From Muslim citizen to Christian minority: Tolerance, secularism and Armenian return conversions in Turkey
Item
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Title
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From Muslim citizen to Christian minority: Tolerance, secularism and Armenian return conversions in Turkey
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:a766d3e35c31:11966
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identifier
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12634
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Creator
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Ozgul, Ceren,
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Contributor
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Talal Asad
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Cultural anthropology | citizenship | minorities | religious conversion | secularism | tolerance | Turkey
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines the manner in which Turkish secularism has come to delimit, define, and calibrate minority religious practices as well as citizenship policies by tracing different categories of the secular and the religious in Turkey. It is an ethnographic study of conversion from Islam to (Armenian) Christianity, among the converted Armenian community in Istanbul. Since early 1990s, hundreds of citizens claiming Armenian descent have submitted petitions to Turkey's secular legal authorities to change their existing name and religion in the public records. They trace their ancestry to Christian Ottoman Armenians who converted to Islam during the genocide of 1915. Given that the Turkish state refuses to recognize the genocide, the return conversion of Islamized Armenians points to the violence that is still largely unmentionable.;This project is a case study of the nature of secular tolerance, and the notions through which it is discussed in Turkey: justice, legal reform, and genocide recognition. It is also an ethnographic study of the descendents of the forcibly Islamized Armenians and their return conversions through an examination of accompanying court cases and conversion procedures, participant observation in several Armenian churches, interviews with converts and their lawyers, court officials and Armenian clergy of different ranks. I explore in detail the process of claiming Armenianness. These return conversions provide a unique perspective for understanding the crisis of citizenship in the heart of Turkish secularism; simultaneously they illustrate the recent shifts in the identities of the citizens under the government of Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi or AKP (Justice and Development Party) since the early 2000s.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Anthropology
