Memory, Identity, Home : Armenian and Jewish Communities in the Capital City of Turkey

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.