This panel discussion will address epistemological, ethical, and methodological predicaments and fallacies that arise in genocide studies under pressures of systematic denialism. It analyzes scholarly accounts of the Armenian (1915–1917) and Dersim (1937–1938) catastrophes—two cases the study of which has been tainted for decades by aggressive denialism in Turkey. Building on disciplines of anthropology and history, and drawing on a variety of source ranging from archival documents to ethnographic engagements, this panel will demonstrate how eclipsing denialisms have trapped contemporary studies of the Armenian and Dersim Genocides into dichotomies (victim vs. perpetrator, heroism vs. betrayal, ethnic vs. religious, rebellion vs. compliance).
Zeynep Türkyilmaz received her PhD from the Department of History at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2009. Her dissertation, “Anxieties of Conversion: Missionaries, State and Heterodox Communities in the Late Ottoman Empire,” is based on intensive research conducted in Ottoman, British, and several American missionary archives. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Postdoctoral Fellow at UNC-Chapel Hill between 2009-2010 and a postdoctoral 2010/11 Fellow of Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe at the Forum Transregionale Studien. She worked as an Assistant Professor of history at Dartmouth College between 2011 and 2016 and as program coordinator and research fellow at Koc University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations finishing her book project based on her dissertation. Her research and teaching interests include state-formation, gender, nationalism, colonialism, and religion with a focus on heterodoxy and missionary work in the Middle East from 1800 to the present. She returned as a EUME Fellow for the academic year of 2017/18 and continues to be with EUME in 2018/19 and 2019/20 as a Fellow of the Forum Transregionale Studien associated with the Center for Global History at Freie Universität Berlin.
Yektan Türkyilmaz received his PhD from Duke University Department of Cultural Anthropology. He taught courses at University of Cyprus, Sabancı, Bilgi, Duke California State Universities addressing the debates around the notions of collective violence, memory making and reconciliation, and politics of music. He is working on his book manuscript based on his dissertation, Rethinking Genocide: Violence and Victimhood in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1915, that addresses the conflict in Eastern Anatolia in the early 20th century and the memory politics around it. He has been a 2014/15 EUME Fellow and returned as a EUME Fellow for the academic years 2017/18, 2018/19, and 2019/20.
In accordance with the measures against the spread of the coronavirus, this seminar session will be held virtually. Depending on approval by the speakers, the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available via the account of the Forum Transregionale Studien on Soundcloud.