Thesis advisor: Elizabeth Shlala / This thesis explores how the Armenian Genocide affected and changed Armenian womens’ roles in post-Ottoman society and how the national rebuilding project relied upon women in both traditional and "modern" positions; specifically, their roles as mothers, educators, nurses, workers, patriots, as well as addresses the fluidity of identity and belonging in post-genocide Armenian society. Based on their experiences during the Armenian Genocide, women received different treatment from the larger Armenian society, and had different, sometimes contradictory roles prescribed to them. Women’s different treatment based on their genocide experiences highlight the complexities, challenges, and contradictions of the Armenian national rebuilding project, as well as the centrality of gender in this project and Armenian society as a whole. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: History.

<p>This dissertation examines the conflict in Eastern Anatolia in the early 20th century and the memory politics around it. It shows how discourses of victimhood have been engines of grievance that power the politics of fear, hatred and competing, exclusionary claims to statehood and territory by Turks, Armenians, and Kurds. Grounded in extensive archival research in American, British, Turkish, and Armenian historical repositories, I trace how discourses of communal victimhood were generated around the traumatic ordeals in the two decades that preceded the Armenian genocide of 1915-6, carried out by the Young Turk government. The dissertation pays special attention to the nature of political tension and debate among Armenians on the eve of the genocide as well as rethinking the events and later interpretations of the iconic Armenian uprising in the Ottoman city of Van in 1915. The analysis here goes beyond deterministic, escalationist and teleological perspectives on the antecedents of the Armenian genocide; instead, it highlights political agency and enabling structures of the war, offering a new perspective on the tragic violence of Eastern Anatolia in the early 20th century.</p> / Dissertation

Esta dissertação de início trata das particularidades do processo de mobilização pelo trabalho da imigração armênia no Distrito de Presidente Altino, localizado no município de Osasco, em relação com a capital paulista. Esse processo tem como referencial histórico de mobilização o Genocídio Armênio perpetrado pelo Império Otomano durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial (1914-1918), intepretada aqui a partir da mobilização geral (Gaudemar, 1981), momento histórico em que todos os esforços estão voltados para a produção, fazendo da guerra uma constante necessária à acumulação de capitais. Tentamos problematizar os desdobramentos históricos da relação social capitalista que foram transformando os sentidos da acumulação de capitais ao longo do século XX, bem como a dinâmica das personificações daí resultantes, até o contemporâneo capitalismo baseado na reprodução ficctícia do valor. Partindo da pesquisa histórica de trajetórias de mobilização aliada a observações feitas em trabalhos de campo, foram realizadas viagens à Argentina, Uruguai no intuito de apresentar as contradições perceptíveis entre a identidade armênia dessas localidades visitadas e a identidade observada em viagem à Armênia. / This dissertation deals with the particularities of the process of mobilization for the work of Armenian immigration in the District of Presidente Altino, located in the municipality of Osasco, in relation to the capital of São Paulo. This process has as a historical reference for mobilization the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during World War I (1914-1918), interpreted here using the concept of general mobilization (Gaudemar, 1981), historical moment in which all the efforts are directed to the production, requiring constant war to the accumulation of capital. We have tried to problematize the historical unfoldings of the capitalist social relationship that have been transforming the meanings of capital accumulation throughout the twentieth century, as well as the dynamics of the personifications resulting therefrom reaching the contemporary capitalism based on the fictional reproduction of value. Starting from the historical research of mobilization trajectories allied to observations made in field research. Travels were made to Argentina, Uruguay in order to present the perceptible contradictions between the Armenian identity of these visited localities and the identity observed during the travel to Armenia.

The Ottoman Empire was in serious decline by the late nineteenth century. Years of misrule, war, and oppression of its various nationalities had virtually driven the Turks from Europe, leaving the weakened Empire on the verge of collapse. By the 1870s the Armenians were the most troubling group, having gained international sympathy at the Congress of Berlin. As a result, violence against the Armenians had escalated dramatically by the turn of the century. They felt, however, that their fortune had changed when the liberal Young Turks seized power from the Sultan in 1908. Unfortunately, the Young Turks had a much more ominous plan for the Armenians. When they entered World War I as an ally of the Central Powers, they decided to use the cover of war to exterminate the Ottoman Armenians. Over one million Armenians were murdered, and the Turkish government's crimes went unpunished in the postwar world.

Esta dissertação de início trata das particularidades do processo de mobilização pelo trabalho da imigração armênia no Distrito de Presidente Altino, localizado no município de Osasco, em relação com a capital paulista. Esse processo tem como referencial histórico de mobilização o Genocídio Armênio perpetrado pelo Império Otomano durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial (1914-1918), intepretada aqui a partir da mobilização geral (Gaudemar, 1981), momento histórico em que todos os esforços estão voltados para a produção, fazendo da guerra uma constante necessária à acumulação de capitais. Tentamos problematizar os desdobramentos históricos da relação social capitalista que foram transformando os sentidos da acumulação de capitais ao longo do século XX, bem como a dinâmica das personificações daí resultantes, até o contemporâneo capitalismo baseado na reprodução ficctícia do valor. Partindo da pesquisa histórica de trajetórias de mobilização aliada a observações feitas em trabalhos de campo, foram realizadas viagens à Argentina, Uruguai no intuito de apresentar as contradições perceptíveis entre a identidade armênia dessas localidades visitadas e a identidade observada em viagem à Armênia. / This dissertation deals with the particularities of the process of mobilization for the work of Armenian immigration in the District of Presidente Altino, located in the municipality of Osasco, in relation to the capital of São Paulo. This process has as a historical reference for mobilization the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during World War I (1914-1918), interpreted here using the concept of general mobilization (Gaudemar, 1981), historical moment in which all the efforts are directed to the production, requiring constant war to the accumulation of capital. We have tried to problematize the historical unfoldings of the capitalist social relationship that have been transforming the meanings of capital accumulation throughout the twentieth century, as well as the dynamics of the personifications resulting therefrom reaching the contemporary capitalism based on the fictional reproduction of value. Starting from the historical research of mobilization trajectories allied to observations made in field research. Travels were made to Argentina, Uruguay in order to present the perceptible contradictions between the Armenian identity of these visited localities and the identity observed during the travel to Armenia.

This master thesis is devoted to an analysis of causes and development of the Armenian Genocide (1915 - 1916) on a central and also on a provincial level. A first part of this thesis examines the phenomenon generally from perspective of political and social history. The key element of used interpretation is emergence of a conflict environment in a process modernization that made the genocide possible. In this context my thesis emphasise role of making of modern political parties, switching from dynastic concept of legitimacy of power to ethno-democratic based conception, and brutalization of public space caused by international conflicts. After the analysis of decision making process the text also presents the general developments of the "Great Disaster" with emphasis on actions taken by the central government in Istanbul. The second part of the work is dealing with ways in which the genocidal policy was introduced into praxis in provincial towns Mezreh and Harpoot. This section is largely build up on the primary sources left by local community of missionaries and American consul. The process of extermination and deportation in a significant way enhanced by a collapse of mutual thrust between the Armenian and the Muslim communities in the towns after searching for arms and arrests of Armenian...

This thesis seeks to examine the characteristics of the Turkish Lobby in the United States and the strategies it has utilized in its approach to countering the Armenian Lobby's efforts at official Recognition of the Armenian Genocide. While the Armenian Lobby and its approach to Genocide Recognition in the United States has been well-documented, the organizational structure of the Turkish Lobby and its approach to counter Genocide Recognition has been less explored. The Turkish Lobby consists of various Turkish-American organizations with close ties to Ankara, as well as professional lobbying and public relations firms contracted by the Turkish government for millions of dollars annually. The variety of actors that compose the Turkish Lobby is a reflection of Turkey's multi-pronged approach to preventing Genocide Recognition. This seeks to examine the primary strategies the Turkish Lobby has employed to counter Genocide Recognition, as well as its strengths and weaknesses according to indicators of effective ethnic group lobbying. Two case studies are presented in order to gain a better understanding of the characteristics of the Turkish Lobby and the strategies it employed to prevent two House Resolutions calling for Genocide Recognition. The findings show that the Turkish Lobby fulfills several...

Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide is the most persistent case of institutionalized genocide denial in recorded history (Stanton, 2010). Through conducting a multimodal critical discourse analysis based on Foucauldian theories of power and exploring the socio-political dimensions of cultural trauma, memory, and photography, this thesis examines genocide denial in the case of the Armenian Genocide and seeks to understand why the ways in which we choose to remember the past matters. Genocide denial provides a compelling case for identifying how discourses legitimize power, politically, judicially, and globally. By applying a highly theoretical lens, I will consider how history is a highly political project of memory upheld by systems of power, while considering the role of eyewitness narration and documentation. It is in this tension between postmodern conceptualization of the regulatory function of discourse and the existence of historical fact that my thesis situates itself. My research will be informed primarily by Foucauldian (1982, 1995, 2003) theories of power and discourse; the unique role of witness photography in times of atrocity (P. Balakian, 2015; Batchen & Prosser, 2012; Clarke, 1997); and theories of trauma and memory (Alexander, 2004; Halbwachs & Coser, 1992; Herman, 1997; Wertsch & Roediger III, 2008).

This thesis examines the politics of narrative control, and how it relates to the formation of diasporic consciousness among Turkish migrants in the United States. It asks how Turkish diasporic identity is formed and shaped by discourses that frame Turks, and that interrogate who or what a ‘Turk’ is? This thesis suggests that this process of continual construction and re-construction of diasporic consciousness should be investigated as a matter of competitive identity formation, meaning that there is competition between multiple actors to impose a definition or label on a diasporic group and to achieve broad-based support for that label or definition. This also implies the attribution of specific values, ideas, and political agendas to that group. The thesis examines the roots, motivations and activities of Turkish American activists in Washington DC. Based on an analysis of their political orientations and internal fissures, it focuses on the current political debate over official recognition of the deportations and massacres of Armenians by Ottoman forces as a genocide. It argues that Turkish American activists have coalesced on the defensive around this issue, framing it as a matter critical to the identity of Turks. Their manifold activities to prevent the further institutionalisation of the ‘genocide’ label in American political discourse do not, however, always resonate with the passive majority of Turkish Americans.

No description available.