Scholar: Armenians want to remember a history that Turks want to forget

PanARMENIAN.Net - Ugur Ümit Üngör is one of a new generation of scholars emerging from Turkey who deal forthrightly with the Armenian Genocide, The Armenian Mirror-Spectator says.

Assistant professor at the Department of History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and researcher at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, his main interest is the historical sociology of mass violence and nationalism. He has recently published three books dealing with the Armenian Genocide and related issues.

Üngör studied at the Universities of Groningen, Utrecht, Toronto and Amsterdam. After obtaining his master’s degree in 2005 at the latter university he continued his studies until defending his doctorate there in 2009. He lectured at the University of Sheffield in England from 2008-09 and served as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for War Studies of University College Dublin (Ireland) from 2009 to 2010.

According to a September 17, 2009 interview with Vahram Emiyan published in the Beirut Armenian newspaper Aztag, Üngör was led to his interest in the Armenian Genocide by reading about the Holocaust, and in particular, a book by Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust.

In 2007 Üngör published his first book, Vervolging, Onteigening en Vernietiging: De Deportatie van Ottomaanse Armeniërs tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog, a short volume in Dutch which provides an overview of the Armenian Genocide. It also includes a sociological analysis of identity conflict. In the Armenian-Turkish conflict, as Üngör later summarized, “Armenians want to remember a history that Turks want to forget.” Since their “constructed memories are a prime component of group identity, both Armenians and Turks experience any deviation from that memory as a direct attack on their very identity. For Turks most of this also relates to a guilty conscience, a so-called ‘perpetrator trauma’: facing the full reality of the genocide is simply too painful and shameful.”

His most recent volume, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London: Continuum, 2011), was co-written with Mehmet Polatel. It examines how Turkish economic nationalism led to the confiscation of Armenian wealth and property, and how the proceeds were distributed. Again, general conditions are illustrated with detailed provincial studies, in this case of Adana in addition to Diyarbekir. The role of local elites and their relationship with the central authorities, and the participation of ordinary Turks in the plunder and distribution are shown.

Turkish and Kurdish reactions to Üngör’s books, ranging “between vitriol and praise,” have on the average been “ambivalent.” Üngör explained: “Nationalist Turks have placed me firmly on their treachery radar and have threatened me in various ways, whereas liberal Turks have encouraged and praised me for their own reasons. Nothing surprising there, but some reactions have surprised me. Some family members have attacked me without having read a single sentence from any of my publications. But then, some Turks have contacted me privately and explained that they grew up with stories from the Genocide. Since I never lived in Turkey, do not have a degree specifically in Turkish history and therefore do not consider myself a ‘Turkologist,’ I am rather unknown in and isolated from the Turkish academic community. That might change because my books are currently being translated into Turkish.”