity in a Changing World (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2006) and Harutyun
University Press, 2008), Esra Ozyiirek, Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism Marutyan, Hishoghutyan dern Azgayin Ynknutyan Ka,rutsvatskum: Tesakan Hartsa-
and Everyday Politics in Turkey (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006) . drumner (Yerevan: Noravank Foundation, 2006) , Harutyun Marutyan, "The
23 Nora C. Dudwick, "Memory, identity and politics in Armenia" (PhD diss., Memory of Genocide and the Karabagh Movement", in Prospects for Reconcilia-
University of Pennsylvania, 1994). tion: Theory and Practice, edited by Hranush Kharatyan-Araqelyan and Leyla Neyzi
24 Edmund Herzig and Marina Kurkchiyan, The Armenians: Past and Present in the (Bonn: DVV International, 2011), 24-38, Kim Ghalachyan, Parrki Hu.shardzanner
Making of National Identity (London: Routledge, 2005), Ronald Grigor Suny, (Yerevan: Hayastan Publishers, 1986) and Hranush Kharatyan-Araqelyan, "On
Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History (Bloomington: Indiana some Features of Armenian-Turkish Joint Memories of the Past", in Prospects for
University Press, 1993), Levon Abrahamian, Armenian Identity in a Changing Reconciliation: Theory and Practice, edited by Hranush Kharatyan-Araqelyan and
World (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2006), Harutyun Marutyan, Hishoghut- Leyla Neyzi (Bonn: DVV International, 2011) , 126-155.
yan dern Azgayin Ynknutyan Karrutsvatskum: Tesakan Hartsadrumner (Yerevan: 31 See e.g. George C. Bond and Angela Gilliam, Social Construction of the Past:
Noravank Foundation, 2006) and Harutyun Marutyan, "The Memory of Representation as Power (London: Routledge, 1994), Cathy Carut, Unclaimed
Genocide and the Karabagh Movement", in Prospects for Reconciliation: Theory Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
and Practice, edited by Hranush Kharatyan-Araqelyan and Leyla Neyzi (Bonn: Press, 1996), Paul Connerton, The Spirit of Mourning: History, Memory and the
DVV International, 2011), 24-38 . Body (London: Cambridge University Press, 2011),Jeffrey K. Olick, "Collective
25 Kim Ghalachyan, Parrki Hushardzanner (Yerevan: Hayastan Publishers, 1986) Memory: The Two Cultures", Sociological Theory 17, no. 3 (1999): 333-348,Jens
and Hranush Kharatyan-Araqelyan, "On some Features of Armenian-Turkish Brockmeier, "Remembering and Forgetting: Narrative as Cultural Memory",
Joint Memories of the Past", in Prospects for Reconciliation: Theory and Practice, Culture & Psychology 8, no. 1 (2002): 15-43 and Marianne Hirsch, "The
edited by Leyla Neyzi (Bonn: DVV International, 2011), 126- 155. Generation of Postmemory", Poetics Today 29, no. 1 (2008): 103- 128.
26 Thomas de Waal, Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of
Genocide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
27 See e.g. Christian Wevelsiep, "Umstrittene Geschichte. Der Volkermord an
den Armeniem im Spannungsfeld der Erinnerungspolitik", in Zeitschrift fur
Theologie und Kulturgeschichte 10 (Saarbriicken: Saarland University Press, 2015)
and Seyhan Bayraktar, "The Politics of Denial and Recognition: Turkey,
Armenia and the EU", in The Armenian Genocide Legacy, edited by Alexis
Demirdjian, Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide series (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillian, 2016), 197-211.
28 Sherko Kirmaaj, "Kurdish History Textbooks: Building a Nation-State within
a Nation-State", The Middle East journal, 68, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 367-384.
29 For recent works on Kurdish politics of memory see e.g. Aras Ramazan, The
Formation of Kurdishness in Turkey: Political Violence, Fear and Pain, Routledge
Studies in Middle Eastern Politics series (London: Routledge, 2014) and
Hisyar Ozsoy, "Between Gift and Taboo: Death and the Negotiation of
National Identity and Sovereignty in the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey", (PhD
diss., University of Texas, 2010). I
30 F_or recent works dealing with Turkish politics of memory see e.g. Salih
Ozbaran, Tarih, Tarihfi ve Toplum (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yaymlan, 2007),
Salih, Ozbaran, Gudumlu Tarih (Cem Yaymevi: istanbul, 2003), Salih, Ozbaran,
Germiii Guncelleitirmek: Tarihfi Imgesinden Medya Siizculugune (Istanbul: Tarih<;i
Kitabevi, 2011), Ozcan Ozcan, Turkiye'de Popiiler Tarihfilik 1908-1960 (Ankara:
Tiirk Tarih Kurum, 2011), Oktay Ozel, Dun Sanas1: Turkiye'de Geftn~ A/g!St ve
Akademik Tarihfilik (Istanbul: Kitap Yaymevi, 2009), Esra Ozyiirk, The Politics of
Public Memory in Turkey (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008), Esra
Ozyiirek, Nostalgia for the Modem: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey
(Durhan1: Duke University Press, 2006), Bii~ra E_rsanh, iktidar ve Tarih - Tiir-
kiye'de "Resmf Tarih" Tezinin Oluiumu (1929-1937) (Istanbul: ileti~im Yaymlan,
2015). For recent works dealing with Armenian politics of memory, see e.g.
Nora C. Dudwick, "Memory, identity and politics in Armenia" (PhD diss.,
University of Pennsylvania, 1994), Edmund Herzig Marina Kurkchiyan, TI1e
Armenians: Past and Present in the Making of National Identity (London: Routledge,
2005), Ronald Grigor Suny, Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History

1 Saving the Empire, Killing Its
Subjects
Circassian and Armenian Tales
"Every dream and every great initiative is paranoia, doctor." - "Great
initiatives rarely succeed . .. ": the fragment is taken from the fictitious
dialogue between a Yugoslavian morphine-addict disguised as a doctor
and a Russian colonel suffering from paranoid schizophrenia in Hristo
Boytchev's award-winning play The Colonel Bird (2007). 1 Set in The Forty
Holy Martyrs, a fictitious psychiatric clinic somewhere in the Balkan
Mountains left to its fate during the Bosnian War (1992-1995), Boytchev
tells the story of its mentally ill patients who, upon dressing in military
uniforms regain the belief in their sanity, declare "a separate European
territory here in the Balkans" and form under the leadership of
a schizof hrenic Russian colonel a small combat unit to join forces with
NATO . As the plot evolves it powerfully reveals the arcane link between
paranoid fears and self-aggrandizing dreams that informs the rationality not
only of the madman. A century ago, it was the multi-ethnic empires of
the east - Tsarist Russian, Habsburg Austrian and Ottoman Empire - that
while dreaming the elevated dream of reforming themselves into modern
and self-sovereign "Europe-style" nation-states were equally haunted by
a fatal paranoia: the paranoia of treason and internal enemies.
In an attempt to recapitulate the history of present-day Eastei;n Turkey
and its adjacent regions (Caucasus, the Balkans and the Black Sea Region)
reckless territorial policies, collective violence and mass deportations
emerge as the three main aspects that dominated, haunted and annihilated
the lives of millions. Religious and/ or linguistic affiliations should form
the main criteria according to which people were categorized into
trustworthy and untrustworthy groups, with the latter being subjected to
reckless policies of deportation and massacre. With present-day Eastern
Turkey and the Caucasus region at the intersection point where the
influential spheres of three empires collide - Ottoman, Persian and Tsarist
Russian - populations are rationalized as either "assets" or "obstacles" to
large-scale military campaigns. With the advance of ideologies which
promote national liberation, the previously military considerations give
way to an unprecedented form of demographic engineering that now
utilizes populations en masse as pawns in a cold-blooded game of chess.
Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects 15
While previously framed within notions of "imperial conquest" and
"divine providence", territorial aspirations are now cloaked in the lan-
guage of "right to the homeland" and " national defense".
In the following sections, these considerations shall form the lens
through which I will envisage the Armenian Genocide as the nadir in
a continuity of dreadful events propelled by misguided mass-mobilization,
reckless state calculations and an environment of constant anxiety. As
a matter of fact, today there is a widely shared consensus in international
academia that from 1915 onwards "deportations and massacres had
occurred; that they had been ordered, organized, and carried out by the
Young Turks and their agents; and that the target of these brutal policies
had been defined ethnoreligious groups".3 After long considerations and
thorough research in both archive sources and secondary literature I have
r~ached the conclusion that the word "genocide" is indeed the most
adequate term available to us to describe these violent events. Or as the
New York University professor Paul Boghossian pointed out in
a rhetorical question to those colleagues reluctant to employ this notion:
"you accept that all this happened, and you still do not want to call it
genocide, then you give us the word" .4 Yet beyond the narrow frame-
work of an "ethno- national tragedy", 1915 also tells us a wider story of
fratricide and of destructive learning processes in which the victims of
yesterday emerge on the stage of history as the perpetrators of tomorrow
and vice versa. It is the history of collective violence that expands from the
Caucasian mountains to the Balkans and the plains of the Armenian
highland. It is clear that the subsequent discussion can only provide
a broad overview of the region's history of collective violence and mass
expulsion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Accordingly, later acts
of collective violence and mass expulsion, such as the World War II
deportations of Meskhetian Turks and Crimean Tatars under Stalinist
rule or the mutual expulsions of Armenians and Azerbaijanis during the
Nagorny-Karabakh war (1988-1994), exceed the scope ofmy research as
cases that deserve treatment in a separate framework tailored to their
contextual particularities. The same is true for the case of Georgian IDPs
in the aftermath of warfare in Abkhazia (1992- 1993) and South O ssetia
(2008) . Although not at the center of my attention, displacement policies
against 0argely rural) Kurdish populations during the period of the
Kurdish-Turkish conflict (1993-1999) are briefly discussed at the end of
this chapter to provide the reader with a contextual framework for
understanding the Kurdish notion of a "continuing genocide".
Thus I will focus on two historical events: the killing and mass
expulsion of Muslim populations from Circassia (1864-1867) following
the defeat of the Tsarist army in the Caucasus campaign and the genocide
against Armenians (1915-1918) in the Ottoman Empire during World
War I. Two reasons prompted me to discuss these cases in more detail:
contextual similarities and substantial evidence for a causal relationship
16 Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects
between the cases. In both cases ethnic markers of differentiation disqua-
lify certain populations of war-ridden regions as "trustworthy". In both
cases, a consensus 1s reached that (purportedly) these untrustworthy
populations have to be removed to restore order. Finally, in both cases,
deportation policies form the smokescreen for state-backed armed forces
to commit acts of collective violence ranging - from case to case - from
arbitrary expropriations to genocidal massacre. Besides these contextual
similarities, there is strong evidence for a causal relationship between both
cases on the level of agency and structure. On the level of agency, I will
show with the case of Circassian refugees in the CUP (and later, Arme-
nian Genocide survivors in the ARF) how the victims of yesterday can
return to the stage of history as the perpetrators of today. On the structural
level, I will show that while 1915 did "successfully" end the previous
conflict between Ottoman central state authority and Armenian insur-
gents, at the same time it laid the foundations for an ongoing conflict
between Turkish central state authority and Kurdish insurgents.
"Treacherous M uslims": The Fate of "Tsarist Circassians"
(1864-1867)
Situated in the periphery of both the Tsarist Russian and Ottoman
empires, the northwestern region of the Caucasus, at that time known
by its exonym Circassia, was home to a variety of diverse populations,
tribally organized and predominantly speakers of Northwest Caucasian
languages (Adgyghe, Abaze and extinct Ubykh) commonly referred to
by the umbrella term "Circassians". In mid-19th century, at the
height of the Russian "conquest of the Caucasus", Circassia would
become the historical stage to witness expropriation, massacre and
deportation within the framework of a new form of state-sanctioned
collective violence aimed at an irrevocable "reconfiguration" of the
demographic landscape:
Wiping away the last vestiges of Ottoman influence there required not
only Russian strategic acumen and military firepower, but also twin
policies of what one would today call genocide and state terrorism - the
systematic burning of villages, wholesale killing of native peoples, and
forced deportation. 5
While it proves difficult to determine an exact date of the so called
"conquest of the Caucasus", 6 Tsarist Russia's push into the Caucasus
started as early as 1777, when forts were erected along a geographical
stripe ranging ·from Mozdok (today's Republic of ~orth Ossetia-Alania)
to Azov (today's Rostov Oblast) to prepare military expansion to the
Kuban river. In the ensuing 101 years the Northern Caucasus witnessed
a series of battles and wars that in their aftermath would irrevocably alter
Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects 17
the demographic landscape of the region at the expense of the region's
Muslim populations. Russia's push into the Caucasus occurs in an envir-
onment in which religion is used instrumentally as the benchmark to
measure loyalty. As King observes, "Russia assumed the mantle of protec-
tor of Eastern Christians - which had been one of the key catalysts of the
Crimean War - while the Ottomans often attempted to utilize Islam as
a link to Caucasus Muslims in Circassia and Dagestan". 7 Consequently,
when the last forces of local resistance surrendered to the Tsarist army at
Qbaada canyon (renamed Krasnaya Polyana) on May 21, 1864, Tsarist
Russia followed the very rationale Tsar Nikolai II had formulated in
a letter to his field marshal Ivan Paskevich 35 years before: "the ultimate
suppression of the mountain people or the destruction of the rebellious
[jstrebleniye nepokornykh]". 8 The Russian officer Ivan Drozdov would
remember the events that ensued later in his war diary on The I.Ast Struggle
with the Highlanders in the Western Caucasus (1977) when he reports of roads
covered with "scattered corpses of children, women, old people, tattered,
half-eaten by dogs" while the surviving populations were driven out into
the port of Sochi where Ottoman vessels - tellingly called "floating
graveyards" by contemporary observers - waited for them.9 From there
they embarked on an uncertain fate. Drozdov recounts with horror how
the Turkish skippers, out of greed, piled Circassians like ship-
load ... and, like ballast, they threw overboard the useless [lishnikh],
at the slightest sign of illness. The waves spilled the corpses of these
unfortunates onto the shores of Anatolia. Hardly half of those who
went to Turkey arrived to the place. 10
In this sense, 1864 marks not only the military victory of imperial
power over local resistance but more importantly the starting point for
a radical intervention and reconfiguration of the region's demographic
landscape: "[t]he Kuban region was not only conquered, but also
cleared" (ne tolko zavoyevana, no i ochishchena), 11 Dr.ozdov would recount
later, and remarks that "[f]rom the former, rather large population, there
remained [only] a handful of people who were settled along the Kuban
[river]" .12 In place of the Muslim highlanders, Christian populations
deemed as "loyal" were resettled to the region emptied of its former
"suspicious" populations. 13 Most importantly "Armenians, and other
groups considered loyal to the empress" were utilized as the spearhead
of Russian expansion, which according to King was "cloaked in the
civilizing mission of a European empire, [yet] prosecuted with incredible
savagery". 14 In this way, Tsarist Russia's policy proved instrumental in
fueling hatred between Armenian and Muslim populations of the region
and contribute to what should later erupt into anti-Armenian pogroms
throughout the Ottoman Empire:
18 Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects
Circassian families were sent to Syria, the Balkans, and eastern Anatolia
and resettled amid restive communities of Arabs, Slavs, Kurds, and
Armenians. These· new arrivals were looked upon by locals as an invading
force, foreigners favored by the imperial government who wfr now
demanding their share ofland, food, and other scarce resources.
This circumstance was further aggravated by an Ottoman resettlement
strategy aiming at settling Circassians in Armenian, Syriac and Greek
populated areas where either Muslim or Turkic populations were, which
16
King calls "the mirror image ... of the policy pursued by the Russians" .
Admittedly, we lack substantial evidence for a similar degree of scope and
organization with which Tsarist Russia pursued its policies of uprooting
large parts of the region's Muslim populations. Yet its terrific impact
makes it very well comparable to the subsequent genocide committed
against the Ottoman Armenians and Syriac Christians in 1915:
Overall, however, the number of those who left the Caucasus, both
highlander and lowlander, from the time of the capture of Shamil
until the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 may be on the
order of two million people, many of whom perished at some point
along their journey northward to the plains or across the Black Sea to
the Ottoman Empire.17
To this day, the "Circassian Question" forms a controversial issue
reflected in a series of conferences and public events held in the ·Russian
Federation, Turkey and beyond with often starkly diverging ideological
standpoints. 18 The question gained wider political attention latest in 2011
when Georgia, after a conference held at the Ilya Chavchavadze Uni-
versity with the support of the American Jamestown Foundation, "became
the first country to recognize as genocide Tsarist Russia's massive slaughter
of ethnic Circassians in the mid-19th century" .19 While intTrpreted by
many journalists in Russia sympathetic to the government as a mere
political move, given the fact that "the 150th anniversary of the Circassian
genocide coincide[d] ... [with the] Winter Olympics in 2014", that were
to be held in Sochi - a Russian port town located at the very heart of
historical Circassia - other intellectuals and journalists critical of the
government, such as Aleksandr Podrabinek in his article "Olympics in
the Memory of Genocide?" (Olimpiada v pamyat o genotside?), repeated the
call to the Russian government to extend "condolences to the people and
national repentance". 20 Although not be discussed in detail, the subse-
quent exodus of Muslim populations in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars
(1912-1913) should have a similar impact and further: deepen the cleavage
along the religious divide that would drastically undermine popular sup-
port for any models of intrareligious coexistence:
Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects 19
The wars and their associated ethnic violence, with Muslims again the
primary victims, accelerated the influx of refugees into Anatolia as
Macedonia was tom away, and killed any vestige of interest in
interreligious pluralism for the CUP leaders. 21
"T reacherous Christians": The Fate of Ottoman Armenians
(1915-1916)
On July 23, 1913, the former imperial capital Adrianople was conquered
by Ottoman forces. Since June 29 the Second Balkan War had raged over
the lands of the Southern Balkans. The Ottomans occupied the city, now
known as Edime, "without firing a single shot".22 Due to the ongoing
war against Greece, Bulgarian troops had all been allocated to the front
with Serbia and Greece. Lured into false security by the London Peace
Treaty, Bulgaria assumed that the Ottomans "would only proceed up until
the border of Eno-Midi and that they would stop there" (samo shte si
zaematii granitsata Enosu - Midiya i che tamu shte spratu"). 23 Not least to the
surprise of the attacking forces, the push of the Ottoman armies into
Bulgarian territory was met with virtually no resistance. At the time of the
reconquest of the city, Edime was populated by 106,000 civilians, 20,000
of whom were Bulgarian refugees who had been resettled in the aftermath
of the first Balkan War. Lyubomir Miletich, a Bulgarian ethnographer,
who documented the crimes perpetrated against the civilian population
during the recapture in his 1918 published work "The Devastation of the
Thracian Bulgarians in 1913" (Razorenieto na Traki[skitye bulgari pryez u
1913 godina), speaks of an "unimaginable horror" (nevuobrazimu uplakhu)
in the face of Turkish "robbing, killing and burning" (grabyatii, ubivat'
24
i opozharyavatu"). A set of widely popular, preconfigured negative stereo-
types associated with the Ottomans might have prompted many observers
of the time to explain the carnage with what they saw as the essential
nature of the "terrible Turk". Yet, the smokescreen of old stereotypes
obscured an entirely new form of violence.
When "the Bulgarian population was expelled to the nearest Bulgarian
border - naked ... without any livestock, and all its belongings ... returned
back to the Turks", Miletich notes with profound surprise "how system-
atically the same plan has been applied equally". 25 Contradicting his
understanding of "Turkish nature and Orientalism" (turskata nabryezhnost'
i orientalshtina) he was appalled to see how "[a]ll of this was fulfilled in
a planned, uniform manner". 26 What he observed at the beginning of the
20th century was very different from the chaotic outbursts of violence that
had ensued occupations in the past - they now were calculated and
formed centerpieces in a larger agenda. Reminiscent of what Thomas
Pynchon, one of the most celebrated post-modern writers of our times,
calls in his novel V. the progression toward the inanimate, we see how
20 Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects
populations are no longer targeted primarily as animates subjected to
wrath, vengeance or corporal punishment (all human categories). Instead,
whether in the "scramble for Africa" to the "Great Game" over Turke-
stan, populations are now targeted as inanimate objects that can be
utilized, moved or disposed of (all technical categories). Populations, now
inanimate and utilizable, were seen by the policy makers of the age as
assets and obstacles in the making and breaking of nation-states. Or
speaking with the words of Miletich, "the plan of the reoccupation" was
that "the newly occupied Thracian region was perfectly cleared from the
Bulgarian population, so that Bulgaria could [no longer] continue to claim
27
it on the basis of the national principle" (osnova na natsionalniya printsipii).
Two months after the occupation, on September 29, 1913 the King-
dom of Bulgaria signed with the Ottoman Empire the Treaty of Con-
stantinople (1913) acknowledging Ottoman gains of Edirne, Kirklareli and
Didymoteicho and the surrounding territory. The plan had worked. The
total removal of the Bulgarian populations in the region had successfully
undermined any claims by the Kingdom of Bulgaria and reinstituted the
region again as part of an Ottoman-Turkish Empire. Breathing in the
warm breeze of a summer day at dawn, a 32-year-old military officer on
July 24, 1913 gazes over Edirne now cleansed from its Bulgarian popula-
tions. The man standing in the twilight of the dawn is no one less than
Ismail Enver Pasha himself, the major-general of the Ottoman military.
Together with Talaat and Cemal Pasha he formed the powerful triumvi-
rate that had de facto ruled over the empire since the 1913 Ottoman coup
d'etat. Enver had just learned an important lesson that would prove fatal
two years afterwards - that where there are no people, there is no claim to
a homeland.
On a global scale, world politics has been dominated since the 19th
century by a fierce multilateral power struggle between competing imper-
ial forces willing to utilize national movements across different regions to
realize their territorial aspirations. This observation urges Fikfet Adanir to
assert that the "Armenian question formed - similar to the Bulgarian,
Macedonian, Albanian or Arab - the diplomatic-historical complex of the
'oriental question' that comprised the new-configuration of the Near
East". 28 With the eruption of World War I in 1914, this imperial power
struggle was channeled into the dualistic framework of wartime alliances.
On the one hand, the mittelmiichte (ger. Central Powers) led by the
German and Austro-Hungarian Empire; on the other hand, the Triple
Entente led by France, Great Britain and Tsarist Russia. The region of
Anatolia turned into a playground for expansionist policies when the CUP
decided to enter the war on the side of the mittelmiichte following a secret
agreement with Germany in 1914. The decision of the Turkish leadership
to abandon Ottoman neutrality, a move Suny described as a "war not of
29
necessity but of choice" , was accompanied by hopes not only to save but
to expand the empire beyond its Eastern borders. In this context, we
Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects 21
witness how the Young Turks - in analogy to Tsarist Russia - adopted
policies that can be characterized as both national-Turkish and imperial at
°
the same time. 3 Consequently, the Russo-Turkish borders to the east
should form a new frontier in the Great War. On the other side of the
frontier, Russia countered with measures for "the rapid transportation of
weapons and provisions across the [Ottoman-Russian] border and for the
distribution of these among the population on the other side of the
border" 31 and "to prepare a rebellion of the Armenians, Assyrians [i.e.
Syriacs], and Kurds". 32 The next historical stage of unprecedented atro-
cities would become the vast territories along this border with its extre-
mely heterogeneous mix of Christian (Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians)
and Muslim (Turkish, Laz and Kurdish) populations - Eastern Anatolia.
Under the influence of bottom- up national movements and imperially-
sponsored propaganda a suicidal radicalization of politics took place in the
region, in which "older differences - from family feuds to struggles over
agricultural land - were cloaked in the language of national survival and,
eventually, revolution". 33 Feuds, nomadic targeting of settled groups and
resettlement came to be interpreted within the framework of oppression
and national survival. At a moment when the empire was "on the brink of
34
dissolution" the Turkish leadership took the ominous decision to resettle
allegedly untrustworthy populations. 35 However, the policy of deporta-
tions "soon escalated into a full-scale war by the Ottoman state against its
own subjects" .36 The "experience and knowledge of links between
Armenian nationalists and Entente sponsors" 37 combined with the stereo-
type "that the whole Armenian population was suspicious or hostile" 38
and formed the basis of legitimacy for a "collective punishment" directed
against all Armenians across the empire and executed by both the regular
army and paramilitary groups.
In this context, primary sources from the German archive, among
others, further illustrate the invalidity of this collective accusation. As
a matter of fact, as representatives of Turkey's most important ally,
German diplomats are not expected to have much sympathy for the
Armenian population. Nevertheless, an evaluation of the telegram
correspondence between the German consuls and the ambassador to
Constantinople, Wangenheim, reaffirm the idea that although Ottoman
Armenians were discontented with the lack of reforms in the Eastern
provinces they never envisaged, let alone organized, a large-scale upris-
ing against the Porte. Evaluating the forceful deportations of Ottoman
A1menians, the verweser in Erzurum, Scheubner-Richtner, argues in
retrospect on August 8, 1915 that "for what it's worth, there is no
evidence for a generally intended and organized uprising of the
Arrnenians". 39 Referring explicitly to the case of Erzurum, a locality
he knew in depth given his long-term tenure there, he adds that no
weapons were found and that
22 Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects
if an uprising had been planned here, January offered the best .
opportunity when the Russians were just 35km away from the city
and the garrison of Erzurum consisted of only a few hundred men
40
while 3,000-4,000 Armenians were in the worker-battalions.
No uprising took place in Erzerum and the wave of Armenian rebellion
that was supposed to sweep over the Eastern provinces did not occur. This
view is also shared by other German diplomats, such as the consul of
Aleppo, Ri:iBler, who remarks in regard to the Armenians of Di:irtyol
(Adana province) that "from all the ongoing events and appearings no
conclusion can be drawn that Armenians had any kind of organization
with the aim of conspiracy and revolution". 41 He reaffirms this again in
the immediate wake of the killings, by expressing his rejection to the
underlying idea of collective punishment:
The [Ottoman-Turkish] government seems to insist on the medie-
val standpoint, that a whole people are to be held accountable for
the actions of an individual or a few. Hence their punitive mea-
sures aim at the annihilation of Armenians in whole districts. All
Armenians with property, education and influence are to be anni-
42
hilated so that only a leaderless herd remains .
In this regard, it goes without saying that the German side had a very strict
standard of who was to be regarded as a traitor or threat to the Ottoman
state. As illustrated in a report by the ambassador to the Porte, Wangen-
heim, mere sympathy with the cause of the ARF was regarded as sufficient
evidence of an Ottoman Armenian's treachery. 43 Against this circumstance
it is highly unlikely that German diplomats downplayed the alleged threat
of the Armenians. Only on May 8, 1915, and explicitly in reference to the
local case of the Van resistance, does W angenheim argue for the first time
that Armenian guerilla fighters in the war zone around ~ake Van are
possibly funded by the ARF from abroad (implicitly referring to Tsarist
Russia). 44
In the subsequent period, not only ARF members, but also the entire
Christian populations of the Eastern provinces (Armenians as well as
Syriacs), became "primary targets of a state-led policy of relocation and
extermination". 45 Rather than being based on an "a priori blueprint for
genocide", 46 it is the destructive momentum of "policies designed both
to rearrange the demographic topography of Anatolia and to prepare for
47
the war with Russia and its European allies". This argument is in line
with the first-hand account of Ri:iBler, the then German consul of
Aleppo, who localizes the trigger of this vicio~s circle to the city of
Marash:
Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects 23
Obviously, the measures of the central government are based on false
reports from Marash. They are a calamity for the province [Aleppo]
and land as well as the systematic ruin of an important part of the
population. They are based on a wrong assumption, according to
which the whole Armenian population was suspicious or hostile.48
Rather than a consistent plan of destruction, well-formulated and imple-
mented from the beginning to the end, Bloxham stresses that
the extreme nature of CUP policies can be traced to perpetrators
acting on ideological precepts and pushing for ever-more indiscrimi-
nate measures. N evertheless, it is only in the early summer of 1915
that we can speak of a crystallized policy of empire-wide killing and
· · 49
d eath - b y-attnt10n.
In order to neutralize the "Armenian threat", firstly, Armenian soldiers
serving in the Ottoman army are discharged, disarmed and lumped
together in working battalions. Large parts of the now unarmed male
populations are subsequently massacred outside the cities. In an attempt to
rid the future Anatolian homeland of its Armenian populations the CUP
leadership finally opts for an even more radical solution that now includes
"all Armenians and their families without exception" (bila-istisna bi'l-umum
Ermeniler d'ileleriyle birlikte). 50 In a second attempt, guided by Talat's
infamous principle "they can live in the desert but nowhere else" ,51 the
Turkish leadership decides to deport the remaining Ottoman Armenian
populations to the Syrian deserts around Deir ez-Zor. Deir ez-Zor was
not a coincidental but a strategic choice. By sending streams of Armenian
refugees - mostly women and children - to the very desert region where
previous attempts to settle Muslim war refugees had failed, the CUP
leadership did not only approve but in a cold-blooded manner calculated
their death.52
As a result of these policies, the estimated death toll of Ottoman
Armenians ranges from 600,000 (according to Ottoman sources) to
1.5 million (according to German archive sources 53). Nevertheless, the
collective violence that unfolded itself in the Armenian Genocide was less
the inevitable climax of an allegedly century-old hatred between Muslims
and Christians than "the result of communal fear, ethnic reprisals, govern-
ment paranoia, and fitful experimentation with targeted killing as a tool of
modern statecraft". 54
The Agency Dimension and the Reversion of Victim-perpetrator Roles
Yet who were the agents behind the genocide? In fact, it is striking to see
that there is a link between the biographical trajectories of many key
perpetrators and the deportations or "uprootings" of Muslims from the
24 Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects
Northern Caucasus (Circassia) and Southeast Europe (Rumelia). As a matter .
of fact, two of the three leading figures that formed the "triumvirate of the
three pashas" (Talit, Enver and Cemal) who ruled the Ottoman Empire_
after the 1913 coup d'etat had lost their native home during the Balkan
Wars (1912-1913). 55 Mehmed Talat Pasha himself, who is known as the
main architect of the genocide, witnessed the loss of his home town
Kyrdzhali to the newly-emerging Bulgarian nation-state in the Balkan
Wars (1912-1913). The same is true for his like-minded companion,
Ahmet Cemal Pasha, whose home town Mytilini on Lesbos was occupied
by the Greeks following the largest sea battle of the Balkan Wars. 56 Similar
observations can be made with regard to high-ranking members of the
infamous te§kilat-mahsusa, a counter-insurgency organization led by the
ministry of war that carried out various operations against internal and
external enemies of the empire. Members like <;erkez Ahmet, Deli Halit
Pasha and Y akub Cemil (murderer of the Ottoman Armenian deputy
57
Grigor Zohrab ), who are held responsible for the total annihilation of
Armenian villages in the Eastern provinces during the genocide, are the
offspring of refugee families from Northern Caucasia.58
The experience of being uprooted from one's homeland at the hands of
a "Christian empire" (Tsarist Russia) together with disruptive and traumatiz-
ing experiences as soldiers in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) were instru-
mental in forming an almost paranoid perception of the conjuring Christian
threat. This accounts largely for the shift from tentative utopias of egalitarian
Ottoman pluralism towards an exclusive ethno-nationalistic agenda as
adopted by the central leadership and their representatives in the region.
Hereby it goes without saying that my aim is not to provide the ground of
an apologetic narrative of "retribution". My point is different: in the face of
the experiences that either they or their close family members endured -
which included the death of a substantial portion of refugees - they were
particularly aware of the fatal impad of deportation during wartime.
Unfortunately, the acts of collective violence committc;d against the
Armenians, Syriac and Y ezidi communities of the Ottoman Empire did
not mark the final stage of atrocities. Instead, it merely shifted the stage
of atrocities to the Caucasus region, where victim and perpetrator roles
would be reversed. A particularly brutal dimension widely silenced in
public discourse in Armenia constitutes the ethnic cleansing of Muslim
populations in the provinces of Zangezur (nowadays Syunik), Daralgiaz
(nowadays Vayots Dzor) and Surmalu (nowadays Armavir) in the
vicinity of Yerevan:
On the .Armenian side, many of the key perpetrators were the former
leaders of the volunteer battalions and T~rkish-Armenian "self-
defense" operations. From mid-1918, Andranik was prominent in
the destruction of Muslim settlements during the purging of the
Armenian-Azeri border region of Zangezur. 59
Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects 25
Biographical material published by the Republican Party of Armenia
suggests that the famous fedayee Garegin Nzhdeh, Andranik's brother-in-
arms, "killed 15,000 Azeris for a total loss of 28 Armenians, and cleansed
of their former inhabitants 200 villages in the process of saving Zangezur
as part of Armenia". 60 As in the previously illustrated cases, Collins' notion
offorward panic seems to capture best the socio-psychological foundation of
this ominous equation of the enemy's civil populations with the perpe-
trator itself
It is the ease of beating a long-sought enemy that makes for the
transformation of tension/fear into the frenzied attack of forward
panic. All the more so when the enemy turns out not to be there at
all, but only some helpless victims who are associated with the enemy
side. 61
However, these military operations also had another dimension. Andranik
brought with him 30,000 Armenian refugees, mostly from the Ottoman
Empire, particularly Mu~ and Bitlis, who under the protection of fedayee
forces led by Ruben Ter-Minassian had managed to resist the Turkish
assault and escape to the Caucasus. Thus, again, armed forces emerging
from within the group of former victims became the perpetrators in
subsequent acts of collective violence. Actions which are described by
Bloxham as ethnic cleansing reminiscent of the "settlement of muhajirs at
Armenian expense in the late Ottoman empire" 62 constituted a policy to
resettle Armenian refugees "to the Erivan and Daralgiaz regions, where
they replaced evicted Muslims in a move to ethnically homogenize key
areas of the Armenian state". 63 Following these mass expulsions, the
Turkic population dropped from 313,176 in the 1897 census of the
Armenian Oblast - comprising the territory of the former Yerevan and
Nakhchivan khanate) - to 98,443 in a Soviet census made in 1939.64 The
latter figure remains relatively constant throughout the Soviet period.
Hereby, in particular the large settlements of Turks to the west and south-
west of Yerevan in the Ararat and Armavir, which roughly comprise the
former Persian provinces of Sardarabad, Zangibasar and Garnibasar, were
subject to large-scale population transfer. For instance, Ulukhanlu (today:
Masis) - with three mosques and a madrasah - was emptied of its Muslim
populations by 1948- 1949, when the last Azerbaijanis were transferred to
the SSR Azerbaijan. The same fate befell the Muslim population in
Shahriyar (today: Nalbandian), a town with four mosques located in the
southern Armavir region. 65
Summing up, "Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects" explored
collective violence and forced population displacement as the essential
precondition in the formation of demographically homogeneous nation-
states. While populated by a heterogeneous mix of both Muslim (Arabs,
Kurds, Turks etc.) and non-Muslim populations (Armenians, Syriacs,
26 Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects 27

Yezidis etc.) until the early 20th century, policies of systematic persecution . 15 Ibid., 97.
and, ultimately, genocide against the empire's Armenian and Syriac 16 Ibid. , 97.
17 Ibid., 96.
populations turned the region into an almost exclusively Muslim-:
18 Veronika Vitalyevna Tsibenko , "The War of Conferences in Russia and Turkey:
populated geography. Based on a thorough reading of archive material as The Circassian Dimension", Asian Social Science 11, no. 14 (2015): 78-87.
well as secondary sources I sought to capture the complex interaction of 19 Giorgi Lomsadze, "Georgia Recognizes Circassian Genocide", Eurasianet,
different motives: ranging from questions of German-Ottoman war inter- May 20, 2011, https:/ / eurasianet.org/s/ georgia-recognizes-circassian-
ests and personal vengeance among high-ranking members of the Young genocide.
Turkish regime (both within ittihad ve terraki and tqkilat-i mahsusa) to 20 Sufian Zhemukov, "The Circassian Question in Russian-Georgian Rela-
tions", PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo 118 (2010) : 1 and Aleksandr Podrabi-
questions of socio-economic opportunism and religious fanaticism in the nek "Olimpiada v pamyat o genotside?" Radio svoboda, March 16, 2010,
Kurdish-populated periphery. Not as a singular act of unprecedented www.svoboda.org/a/1994460.html.
"Turkish barbarity" but instead seen in the wider context of preceding 21 Ronald Bloxham, "The First World War and the Development of the Am1enian
acts of mass expulsion and massacre, this chapter established a dialogue Genocide", in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the
between the Armenian Genocide (1915) and the expulsion of the Circas- Ottoman Empire, edited by Fatma Miige Gor;:ek, Norman M. Naimark and
Ronald Grigor Suny (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 262.
sians (1864-1867) from the Northern Caucasus by Tsarist Russia. In spite 22 Nazmi <;::agan, "Balkan harbinde Edime (1912-1913)" in Edirne (Ankara:
of the distinct difference in terms of scope and systematization, in both Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1965), 200.
cases an increasingly degenerating political environment triggered a fatal 23 Lyubomir Miletich, Razorenieto na Trakiiskitye bulgari pryezu 1913 godina
process of dehumanization and immoral rationalization in which popula- (Sofia: Biilgarska akademiya na naukite, Diirzhavna pechatnitsa, 1918), 10,
tions were divided up based on their linguistic and religious markers into http: //promacedonia.com/bmark/lm_tr/ lm_tr_2.htm.
24 Ibid.
loyal and disloyal collectives. 25 Ibid., 11.
26 Ibid. , 11.
27 Ibid. , 12.
Notes 28 Fikret Adarur, "Die Am1enische Frage und der Volkermord an den Anne-
1 Boytchev, Hristo, The Colonel Bird [Polkovnikt Ptitsa], theater play, 2007. niem im Osmanischen Reich", in Erlebnis. Gediichtnis. Sinn - Authentische und
2 Ibid. konstmierte Erinnenmg (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1996), 240.
3 Ronald Grigor Suny, "Truth in Telling: Reconciling Realities in the Geno- 29 Ronald Grigor Suny, "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History
cide of the Ottoman Am1enians", The American Historical R eview 114, no. 4 of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 314.
(October 2009): 944. 30 Ibid. See analogy to case of Tsarist Russia: promoting the cause of saving the
4 Ibid. Russian Empire was accompanied by policies of "promoting an aggressive
5 Charles King, The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (New York: 'Russification' of non-Russian nationalities", "insisting on Russian as the
Oxford University Press: 2009), 16. language of education and administration" and "promoting the settlement of
6 "The 'conquest of the Caucasus' is thus a fundamentally misleading phrase. ethnic Russians in the borderlands".
Some parts of the Caucasus, such as lowland Kabarda or eastern Georgia, did 31 IBZI, Series II, vol. 6/1, no. 191, Sazonov to Goremykin, August 30, 1914,
not need to be conquered at all and were rather easily joineql to the empire 144-5; no. 295, Klemm to Giers, September 23, 1914, 227-8; cited in
through the fiat of the tsar and the acquiescence of local notables. Other parts, Mustafer Aksakal, Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the
such as the khanates of modem Azerbaijan and Amlenia, were taken from First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 132.
neighboring empires as a by-product of peace treaties", ibid., 38-39. 32 Ibid.
7 King, The Ghost of Freedom, 156. 33 King, The Ghost of Freedom, 150.
8 Aleksandr Petrovich Shcherbatov, Generalfeldmarshal knyaz Paskevich. Yego 34 Suny, "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else", 374.
z hizn i deyatelnost, vol. III (St. Petersburg: R. Golike, 1988), 229-230. 35 Transl. by the author. "Gewaltsame Islarnisierung der Amlenier in Anatolien"
9 Ivan Drozdov, Poslednyaya borba s gortsami na Zapadnom Kavkaze. Kavkazskiy [Forcible Islamization of Am1enians in Anatolia); Kuckhoff (Gem1an vice consul
sbornik, vol. II (Tiflis, 1877), 456. in Samsun) to Mordtmann (General Consul in Constantinople), December 21,
10 Ibid., 457. 1915, DuA Dok. 217(gk.), 1915-12-21-DE-011-V, German Federal Archive,
11 Ibid. Berlin, Armenocide, accessed January 25, 2016, www.armenocide.de/armenocide/
12 Ibid. ArmGenDE. nsf/0/D F964CCD 50630D 88C 1256AD7003525 77?
13 "Some local chieftains resisted, appealing to the Ottomans for assistance, but OpenDocument.
Russia continued its policy of building forts and enc,ouraging the settlement of 36 King, The Ghost of Freedom, 157.
Cossacks, Amlenians, and other groups considered loyal to the empress", 37 Bloxham, "The First World War and the Development of the Amlenian
ibid., 26. Genocide", 263.
14 Ibid. , 18.
28 Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects
38 Transl. by the author. "Offenbar beruhen diese MaBregeln der Zentralregier-
ung auf falschen Berichten aus Marasch. Sie sind ein Ungliick fur die Provinz
1md das Land und auf den systematischen Ruin eines wichtigen Bevolkerung-
steiles berechnet. Sie gehen von einer falschen Grundauffassung aus, welche
die ganze armenische Bevolkerung als verdachtig oder gar feindlich ansieht".
RoBler to the German embassy in Constantinople, April 20, 1915, DuA Dok.
027 (re. gk.), 1915-04-20, German Federal Archive, Berlin, Armenocide,
accessed January 25, 2016, www.armenocide.de/armenocide/ ArmGenDE.
nsf/0/8F21A20AE791F17CC1256AD7002F3BE6?OpenDocument.
39 Transl. by the author. "Fiir einen allgemein beabsichtigten und vorbereiteten
Aufstand der Armenier fehlen jedoch meines Erachtens jegliche Beweise";
Scheubner-Richter (imperial vicar in Erzurum) to Hohenlohe-Langenburg
(an1bassador on extra-ordinary mission in Constantinople), August 5, 1915,
DuA Dok. 129 (re. gk.); 130 (Anl.2, re. gk.), J.Nr. 580/secret report Nr.23
replica, 1915-08-05, German Federal Archive, Berlin, Armenocide, accessed
January 25, 2016, www.armenocide.de/armenocide/ ArmGenDE.nsf/0/
5DD9824D9090C301C1256AD70033527D?OpenDocument.
40 Transl. by the author. "So sind z.B. im Vilajet Erserum weder Waffen noch
kompromittierende Schriftstiicke gefunden worden. Ware hier ein Aufstand
geplant gewesen, so war dafur die giinstigste Gelegenheit im Januar, als die
Russen 35 km vor Erserum standen und die Garnison Erserums nur aus
einigen hundert Mann Gendarmerie bestand, wahrend sich in Erserum in
den Arbeiter-Bataillonen allein 3-4000 Armenier befanden"; Ibid.
41 Transl. by the author. "Aus allen Vorgangen und Erscheinungen kann man
nicht den SchluB ziehen, daB die Annenier irgendeine Organisation zwecks
Verschworung oder Revolution gehabt haben"; Biige (consule in Adana) to
ambassador Wangenheim, March 13, 1915, J.Nr. 2234, DuA Dok. 019 (gk.),
1915-03-13-DE-012-V, German Federal Archive, Berlin, Armenocide, accessed
January 25, 2016, www.armenocide.de/armenocide/ ArmGenDE.nsf/0/
D0EBE51BA56FC437C1256AD7002F12A4?OpenDocument.
42 Transl. by the author. "Die Regierung scheint auch auf dem mittelalterlichen
Standpunkt zu verharren, daB fur die Tat eines einzelnen oder einiger weniger
Solidarhaft eines ganzen Volkes besteht. Denn ihre MaBregeln gehen auf
Vernichtung der Armenier in ganzen Bezirken hinaus. Aile Armenier von
Besitz, Bildung oder EinfluB sollen beseitigt werden, darnit nur eine fuhrerlose
Hertle zuriickbleibt"; Wangenheim (ambassador in Constantinople) to imper-
ial chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, May 10, 1915, Nr. 3241 DuA Dok. 075
(re.), 1915-05-27-DE-001-V, German Federal Archive, Berlin, Armenocide,
accessed January 25, 2016, www.armenocide.de/armenocide/ ArmGenDE.
nsf/0/BF31545306E9F465C 1256AD700325C99?OpenDocument.
43 Wangenheim (ambassador in Constantinople) to imperial chancellor Beth-
mann Hollweg, August 11, 1914, DuA Dok. 009 (gk.), Nr. 203, 1914-08-11-
DE-001-V, German Federal Archive, Berlin, Armenocide, accessed January 25,
2016, www. armeno ci de. de/ arm eno cide / ArmG enD E. nsf/ 0 /
C8BE95B80FB65BB0C1256AD6005CA0E1 ?OpenDocument.
44 Transl. by the author. "mehren sich <loch die Anzeichen dafur, daB diese
Bewegung weiter verbreitet ist, als bisht;r angenommen wurde, und daB sie
vom Ausland mit Hilfe der armenischen Revolutionskomitees gefordert
wird"; Wangenheim (ambassador in Constantinople) to imperial chancellor
Bethmann Hollweg, May 8, 1915, DuA Dok . 044 (gk.), Nr. 286, Pera, 1915-
05-08-DE-001-V, German Federal Archive, Berlin, Annenocide, accessed
January 25, 2016, www.armenocide.de/armenocide/ ArmGenDE.nsf/0/
B7 66A67E 1D6B 1705C 1256AD70031B592?OpenDocument.
Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects 29
45 King, The Ghost of Freedom, 157.
46 Bloxham, "The First World War and the Development of the Armenian
Genocide", 260.
47 Suny, "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else", 333.
48 "Offenbar beruhen diese MaBregeln der Zentralregierung auf falschen Ber-
ichten aus Marasch. Sie sind ein Ungliick fur die Provinz 1md das Land und auf
den systematischen Ruin eines wichtigen Bevolkerungsteiles berechnet. Sie
gehen von einer falschen Grundauffassung aus, welche die ganze armenische
Bevolkerung als verdachtig oder gar feindlich ansieht"; RoBler (consul in
Aleppo) to the German embassy in Constantinople, April 20, 1915, DuA
Dok. 027 (re. gk.), 1915-04-20-DE-013-V, Gern1an Federal Archive, Berlin,
Armenocide, accessed January 25, 2016, www.armenocide.de/arn1enocide/ Arm
GenDE.nsf/0/8F21A20AE791F17CC1256AD7002F3BE6?OpenDocument.
49 Bloxham, "The First World War and the Development of the Armenian
Genocide", 260.
SO "Trabzon, Ma'muretii'l-aziz, Sivas, Diyarbakrr vilayetleriyle Canik Mutasarnfu-
gma". From the Porte to the Interior Ministry, 7 Haziran 1331 Uuly 20, 1915],
T<;:: Ba~kanhk Devlet ~ivleri Gene! Miidiirliigii. DH.$FR 54/87 Beige No: 1.,
Annenocide, accessed January 25, 2016, http:/ /arsiv.yapyonet.com/icerik/624/
vilyet-liv-dhilindeki-koy-ve-kasabalarda-bulunan-istisnsiz-butun-ermenilerin-
cikarilarak-musul/.
51 Henry Sr. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (USA: Page, 1918), 163.
52 Fuat Diindar, "Pouring a People into the Desert: The 'Definitive Solution' of
the Unionists to the Am1enian Question", in A Question of Genocide: Arme-
nians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Fauna Miige
Govek, Norman M . Naimark and Ronald Grigor Suny (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 279.
53 "Wir schatzen den Verlust an Menschenleben unter den Christen auf 1 ½
Millionen"; Erzberger (deputy to the Reichstag) to imperial chancellor Beth-
mann Hollweg, May 27, 1916, DE/PA-M/R14091, 1916-05-27-DE-001,
German Federal Archive, Berlin Armenocide, accessed January 25, 2016, www.
armenocide.de/ armenocide/ ArmGenDE.nsf/$$AllDocs/1916-05-27-DE-
001 ?OpenDocument.
54 King, The Ghost of Freedom, 157.
55 Hasan Kayah, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the
Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 195.
56 Bernd Langensiepe and Ahmet Giileryiiz, The Ottoman Steam Navy,
1828-1923 (Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 196.
57 Raymond Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London:
Tauris, 2011), 616.
58 Ay~e Hiir, "Te~kilat'm tetikyisi: Yakup Cemil", Radikal Gazetesi, May 14,
2015, Retrieved from www .radikal.com. tr/yazarlar / ayse-hur/ teskilatin-tetik
cisi-yakup-cemil-1378707 / .
59 Brady Kiesling and Raffi Kojian, Rediscovering Armenia (Yerevan: Matit, 2005), 69.
60 An avenue, a large square and a nearby metro station in Yerevan as well as a village
in the southern Syunik Province of Armenia are nan1ed after Garegin Nzhdeh.
61 Collins, Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory, 88.
62 Donald Bloxham, The Great Came of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the
Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), 105.
63 Ibid, 105.
64 Compare the Russian census data (1897) to the first All-Union Census of the
Soviet census data (1926), demoscope, accessed December 12, 2015, http://
30 Saving the Empire, Killing Its Subjects
demoscope.ru/ weekly / ssp/ sng_nac_26.php?reg=2314 and http:/ / demoscope.
ru/ weekly/ ssp/ emp_lan_97_uezd.php?reg=387. 2 Eternal Histories, Elusive
65 However, Turkic populations persisted throughout the Soviet period as clustered
agglomerations of different villages in the areas around Lake Arpi (e.g. T;:ip;:ikoy, Homelands
Giilliibulaq), the eastern shores of Lake Sevan (e.g. Toxluca/ Drakhtik, Agkils;:i/
V ardenis, Aghbulak/ Aghberk, Babacan, 8mirxeyir/Kalavan, Golk;:ind/ Ayqut)
the region in the very south of Armenia in the vicinity of Meghri (e.g. Aqarak)
Eastern Turkey. Western Armenia.
and the very north (e.g. Alaverdi and Axtala) and dispersed settlements in the Northern Kurdistan
areas around Vanadzor (e.g. Arc;:uq) and Dilijan (e.g. Ala<;:iq Qaya).

Slavoj Zizek, in the British documentary "The Pervert's Guide to ldeol-

~gy" (2012), argues that in the age of nationalism the real challenge to
totalitarian rule is not to demonstrate "that leaders are not leaders" but to
reveal the fact that "there is no mythic people, which serves as the
ultimate legitimization" 1 for their political actions. While divine guidance
or, simply, God had served as ultimate legitimization for the rule of
hegemons in the age of empires, the modern state is legitimized by
another powerful abstraction: the nation. Regarding its historical fixation
in time, Bagehot's idea of nation being as old as time can be regarded as
refuted in current academia.2 The Westphalian peace (1648) and the
corresponding system of sovereign nation-states with fixed territories is
possibly one of the earliest historical incidents that reflect this newly
emerging macro- narrative. However, .this first creation of a multitude of
territorial units subject to different rule neither comprises the notion of
nation nor the idea of the nation being the essential owner and legitimate
claimant on the territory. However, in the wake of the French Revolu-
tion the idea of fixed territoriality is complemented with the idea of
sovereignty of the people as reflected in the French Declaration of
Rights (1795), stating:

Each people is independent and sovereign, whatever the number of

individuals who compose it and the extent of the territory that it
occupies. This sovereignty is unalienable. [Emphasis by the author.]

Yet, even though the inhabitants of a considered territory are recognized as

the essential owners and legitimate claimants there is no specific reference to
the nation as such, prompting the idea that the French Revolution was in its
"essence completely foreign to the feeling of nationality or even hostile to it"
as it crystallized around the idea of representing equal rights against privilege
rather than the superiority of any linguistic or ethnic group. 3 Thus, the
pronounced notion of the nation as an integral part of the modernization
project only emerges in the mid-19th century when "capitalist industrializa-
tion pressed forward by a vigorous bourgeoisie" identified national economy
32 Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands
as the field in which to "accomplish the economic development of the nation
4
and prepare its entry into the . universal society of the future". Hereby,
emphasis is put on the creation of large-scale states at the example of Gr~at
Britain and France since a "large population and an extensive territory
endowed with manifold national resources" were believed to be more
powerful economic units equaling a stronger military strength than small
territory-based states with a separate language that would amount to a "crippled
5
language, crippled institutions for promoting art and science". Thus, the
promise of sovereignty for all people is factually curtailed at the expense of
potentially smaller nationalities, as their struggle for "national independence"
is denounced as kleinstaaterei (ger.: system of mini states) or - in alignment
with the Ottoman experience - balkanization. 6 Translated into the reality of
post-W odd War I Europe the often recited Wilsonian principle of national self-
determination granted in fact only sovereignty to 26 states with sufficiently large
populations and territories to perform as lebensfiihige (viable) economic units at
the expense of other national movements whose call for sovereignty remained
unfulfilled.7 In that sense, the hybrid pattern emerging from a synthesis of
both can be formulated as such: the struggle for the sovereignty of a people
may take place under the condition that it constitutes a struggle for unification
of a nation (not for secession) . However, as struggle for the sovereignty of
a people was channeled into an aggregative process involving different
societal groups with distinct linguistic, religious or social characteristics, the
question regarding the principal "national culture" emerged. In this regard,
the language of the dominant group which had been endowed with legiti-
macy as the sole official language after a process of standardization and
purification emerged as a dominant element in the construction of
a dominant culture believed to be superior to other "minor folkloric tradi-
tions". As a matter of fact, how close official language is linked up with the
notion of a rigidly-defined, static nation dominated by one superior culture is
perhaps best reflected in The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (1884),
defining the lengua nacional as the "official and literary lan~age of a country,
and the one generally spoken in the country, as distinct from dialects and
languages of other nations". 8 Hereby, it is striking to see that the notion of
national language enters the dictionary far earlier than the notion of the nation
itself (in 1925) - evidence for the argument that nationalization of the
language in the form of language engineering and purification policies
preceded the actual nationalization of the masses. This last stage is only to be
achieved by means of mass schooling and homogenization. In this regard,
national military service emerges as a crucial tool to fortify the imaginary
bond between the defended territories, on the one hand, and the defending
people OI?- the other hand. Furthermore, it reflects the practical implementa-
tion of the idea of the sovereign people - sovereign in the sense that the
people themselves are endowed with the God-given duty of national self-
defense. As the state enters this equation as the institutional reflection of this
bond it eternalizes the triumvirate of nation - state - territory on which the
Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands 33
nation-state is ultimately erected. Based on this brief five essential patterns can
be identified which lie at the foundation of national narratives regardless of
different geographical contexts: 9
1. Fixed national territory
2. Sovereignty lies with the people of the nation
3. Viable economy demands a large-scale national territory
4. Superiority of national culture and national language
5. National military.
However, as scholars such as Anderson have rightly pointed out, nations
constitute imaginary communities and are highly artificial and coincidental
t? a degree that any attempts to establish objective criteria that could
thoroughly ex~lain why certain groups have become nations (and other
0
not) must fail. Renan stressed this circumstance most poignantly when
he argued that "forgetfulness and, I would even say, historical error is
a crucial factor in the creation of the nation" . 11 However, this does not
hamper the impact of nationalism, as Hobsbawm observes e.g. with regard
to the case of Jewish nationalism: "people can identify themselves as Jews
even though they share neither religion, language, culture, tradition,
historical background, blood-group patterns nor an attitude to the Jewish
12
state". For, speaking with the words of another acclaimed scholar of
nationalism, Anthony D. Smith, "nations must have a measure of
common culture and a civic ideology, a set of common understandings
and aspirations, sentiments and ideas, that bind the population together in
13
their homeland" - imagined or real. In spite of that, or in particular
because of it, the national narrative succeeded in becoming possibly the
first narrative to expand on a truly global scale likewise in the Western and
Eastern political hemisphere, among colonial powers and colonies alike.
However, the expansion of this narrative upon different societal groups in
different regional contexts under the formation of "national conscious-
ness" took place in an uneven and asymmetrical way; with the masses (e.g.
peasants, workers, servants) on which it is supposedly built on to be the
last to be transformed. 14
In the following, I will re-contextualize the Armenian, Kurdish and
Turkish case in an open-ended transition period from reforming empires
to revolutionary nations. By discussing their pathways towards nationalism
in a comparative approach, I will seek to show their interdependence and
contest their claim for uniqueness. Hereby, I will particularly highlight
those segments of the national movement which are relevant in the
formation of the "mainstream" position currently propagated by three de
facto representatives that are: the governments of Turkey and Armenia as
well as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). It goes without saying that
this comes at the expense of alternative approaches to the national
question that failed to gain major popular support. Furthermore, while
34 Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands
recognizing the intertwined relationship of Armenians, Turks and Kurds
rallying around the cause of national liberation in different geographical
contexts, I gave ·precedence to those movements and organizations cru~ial
for the understanding of competing nationalisms in the particular geogra-
phy known as Eastern Turkey/Northern Kurdistan/Western Armenia.
This comparative discussion compels me to deconstruct the collection of
beliefs that have lent a sacred aura to the story of one's own people as
a unique pathway towards the nation. Thus, any attempts to do so, as
Suny rightly observes, "may be perceived as an attack on the very soul of
the nation" 15 and, thus, are likely to incite anger and outrage.
In the Armenian case I will mainly refer to the pre-1915 activities of the
Social Democrat Hnchakian Party (or short "Hnchaks") and the Armenian
Revolutionary Front (or short "Dashnaks") as the two most influential
actors in the six Ottoman provinces where Armenians constituted sub-
stantial populations. It goes without saying that Armenian national activ-
ities outside these six provinces (Van, Erzurum, Mameretiilaziz, 16 Bitlis,
Diyarbekir, Sivas) can only be briefly outlined when essential for the
general understanding. In the post-1915 period, I will mainly elaborate
on a heterogeneous, mainly diaspora-based national movement united in
its goal to restore Western Armenia, yet divided in its means: lobbying the
Armenian case to the "great powers" and the UN in order to win over
the international public (Armenian Revolutionary Front), putting pressure
on the Turkish government through terror activities (A.SALA) or self-
mobilization of the Armenian people and guerilla warfare (Armenian
Patriotic Liberation Movement). While recognizing the variety in ideolo-
gical and political standpoints, I will attach particular emphasis to those
elements crucial in the formation of Armenia's current state ideology vis-
a-vis Eastern Anatolia. In the Turkish case, it means an emphasized
discussion of a territorially confined "Anatolian" Turkish nationalism as
envisaged by Mustafa Kemal's movement and propagated till this day in
mainstream Turkish politics by both right-wing conpervative (AKP,
Saadet) and national-democratic parties (CHP). This occurs at the expense
of a Pan-Turkish nationalism as envisaged by Alparslan Tiirke~ and
promoted by the nationalistic parties (MHP).
In the Kurdish case, finally, I will highlight the peculiarities of
a "Northern Kurdistani" /"Turkish Kurdistani" national movement as
represented by the Kurdistan Workers' Party. While recognizing the
organic relationship with other organizations across Turkey's eastern
borders, this discussion addresses the particular trajectories of the Kurdish
national movement in neighboring Iran, Syria and Iraq only when
essential for th:e understanding of the Turkish case. As a matter of fact,
following the US invasion into Iraq (2003) t,h e Barzani-led Kurdistan
Regional Government of Iraq without doubt constitutes the most institu-
tionalized form of the Kurdish movement. Thus, it might seem at first
glance obvious to treat the KRG as the relevant counterpart to the
Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands 35
Armenian and Turkish state. Yet, unlike the PKK, it is safe to say that the
KRG and its sub-organizations do not run a clear-cut policy towards
mobilizing Kurds around a national cause in present Turkey. Hence,
I argue, the PKK, not the KRG, qualifies for treatment as the de facto
institutional representative of the Kurdish national movement in Turkey.
In the Aeon of Nations: Ottoman Society and the Millet System
The very question regarding the nature of late Ottoman society is
politically loaded and subject to widespread controversy: while historians
17
like Braude and Lewis see in it the "functioning of a plural society" of
Muslims, Jews and Christians, other historians like Dadrian see in it "a
sµbjugative organization based on the principle of fixed subordination" 18
with the Muslim as the master and the non-Muslim as the exploited
subject. It goes without saying that this question is closely linked up with
the issue of competing national movements emerging throughout the 19th
century. Are they to be understood as a logical response to an oppressive
regime or the result of imperial policies of agitation that pitched the
empire's non-Turkish subjects against a benevolent Ottoman sultanate?
In accordance with one's standpoint on this historical question, the Otto-
man system is either romanticized as a "harbor of tolerance" or demonized
as a "system of institutionalized injustice and state terror".
What is essential to our understanding of the Ottoman Empire, however, is
that in contrast to modern nation-states, imperial systems are enforced not
through societal homogeneity but through societal heterogeneity. As it is true
indeed for imperial systems in general, "distinction and discrimination,
separation and inequality" 19 are the societal pillars that underpin the power
hierarchy. I distinguish here between three segments: a mostly urban Otto-
man class (pa§alar ve efendiler), Ottoman subjects in a wider sense (rayat) and
the tribes (a§iretler) . The first mainly corresponds to members of the military
and bureaucratic apparatus (millet-i hakime), higher religious functionaries and
part of the urban notables. The rayat or millet-i mahkume comprise all subjects
from the tradesmen over the craftsman to the peasant without regard to
religion. The a§iret, finally, maintain a position somewhere within and outside
the imperial power hierarchy and emerge at times as obedient subjects of the
sultan, at other times, as autonomous institutions of power independent from
the Porte. Both Turkic and Kurdish people were represented in all three
cohorts, although Kurdish tribes by far outweighed the (mainly otherwise)
Turkmen tribes in numbers. Armenians as non-Muslims were mainly repre-
sented in the rayat, while their religious leaders and urban notables maintained
influential roles in the interweaving structures of the Ottoman power
hierarchy. With the exception of tribal structures in regions like Sason,
Armenians were mainly sedentary and obedient to the Sultan.
The aforementioned heterogeneity was anchored in the millet system, an
imperial structure geared towards administrating religious affairs among the
36 Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands
empire's different Muslim and non-Muslim communities or millets. The
millet system corresponds with an institutionalization of the previously
developed Islanuc concept ahl al-dhimmah, referring to non-Muslims . of
the book religions (ahl el-kitap) as the "protege of Muslim rulers". The
status of dhimmah granted them a conditional right to live as non-Muslims
under the aegis of the dar al-islam ("the house of Islam"), in contrast to
non-Muslims outside the empire whose territory was regarded as the dar
al-harb ("the house/region of war"). 20
In the Ottoman context, the emergence of an institutionalized system to
govern the al-dhimmah is attributed to the year 1453 when Sultan Mehmed
II "the conqueror" ifatih) conquered Constantinople to establish the capital
of an Islamic empire at the very center of Orthodox Christianity - an act
that challenged the commonly held occidental-oriental dichotomy and
highlighted the hybrid nature of the Ottoman Empire. This choice,
together with his obscure maternal background, led to a tremendous sym-
bolic meaning that gave rise to manifold myths shared among different
communities of the empire. Hereby, a space opened up for Ottoman
Muslims and Christians alike to link up their community narrative with
that of the ruling dynasty. With the sultan's mother (valide-i sultan) Hatice
Halime Hiima Hatun's ethnic origin shrouded in mystery with nothing
21
more known then her probably non-Muslim origin, different millets of the
empire could claim partaking in the royal lineage.
In technical tenns, the millet system safeguarded the exemption of
confessional communities from military service and the maintenance of
supremacy over jurisprudence and educational affairs within their millet in
return for the continual payment of a special tax, the cizye. While not
violating the factual supremacy of the sharia law, all lawsuits pertaining to
intra-communal affairs where settled by the corresponding law system of
the millet. While the Jewish millet abided to the halakha, Christian millets
abided to their respective canon law. Apart from the Islamic millet, also
referred to as the ruling community (millet-i hakime), tht; empire consti-
tuted of three main non-Muslim communities also referred to as "founda-
tional elements" (anasir): the Orthodox Christian community (millet-i rum),
the Jewish community (millet-i yahudt) and the Armenian community
(millet-i ermeni). The latter comprised all non-Chalcedonian churches such
as the Syriac orthodox and Coptic church under the aegis of the Apostolic
Armenian church. During the tanzimat reforms (1839-76) the term millet
acquired gradually the meaning of a legally protected religious minority
group that should ertjoy an egalitarian status vis-a-vis the empire's Muslim
population. In the following years the established millets should be
complem~nted by separate Roman-Catholic, Protestant and Assyrian
millet communities. 22 The existence of an ins~tutional framework that
allocated the heterogeneous mix of Ottoman populations to firmly estab-
lished, separate millet communities might at first suggest a highly segre-
gated imperial society with impervious socio-religious boundaries. Yet,
Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands 37
particularly in the periphery regions of the Ottoman Empire a myriad of
other syncretic or hybrid religious communities erode the boundary
between the empire's Muslim and non-Muslim populations. While
G. R. Driver notes in his famous essay on "The Religion of the Kurds "
(1922) a high level of cultural transitivity reinforced through intermarriage
among Muslim Kurds and Christian Nestorians in mountainous Hakkari,
Zeynep Tiirkytlmaz has brought to light the historical existence of crypto-
Christianism among "Muslim" miners in secluded, mountainous villages
to the north of Trabzon as researchers such as Marc Baer and Marius
Reinkowski explored the Crypto-Jewish sect of the donmeh, which had its
roots in the Ottoman port town of Salonica. 23
By far more important than the religious divide between Muslims and
non-Muslims is the societal divide between nomadic ("gocebe") and
s·ettled populations ("~ehri"). The historian Ibn-Khaldun (1332-1406)
observed already in the 14th century in his elaborations on the sciences
of civilizations and culture (ilm al-umran) the difference between nomadic
and settled life and perceived it as the fundamental societal divide in the
Islamic world. This observation is echoed over half a millennia in the
works of the German orientalist Blau, who observes in the mid-19th
century in regard to Kurdish tribes of Eastern Anatolia, that "if there is
one part of the tribe settled [i.e. Rajah] and one part nomadic [i.e.
Kotscher], there is no community among them ... the settled are despised
24
by their nomadic fellows and persecuted". However, as "differences of
condition among f.eople are the result of different ways in which they
make their living" 5 boundaries between both were rather permeable and
societal groups are not to be understood as hermetically-closed castes but,
instead, organic groups exposed to constant change "in connection with
regions and districts, periods and dynasties". 26
Consequently, focal points of the reform efforts during the 19th century
were to abolish the segregating millet system in favor of an egalitarian
society, the settlement (sesshaftmachung) of nomadic populations and the
extension of state sovereignty over regions contested· by tribal rulers . With
the proclamation of the 1876 constitution (kanun-u esas1), which should de
facto end the uncontested supremacy of sharia law, the model of
a constitutional and (at least partially) secular monarchy became the blue-
print for large-scale reform efforts in the years to come.27 Within a short
period an empire that had established its internal power through inter-
mediaries and conventions rather than direct rule and military presence
had to be transformed into a "Western-style" centralized and sovereign
nation-state. In this context, similar to the case of the waning Russian
Empire, the situation was complicated by the fact that "ethnic and class
identities frequently reinforced one another" as "ethnic groups occupied
particular socio-economic niches in the imperial political economy". 28
The resulting failure of these reform efforts - which may be regarded as
over-zealous in retrospect - should not only seal the fate of the waning
38 Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands
empire but at same time pave the way for the emergence of competing
national movements contesting _its territories. ·
In Search of the Land of Nairi: The Quest for Western Armenia
In the case of Armenians the earliest evidence of the idea "to liberate
Armenia from the yoke and slavery of foreigners (i.e. Muslims), and the
prevailing lawlessness of the homeland" can be found as early as the late
18th century. The publications of the Shahamirians, a family of Armenian
merchants from New Julfa residing in distant Madras, India, are re~arded
as the earliest traces of Armenian nationalism and constitutionalism. 9 Yet
little is known about the actual impact of these writings beyond urban
intellectual circles and there is evidence to assume that these publications
were not received by larger Armenian populations within the envisioned
Armenian hayrenik ("homeland"). Still the apparent divide between the
urban communities of Armenian amiras and sarrafs and the largely impo-
verished Armenian peasantry prevailed. The gap between a gradually
nationalizing elite in the urban centers and the rural populations is
reflected in various travelogues of the time. In Hermann Vambery's
account, "only the European-dressed, Armenian intellectual
Mr. Nazarian from Constantinople", who would speak "with profound
exaltation and enthusiasm about the past of his nation" 30 is juxtaposed
with the Armenian peasantry's indifference to "the stone ruins of Ani and
Sis [important sights of Armenian history]" that elicit "far more interest
among European travelers, than among the ancestors of the fonner
powerful rival of Parthia and Rome". 31
Only half a century later does the national struggle of Ottoman
Armenians acquire an institutional dimension when in 1848 the Ararat
Union is founded in Paris. 32 In 1869, the foundation of the short-lived
Barenpatak Ynkerutyun (Good Intention Society) in Tsarist-controlled
Alexandropol (Gyumri) constitutes evidence of the firsf organizational
body to promote the liberation of Russian Armenians. From this period
on, two urban centers should determine the trajectory of the Armenian
national movement: Tbilisi and Van. In 1872, the influential literary and
political newspaper Mshak ("The Toiler") is founded in Tbilisi by the
economist and writer Grigor Artsruni (1845-1892). Although a platform
for writers from different political orientations, a national-liberal view
propagating a united Armenia under Russian suzerainty was paramount.
Covering various political topics from national liberation, to bourgeois
revolution, the emancipation of women 'and the development of national
art, the reach of the newspaper exceeded the Russian Armenian commu-
nity as it ~as also received among national-minded Armenian intellectuals
in the neighboring Ottoman Empire and abroad.·
ln the same year, in the city of Van, the first secret organization geared
towards national liberation of the Armenians, Miutiun i Prkutiun ("Union
---
Eternal Histories, Elusive Homelands 39
for Salvation") was founded within the boundaries of the Eastern provinces
where the large bulk of Ottoman Armenians resided. Miutiun i Prkutiun
constituted of an ephemeral association with no formal organization that
"petitioned the Russians for protection against [Ottoman] governmental
outrages" 33 and, according to Baibourtian, was the first to choose "armed
revolt as its method of struggle". 34 Although club activities were banned
shortly after, the organization succeeded in disseminating its ideas among
the Armenians of Van and the surrounding villages. Miutiun i Prkutiun was
followed 1881 by the Erzurum-based Pashtpan Haireniats (Defense of the
fatherland). Both organizations were mainly designed for "self-defense to
counter anti-Armenian violence" and lacked a clear political program
beyond "vague notions of the liberation and salvation of the oppressed
f\nnenians" 35
Early Nationalism, Revolutionary Struggle and First Independence (1880s-1920)
Only in the late 1880s and early 1890s, with the foundation of mainstream
Armenian revolutionary parties (Hnchaks, Dashnaks, Armenakans), did the
national movement succeed in extending its popular support to include
large segments of rural Armenians. 36 In what is described by Panossian as
the "'crowning moment' for the new politics of nationalism", 37 move-
ments which were socialist-internationalist in name yet nationalist Arme-
nian in content entered the stage of mass politics. This "new politics of
nationalism" was characterized by a more radicalized political stance,
opting now openly for revolution and a full-fledged liberation of the
empire's Armenian subjects. Furthermore, party newspapers served as
a channel to promote and propagate political ideas and ideological stand-
points across wide territories. In 1885, the Armenakan Party is founded
again in Van by Mgrdich Portugalian (1848-1921), a teacher and son of
a banker from Istanbul. 38 Through cultural education, political propaganda
and teaching of military discipline propagated through the newspaper
Armenia, the party aimed at the mass mobilization ,of Armenians around
the national cause of self-rule and self-defense. Although the party held
the view that an "immediate revolution was not desirable", it recognized
violence as a legitimate means to reach its goals. However, already by the
early 1980s the actual organization of the party had ceased to have any
significant presence, with its liberal members joining the bourgeois-liberal
Ramkavar (Constitutional Democratic) Party founded in 1908 in Alexan-
dria and its more radical revolutionary-nationalist members being
assimilated into one of the two mainstream nationalist-revolutionary
parties - the Armenian Revolutionary Federation ("Dashnaks") and the Social
Democrat Party of the Bell ("Hnchaks").
Founded in 1887 by the Tbilisi-born revolutionaries Avedis Nazarbek-
yan (1866-1936) and Maryam Vardanyan (1864-1941) alongside other
Russian Armenian students in Geneva, the Sotsial-Demokrat Hnchakyan
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ornament; but the main figures and general design have perished.
The walls of the opposite chamber were never cased with marble, so
that the pilgrims were able to leave here the same tokens of their
visits as they left at St. Sixtus’. The graffiti are of the same general
character, but of a somewhat later date; the old forms of prayer have
disappeared; most of the names and inscriptions are in Latin; and
among the few that are Greek, there are symptoms of Byzantine
peculiarities.
The chief object of interest, however, now remaining in these
chambers is the epitaph which stands in the middle of the smaller
room. Of course, this was not its original position; but it has been so
placed, in order that we may see both sides of the stone without
difficulty, for both are inscribed. The stone was originally used for an
inscription in honour of Caracalla, belonging to the year 214. The
Christian inscription on the other side professes to have been set up
by “Damasus, Bishop, to Eusebius, Bishop and Martyr,” and to have
been written by Furius Dionysius Filocalus, “a worshipper (cultor)
and lover of Pope Damasus.” But it is easy to see at a glance that it
never was really executed by the same hand to which we are
indebted for so many other beautiful productions of that Pope. At
first, therefore, and whilst only a few fragments of this inscription had
been recovered, De Rossi was tempted to conjecture that it might be
one of the earliest efforts of the artist who subsequently attained
such perfection. At length, however, the difficulty was solved in a
more sure and satisfactory way. A diligent search in the earth with
which the chamber was filled brought to light several fragments of
the original stone, on which the letters are executed with the same
faultlessness as on the other specimens of its class. The visitor to
the Catacombs may see them painted, in a different colour from the
rest, in the copy of the epitaph which De Rossi has caused to be
affixed to the wall; and he will observe that amongst them are some
letters which are wanting in the more ancient copy transcribed on the
reverse of Caracalla’s monument. It is clear that the original must
have been broken in pieces, by the Lombards or other ancient
plunderers of the Catacombs, and that the copy which we now see is
one of the restorations by Pope Vigilus or some other Pontiff about
that time (page 47). The copyist was so ignorant that he could only
transcribe the letters which were on the spot before his eyes, and,
even when he was conscious that a letter was missing, he could only
leave a vacant space, being doubtful how it should be supplied.
Witness the space left for the first letter of Domino in the penultimate
line of the inscription, and the word in altogether omitted in the third
line.

“Heraclius forbad those who had fallen away [in times of

persecution] to grieve for their sins.
But Eusebius taught those unhappy men to weep for their crimes.
The people are divided into parties; fury increases;
Sedition, murder, fighting, quarrelling, and strife.
Presently both [the Pope and the heretic] are exiled by the cruelty
of the tyrant,
Although the Pope was preserving the bonds of peace inviolate.
He bore his exile with joy, looking to the Lord as his Judge.
 And on the shore of Sicily gave up the world and his life.”

Having sufficiently considered the form of the inscription, let us

now say a few words about its substance, which is important,
because it restores to us a lost chapter of Church history. Every
student knows how keenly contested in the early ages of the Church
was the question as to the discipline to be observed towards those
Christians who relapsed into an outward profession of Paganism
under the pressure of persecution. There were some who would fain
close the door of reconciliation altogether against these unhappy
men (miseri), whilst others claimed for them restitution of all
Christian privileges before they had brought forth worthy fruits of
penance.
The question arose whenever a persecution followed after a long
term of peace; for during such a time men’s minds were specially apt
to decline from primitive fervour, and the number of the lapsed to
increase. We are not surprised, therefore, to find the question
agitated during the persecution of Decius in the middle of the third
century. There is still extant a touching letter, written to St. Cyprian
by the clergy of Rome at a time when the Holy See was vacant after
the martyrdom of St. Fabian, which clearly defines the tradition and
practice of the Church. In it they say that absolution was freely given
to those of the lapsed who are in danger of death, but to others only
when wholesome penance has been exacted; and they declare that
“they have left nothing undone that the perverse may not boast of
their being too easy, nor the true penitents accuse them of inflexible
cruelty.” The same question arose under the same circumstances in
the persecution of Diocletian. Pope Marcellus was firm in upholding
the Church’s discipline, but he was resisted with such violence that
public order was disturbed in the city by the strife of contending
factions, and the Pope was banished by order of the Emperor
Maxentius. This we learn from another inscription of Pope Damasus,
who says that he wrote it in order that the faithful might not be
ignorant of the merit of the holy Pontiff. Eusebius was the immediate
successor of Marcellus, and the epitaph now before us is clearly a
continuation of the same history, ending in the same punishment of
the Pope, as the reward of his contention for the liberties of the
Church. For it should be remembered that these Popes were driven
from their see and died in exile, not because they refused to
apostatize, but because they insisted on maintaining the integrity of
ecclesiastical discipline. They may justly be reckoned, therefore,
among the earliest of that noble army of martyrs, who, from those
days even to our own, have braved every danger rather than
consent to govern the Church in accordance with other than the
Church’s rules.
It yet remains to make two further remarks upon the epitaph of
Pope Eusebius before we leave it. The first is, that he is called a
martyr, though it nowhere appears that he really shed his blood; but
this is by no means the only instance in which the title of martyr is
given in ancient documents to men who have suffered for the faith
and died whilst those sufferings continued. And secondly, it is to be
observed that although we have no record of the translation of the
body of St. Eusebius from Sicily to Rome, there is no reason to
doubt the fact. All the earliest monuments speak of him as buried in
a crypt of the Cemetery of St. Callixtus, and although the law forbad
the translation of the bodies of those who had died in exile unless
the emperor’s permission had been previously obtained, the old
lawyers tell us that this permission was freely given. Numerous
examples teach us the great anxiety of the ancient churches to have
their bishops buried in the midst of them; no doubt, therefore, the
necessary permission was asked for, as soon as a change in the
imperial policy towards the Church made it possible; and the body of
St. Eusebius was recovered and brought to Rome soon after his
death, just as that of one of his predecessors, St. Pontian, had been
brought from Sardinia by St. Fabian.
 CHAPTER IV.
THE TOMB OF ST. CORNELIUS.

We have not promised to conduct the visitor to everything that is

worth seeing in this cemetery, but only to enumerate and explain the
principal monuments of historical importance which every stranger
usually sees. And the only specimen of this class which remains to
be spoken of is the tomb of St. Cornelius, which lies some way off. In
order to reach it we must traverse a vast network of galleries, narrow
and irregular, connecting what were once independent cemeteries,
or at least were areæ added at various times to the Cemetery of
Callixtus. If our guide is not in too great haste, he may allow us to
step aside into two or three chambers by the way, in which are
certain objects of interest worth looking at. The first is a long
inscription belonging to the last decade of the third century, in which
the Deacon Severus records that he has obtained leave from the
Pope Marcellinus to make a double chamber, with arcosolia and a
luminare, in which himself and his family may have quiet graves
(mansionem in pace quietam). This is in the third area of the
cemetery, next to the area in which we visited the crypt of St.
Eusebius.
In the adjoining area, and belonging probably to the same date, is
a very curious fresco, much damaged by having been cut through for
the sake of making a grave behind it, yet still easily distinguishable in
all its main features. The Good Shepherd occupies the centre of the
painting. On either side is an apostle, probably SS. Peter and Paul,
hastening away from Christ, Who has sent them to go and teach all
nations. These are represented by two sheep standing before each
of the apostles; and over their heads hangs a rock, whence pour
down streams of water, which the apostles are receiving in their
hands and turning on the heads of the sheep. We need no special
explanation of this; we have already learnt that the Rock is Christ,
and that the waters represent all Christian graces and sacraments.
But what is worth noticing in this picture is the various attitudes of the
sheep, and the corresponding distribution of the water. A perfect
torrent is falling on the animal that stands with outstretched neck and
head uplifted, drinking in all he hears with simplicity and eagerness;
whilst another, which has turned its back upon the apostle, is left
without any water at all. Of the other two, one is standing with head
downcast, as if in doubt and perplexity, and upon him too grace is
still being poured out more abundantly than upon the fourth, which is
eating grass, i.e., occupied with the affairs of this world.
On the right hand side of this arcosolium are two representations
of Moses; in the one he is striking the rock, and one of the Jews is
catching some of the water which gushes forth; in the other he is
taking off his shoes, preparing to obey the summons of God, who is
represented by a hand coming forth from the cloud. The painting on
the other side of the arcosolium is even more defaced than that in
the centre. A large semi-circular recess has been cut through it, and
then the smoke of the lamp which burnt in this recess during the
fourth and fifth centuries has almost obliterated the little that
remained of the figure of our Lord. He stood between two of His
apostles, who are offering Him bread and fish, and six baskets of
loaves stand on the ground before them.
And now we will not linger any more upon the road, but follow our
guide, who hurries forward along the intricate passages until he
lands us at last in an irregularly shaped space, illuminated by a
luminare, decorated with paintings, and bearing manifest tokens of
having been once a great centre of devotion. There is the pillar to
support the usual vessel of oil or more precious unguents to be burnt
before the tomb of the martyr; and hard by is a gravestone let into
the wall with the words Cornelius Martyr, Ep.
The stone does not close one of the common graves such as are
seen in the walls of the galleries or of the cubicula, neither is the
grave an ordinary arcosolium. The lower part of it, indeed, resembles
an arcosolium inasmuch as it is large enough to contain three or four
bodies, but there is no arch over it. The opening is rectangular, not
circular, and yet there is no trace of any slab having been let into the
wall to cover the top of the grave. It is probable, therefore, that a
sarcophagus once filled the vacant space, and that the top of this
sarcophagus served as the mensa or altar, an arrangement of which
other examples have been found.
But how came Pope Cornelius to be buried here, and not with his
predecessors in the Papal Crypt? He was Pope, a.d. 250, between
Fabian and Lucius, both of whom were buried, as we have seen, in
that crypt. It is to be observed, however, that Cornelius is the only
Pope, during the first three centuries, who bore the name of a noble
Roman family; and many ancient epitaphs have been found in the
area round this tomb, of persons who belonged to the same family. It
is obvious, therefore, to conjecture that this sepulchre was the
private property of some branch of the Gens Cornelia. The public
Cemetery of St. Callixtus may have been closed at this time by order
of the Government; but even without such a reason, it may have
been the wish of the family that the Pope should not be separated in
burial from the rest of his race. The same circumstance would
account for the epitaph being written in Latin, not in Greek, for many
of the old patrician families clung to the language of their forefathers
long after the use of Greek had come into fashion; and this departure
from the official language of the Church (for such, in fact, Greek
really was at that time) is quite of a piece with the preference of the
domestic to the official burial-place.
But whatever may be the true explanation of these circumstances,
the fact is at least certain that Cornelius was buried here; and above
and below the opening of his tomb are fragments, still adhering to
the wall, of large slabs of marble, containing a few letters of what
were once important inscriptions. The upper inscription was
unquestionably the work of Damasus. The letters of the lower,
though closely resembling the Damasine type, yet present a few
points of difference—sufficient to warrant the conjecture of De Rossi
that they were executed by the same hand, but with slight variations,
in order to mark that it belonged to another series of monuments. We
subjoin a copy of both inscriptions, in the form in which De Rossi
believes them to have been originally written. In the first inscription
the difference of type will distinguish the earlier half of each line,
which is a conjectural restoration, from the latter half which still
remains in situ; and in estimating the degree of probability of the
restorations, the reader should bear in mind two things: first, that the
Damasine inscriptions were engraved with such mathematical
precision that no emendations are admissible which would materially
increase or diminish the number of letters in each line; and secondly,
that whereas Damasus was in the habit of repeating himself very
frequently in his epitaphs, several of De Rossi’s restorations are
mere literal reproductions of some of his favourite forms of speech.
Had the following epitaph been found in some ancient MS., and
there attributed to Pope Damasus, we are confident that no critic
would have seen reason to doubt its genuineness:—

ASPICE, DESCENSU EXSTRUCTO TENEBRISQUE FUGATIS,

CORNELI MONUMENTA VIDES TUMULUMQUE SACRATUM.
HOC OPUS ÆGROTI DAMASI PRÆSTANTIA FECIT,
ESSET UT ACCESSUS MELIOR, POPULISQUE PARATUM
AUXILIUM SANCTI, ET VALEAS SI FUNDERE PURO
CORDE PRECES, DAMASUS MELIOR CONSURGERE
POSSET,
QUEM NON LUCIS AMOR, TENUIT MAGE CURA LABORIS.

“Behold, a new staircase having been made, and the darkness

put to flight,
You see the monuments of Cornelius and his sacred tomb.
This work the zeal of Damasus has accomplished, at a time when
he was sick;
That so the means of approach might be better, and the aid of the
saint
Put more within the reach of the people; and that if you pour forth
prayers
From a pure heart, Damasus may rise up in better health;
Though it has not been love of life, but rather anxiety for work,
that has retained him in this life.”

The second inscription De Rossi would restore as follows:—

SIRICIUS PERFECIT OPUS,
CONCLUSIT ET ARCAM
 MARMORE, CORNELI QUONIAM
PIA MEMBRA RETENTAT
—that is to say, he supposes that, Damasus having died, his
successor Siricius completed the work that had been begun, and,
furthermore, strengthened the wall which enclosed the tomb of St.
Cornelius with this very thick slab of marble—a work which may
have been rendered necessary by the alterations already made by
Damasus. Of course, these restorations of the mutilated inscriptions
must always remain more or less doubtful, for we fear there is no
chance of any other fragments of the original ever coming to light.
We publish them under the same reserve with which he himself
proposes them, as at least approximations to the truth. He says that,
without daring to affirm their literal correctness, there are certainly
strong reasons for believing that they exactly reproduce the sense of
the original.
This same tomb of St. Cornelius will supply us with an example of
De Rossi’s power of happy conjecture, confirmed with absolute
certainty by subsequent discoveries. He had often publicly
expressed his confident expectation of finding at this tomb of St.
Cornelius some memorial of his cotemporary, St. Cyprian. These two
saints were martyred on the same day, though in different years; and
their feasts were, therefore, always celebrated together, just as they
are now, on the 16th of September, all the liturgical prayers for the
day being common to both. Now, De Rossi had found in one of the
old Itineraries, to whose accuracy of detail he had been greatly
indebted, an extraordinary misstatement, viz., that the bodies of both
these saints rested together in the same catacomb, whereas
everybody knows that St. Cyprian was buried in Africa. He
conjectured, therefore, that the pilgrim had been led into this blunder
by something he had seen at the tomb of St. Cornelius. On its
rediscovery, the cause of the error stands at once revealed.
Immediately on the right hand side of the grave are two large figures
of bishops painted on the wall, with a legend by the side of each,
declaring them to be St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian.
On the other side of the tomb is another painting, executed in the
same style, on the wall at the end of the gallery: two figures of
bishops, again designated by their proper names and titles. Only one
of these can now be deciphered, s̅c̅s̅ xustus p̅p̅ r̅o̅m̅, i.e., Pope
Sixtus II., of whose connection with this cemetery we have already
heard so often. The other name began with an O, and was probably
St. Optatus, an African bishop and martyr, whose body had been
brought to Rome and buried in this cemetery.
These paintings are manifestly a late work: perhaps they were
executed in the days of Leo III., a.d. 795-815, of whom it is recorded
in the Liber Pontificalis, that “he renewed the Cemetery of Sts. Sixtus
and Cornelius on the Appian Way;” and the legend which runs round
them would have a special significance as the motto of one who had
been almost miraculously delivered out of the hands of his enemies
by the Emperor Charlemagne. It is taken from the 17th verse of the
58th Psalm: “Ego autem cantabo virtutem Tuam et exaltabo
misericordiam Tuam quia factus es et susceptor meus.”... “I will sing
Thy strength, and will extol Thy mercy, for Thou art become my
support.” Of course, this had not been the earliest ornamentation of
these walls. Even now, we can detect traces of a more ancient
painting, and of graffiti upon it, underlying this later work. The graffiti
are only the names of priests and deacons, who either came here to
offer the holy sacrifice, or perhaps to take part in the translation of
the relics: “Leo prb., Theodorus prb., Kiprianus Diaconus,” &c.
We are drawing very near to the end of our subterranean walk:
indeed, the staircase which is to restore us to the upper air close to
the very entrance of the vineyard is immediately behind us, as we
stand contemplating the tomb of St. Cornelius. Nevertheless, if we
are not too weary, nor our guide too impatient, we should do well to
resist the temptation to escape, until we have first visited two small
chambers which are in the immediate neighbourhood. They contain
some of the most ancient specimens of painting to be found in the
whole range of the Catacombs. The ceilings are divided into circles
and other geometrical figures, and then the spaces are filled up with
graceful arabesques, birds, and flowers, peacocks, and dancing
genii. It was the sight of such paintings as these which led the
Protestant writer quoted in a former chapter to express an opinion
that, on first entering some of the decorated chambers in the
Catacombs, it is not easy to determine whether the work is Christian
or Pagan. Here, indeed, the Good Shepherd in one centre and
Daniel between two lions in the other soon solve the doubt; but all
the other details and the excellence of their execution may well have
suggested it. No one can doubt that the paintings belong to the very
earliest period of Christian art, when the forms and traditions of the
classical age had not yet died away.
In the first of the two chambers we are speaking of, there is
nothing special to be seen besides the ceiling; but the second and
more distant is more richly decorated. Here, two sepulchral
chambers open one into the other: over the doorway which admits to
the inner vault is represented the Baptism of our Lord by St. John:
He is coming up out of the water and the dove is descending upon
Him. On the wall opposite to the entrance is that fish carrying the
basket of bread and wine that has been already described (page 81).
On the wall to the left is a pail of milk standing on a kind of altar
between two sheep, and we know from St. Irenæus and from some
of the earliest and most authentic acts of the martyrs that milk was
an accepted symbol of the Holy Eucharist. Opposite to this are
doves and trees, which are often used as types of the souls of the
blessed in Paradise. Thus, on one side we have the faithful on earth
standing around the Divine food which prepares for heaven; and on
the other, souls released from the prison of the body have flown
away and are at rest, reposing amid the joys of another world; so
that it would almost seem as though the same sequence of ideas
presided over the decoration of these chambers, as was certainly
present to the minds of those who designed the ornamentation of the
sacramental chambers in the Cemetery of St. Callixtus (page 84).
And now at length we must conclude our visit to St. Callixtus. We
fear that we have already enumerated more than can be seen with
advantage during the course of a single visit; yet it is worth an effort
to see it all, because it includes monuments which illustrate nearly
every century of the period during which the Catacombs were used.
It is for this reason that a visit to St. Callixtus is so singularly
valuable, whether it be intended to take this cemetery as a sample of
all, or only to use it as an introduction to others. Those who propose
to pursue the subject further would do well to visit next the Catacomb
of SS. Nereus and Achilles, which lies at no great distance, off the
Via Ardeatina; then the Cemetery of Pretextatus on the other side of
the Via Appia; and finally, the Cœmeterium Ostrianum on the Via
Nomentana. When these have been carefully examined, there will
still remain many interesting monuments, of considerable historical
importance, in other less famous cemeteries; but enough will have
been seen to give an excellent general acquaintance with the main
characteristics of Roma Sotterranea.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.

EDINBURGH AND LONDON
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A VISIT TO
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