The elimination of Armenians and Greeks as part of Turkish nation building

Abstract

Like many other instances of nation building, Turkish nation building was a violent process. However, accounts of it usually focus on its constructive side or deal only with aspects of its destructive side. This thesis analyzes secondary texts concerned with anti-minority policies and acts implemented and carried out with a view to nation building in Turkey in the period from the 1890s to the 1960s. It concentrates on how two minority populations, Armenians and Greeks, were affected by the two main goals of Turkish nation building: the homogenization of the population and the 'nationalization' of the economy. It shows that the expropriation, expulsion, killing and assimilation of Armenians and Greeks in Ottoman and Republican times were important factors in making the Turkish nation. It also shows how i) the removal of Armenians and Greeks from Turkish territory and ii) the disappearance of most of the former Armenian-Greek bourgeoisie, the appropriation of its property by the Turkish state and its Muslim citizens and the cooptation of the know-how of the remaining minority businessmen contributed to the formation of the so-called national bourgeoisie. This process can also be related to the accumulation of Muslim-Turkish capital and to the homogenization of the population in Turkey in the early Republican era. Though the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and Kemalist nation builders largely succeeded in homogenizing the population and in 'Turkifying' the economy, their actions seem to have had unintended consequences that negatively impacted the development of Turkish civil society, class formation, education and academia, living standards, industrialization, and the project of getting on a par with Europe.