Higher education in Turkey

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429023163-19

This chapter consists of three stories from the author's father, Tosun Terzioglu’s life. Although they belong to different periods of time in his life and include different people, they all point out the difficulties in facing and talking about the 1915 Armenian Massacres in personal, familial, academic and political settings. He still remember how his father and his academic friends spent long hours of meticulous planning and strategizing so that the 2005 Conference could take place in Istanbul. His father was a mathematician, but he was always interested in how the official account of Ottoman and Turkish history is produced and which voices and perspectives are silenced in that process. He grew up in the 1940s cosmopolitan Istanbul among Armenian, Greek and Jewish friends and neighbors. He mournfully witnessed them gradually leaving Turkey, throughout the years, facing the political and social oppression and discrimination, and following violent events, such as the Istanbul Pogrom on September 6–7, 1955.