Descripción del proyecto
The proposed project aims to study 'remnants' from past atrocities in contemporary Turkey and its associated migrant and diaspora communities elsewhere. 'Remnants' are conceptualized as multiplex phenomena which have an enduring effect in the after-life of persons and communities which were once associated with them. These may be material remains in the form of houses, temples, and other forms of built and spatial structure once used and inhabited by communities that were displaced, deported, ethnically cleansed, or exterminated. They may also be immaterial affects, in the form of memory or the imagination as associated with past atrocities, such as accounts of haunting and/or loss in the aftermath of violence. 'Remnants' figure in subjective worlds in embodied forms, where contemporary inhabitants of Turkey have begun to claim Armenian, Greek, or Kurdish ancestry. They are also 'political' insofar as they constitute the context for ongoing inter-communitarian relations in and outside Turkey, relations which sometimes take 'legal' and 'economic' forms. This project proposes to ethnographically study 'remnants' in Turkey and its diaspora communities at a time when Turkey is being challenged to face its past of mass atrocities. We propose to actualize this research by focusing on four key city-sites (Tunceli-Elazig, Mardin, Diyarbakir-Batman, and Antakya) in Turkey's under-studied south and south Eastern regions, relevant from the point of view of the mass atrocities targeting Armenians, Assyrian-Syriacs, Alevis, Kurds and other local communities which this project aims to focus on. The project will be composed of four ethnographic sub-projects in these sites and their respective diasporas outside Turkey (Syria, Cyprus, Germany, Sweden) composed of migrants, deportees, survivors, or refugees from the sites of mass atrocity. The project will employ innovative methodologies in ethnographic and archival research in addressing the aftermath of violence in Turkey.