SPECIAL REPORTS

Kütahya Governor Faik Ali Ozansoy was one of those who displayed the courage to stand up to the Union and Progress government to protect the Armenians during the inferno of 1915. In our “Rescuer” series, Ari Şekeryan sheds light on Ozansoy’s struggle, and how Armenians thanked him.

Social engineering was an important method applied by the Committee of Union and Progress in establishing relationships between State and society. This policy, with aspects of resettlement, assimilation and slaughter, appears clearly in the ideological and political progress of Union and Progress members. The Union and Progress Party’s policy of Turkification and Islamisation, applied across the empire, was adopted by the Kemalists for the new Republic. Şükrü Kaya was a member of the elite group of actors who implemented these policies.

The exhibition titled ‘Spectography: Tracing the Ghosts’ opened at Depo on March 14, and Arménouhie Kévonian’s book ‘Gülizar’s Black Wedding’, published by the Aras Publishing House in Turkish, was also launched during the opening. The exhibition features the photographs and videos of three Swiss artists, Anna Barsaghian, Stefan Kristensen and Uriel Orlow, produced during their travels across Anatolia.

Entrusted to her daughter fifty years after she was abducted, the memoirs of Gülizar have been published in Turkish by the Aras Publishing House with the title ‘Gülizar’s Black Wedding’. Gülizar’s story contains messages for us all…

Along with Mamuretül Aziz, the Diyarbekir Province is an area where we encounter the highest number of instances of disobedience during the Armenian Genocide, or where the most accounts of disobedience have reached the present day. The sense among communities in the area that “with 1915, there was an irreversible rupture in our fate as well” is perhaps the most important factor in that the memory of the period has remained so vivid in the region.

The assignment during the Republican Period of important tasks in matters such as the settlement of immigrants and the Kurdish question to former Union and Progress members like Mustafa Abdülhalik Renda who played active roles in the perpetration of the Armenian Genocide, clearly shows that social engineering policy of Union and Progress influenced the violence, enforced migration and assimilation practices of the State in the Republican Period.

The guest on March 5 of the Thursday Talks organized by the History Foundation was Nevzat Onaran. Onaran presented a speech titled ‘The Code of 1915: Emval-i Metruke/Abandoned Properties’ and we talked to him about the continuity of the economic policy based on liquidification, and the laws that enabled that continuity.

Executive director of HRW Middle East and North Africa Division Sarah Leah Whitson will be visiting Istanbul on April 24 as part of the ‘Project 2015’ group to take part in the Armenian Genocide 100th Anniversary Commemoration. We interviewed Whitson in Istanbul, where she held meetings with civilian society organizations in Turkey, which will participate in the organization of the commemoration event; and asked her about Turkey’s position in 2015, the Diaspora’s expectations and the impact of Armenian identity on her life.

The Hrant Dink murder is seen by the ruling party as a weapon that can be used against the Gülen movement. This is an ugly plan in which one of the country’s greatest tests of justice is being instrumentalized.