The Armenian Studies Program at Fresno State will hold a two-day conference on “The State of the Art of the Early Turkish Republic Period: Historiography, Sources, and Future Directions” at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, on Zoom and 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, on Zoom. Registration is required, but the event is free and open to the public.
On Friday, the panel includes Dr. Christine Philliou, associate professor at UC Berkeley; Dr. Christopher Sheklian, director of the Zohrab Information Center; and Erdem Ilter, UCLA. They will explorer “The Ottoman Imperial Legacy on Turkish Nation Building: An Analysis of the General Inspectorates (1895 – 1945).”
On Saturday, the international panel includes Dr. Talin Suciyan, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich; Dr. Ümit Kurt, Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem; and Dr. Ari Şekeryan, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The topic is “The ‘loyal citizens’ of the Republic: The Armenian Community During the First Years of the Republic of Turkey (1923-1928).”
Organizers say this conference aims to use the historical context of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Republic of Turkey to discuss and analyze issues that played a dominant role in the history of this period, including the emergence of the modern state, the impact of war, nationalism and nation-building, and the role of religion and secularism.
The conference is sponsored by the Thomas A. Kouymjian Family Foundation, the Leon S. Peters Foundation, and the M. Victoria Kazan Fund. For more information, contact the Armenian Studies Program at 559.278.2669.
