Talin Suciyan to Speak at NAASR on Armenian Community in Turkey

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NAASRSuciyanArmenians in Modern TurkeyBELMONT, Mass. — Dr. Talin Suciyan will present a lecture titled “The Armenians in Modern Turkey: Post-Genocide Society, Politics, and History,” on Wednesday, April 20, at 8 p.m., at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Center, 395 Concord Ave.

After the Armenian Genocide of 1915, in which more than a million Armenians died, thousands of Armenians lived and worked in the Turkish state alongside those who had persecuted their communities. Living in the context of pervasive denial, how did Armenians remaining in Turkey record their own history?

In her new book, The Armenians in Modern Turkey (I.B. Tauris, 2016), Suciyan explores the life experienced by these Armenian communities as Turkey’s modernization project of the 20th century gathered pace. Suciyan used Turkish state archives, minutes of the Armenian National Assembly, a kaleidoscopic series of personal diaries, memoirs and oral histories, various Armenian periodicals such as newspapers, yearbooks, and magazines, as well as statutes and laws which led to the continuing persecution of Armenians.

The first history of its kind, The Armenians in Modern Turkey is a fresh contribution to the history of modern Turkey and the Armenian experience there. As historian Raymond Kevorkian has written, “This study fills a historiographical vacuum. The subjects broached in this book until now constituted a white page, doubtless because the Turkish academic environment was not interested in conducting a study of this nature.”

Suciyan completed her PhD at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich where she is currently an assistant professor at the Institute of Near and Middle Eastern Studies.

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