Fresno State Armenian Series Publishes “The State of the Art of the Early Turkish Republic Period: Historiography, Sources and Future Directions”

Edited by Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Ümit Kurt, and Ara Sarafian

FRESNO — The Armenian Studies Program announces the publication of The State of the Art of the Early Turkish Republic Period: Historiography, Sources and Future Directions, Volume 17 in the Armenian Series of The Press at California State University, Fresno.

Edited by Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Ümit Kurt, and Ara Sarafian, The State of the Art of the Early Turkish Republic Period is the third in the Armenian Studies Program Conference series.

The chapters included in this work were first presented as papers at a conference entitled “The State of the Art of the Early Turkish Republic Period: Historiography, Sources and Future Directions,” held October 2–3, 2020, organized by Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian and Dr. Ümit Kurt, and sponsored by the Armenian Studies Program of California State University, Fresno. The papers have since been edited and appear here in a single volume.

The chapters include contributions by Christine Philliou, on “Keynote Address: New Directions in the Early History of the Turkish Republic”; by Ümit Kurt, on “The End of Armenian Aintab and the Rise of a New Turkish Bourgeoisie (1915-1945)”; by Talin Suciyan and Harry Harootunian, on “Abstracting the Peasant in Ottoman and Turkey’s Historiography”; by Ari Şekeryan, on “‘Loyal’ Citizens of the Republic: Revisiting the Nationalist Policies of the Republic of Turkey and the Precarious Situation of the Armenian Community in Istanbul (1923–1928)”; by Christopher Sheklian, on “The Problem-Space of Secularism in the Early Turkish Republic”; by Ayşe Kose Badur, on “A Portrait of a Unionist in the Early Republican Era: Mehmed Cavid (1876–1926)”; and by Hans-Lukas Kieser, an “Afterword: Reassessing the Formation of Post-Lausanne ‘New Turkey.’”

“This is an important book on a topic that has been under-studied,” said Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian, general editor of the Armenian Series. “A better understanding of the early Turkish Republic period is essential to understanding Armenian-Turkish relations today.”

“The scholarship on Turkey’s pre-republican history has made great strides over the past three decades, expanding the historical aperture to a plurality of actors and becoming more representative of diverse political, religious, and cultural groups involved in the transition to post-Ottoman Turkey,” said Dr. Hans-Lukas Kieser. “The proliferation of research on late-Ottoman history, including notably the last Ottoman decade, has contributed to a thorough revision of republican Turkey’s foundation in general and of the early Republic in particular.  This is scholarly work in progress that grasps the republican nation-state as a post-genocidal polity.”

Copies of The State of the Art of the Early Turkish Republic Period are available for purchase from: Abril Bookstore, http://www.abrilbooks.com/books/state-of-the-art-of-the-early-turkish-republic-period-the.html or the National Association for Armenian Studies & Research (NAASR) Bookstore, https://naasr.org/products/the-state-of-the-art-of-the-early-turkish-republic-historiography-sources-and-future-directions

All of the books in the Armenian Series can be found at the following website: https://cah.fresnostate.edu/armenianstudies/resources/armenianseries/index.html