ABSTRACT

The introduction sets out the approach and aims of the book and explains its wider relevance for the study of nationalism, memory and conflict, particularly with regard to the Armenian-Kurdish-Turkish case. It questions the notion of a simple, homogeneous “national memory”. Highlighting the present lack in any comparative work that engages the “Armenian question” of the past and the “Kurdish question” of the present into a meaningful and historically well-founded dialogue, the introduction introduces memory as a highly contested discursive field through which conflicting imaginaries of homeland, past violence and the other can be studied. Engaging with international and local debates on memory and its manipulation through political actors, the introduction presents a novel approach that departs from an ethno-centered understanding of collective memory as homogeneous and dichotomously fragmented along the perpetuated divide of in- and out-group. Instead, it argues in favor of emancipating the notion of “collective memory” from the “ethnonational collective” and introduces the threefold contested geography of Eastern Turkey/Western Armenia/Northern Kurdistan as a multi-facetted “embattled dreamland” that defies the simplifying assumption of a “national memory”. In order to investigate in comparative perspective this challenging and fundamental question, whose relevance transcends the narrow confines of area studies, the introduction raises the need for a new set of empirical data in the form of biographical narrative interviews to be compiled in both Turkey and Armenia.