MEMORY, IDENTITY, HOME

This book explores historical, political and socio-cultural existence of the Armenian and Jewish communities in the capital city of Turkey, Ankara. The objective, with a special emphasis on belonging', is to understand their identification, self-understanding, and groupness', through their spatial relations at the city level, encounter with the acts of the state, and of intra-community relations. It is important to understand how people, defined legally to be minority' and socio-politically at the margin, if not outside, of the imagined nation', have experienced the tripartite construction of the nation/Turkishness, city-space, and citizenship in a city projected to be the symbol newly established Turkish Republican nation-state and the source of the homogeneous population that would help to construct the nation as an imagined community'. Offering rich details of oral history narratives, the book will be of interest to those who grapple with issues of identity, belonging and memory as well as to sociologists, anthropologists and local historians.

Autorentext

Özgür Bal, studied Political Science and International Relations at Marmara University, Cultural Studies at Istanbul Bilgi University, Sociology at METU. Currently, is a PhD Candidate and Research Assistant at Sociology, METU, Turkey.