In this talk, Dr. Ümit Kurt will explore Mimaroğlu’s biography including his relationship with the Armenian journalist and professor Diran Kelekian, who was arrested by his former student Mimaroğlu in April 1915 and killed; examine the continuation of a genocidal regime in the modern Turkish Republic and how genocidaires such as Mimaroğlu constituted core elements of the new state; and explore what kinds of administrative/bureaucratic mechanisms made the Armenian Genocide possible and how technocrats like Mustafa Reşat, taking charge of these mechanisms, facilitated the genocide for political decision-makers.
Meghri Dervartanian will tell the story of Hovhannes Tumanyan’s Պոչատ Աղուէսը / Bochad Aghvesě / "The Fox That Lost It's Tail" in Armenian, followed by a fun activity. An adult must accompany the children. All are welcome. Admission is free.
The presentation will focus on the problem of how the memory of trauma, survivors of genocide and repression interact. In some cases, they can develop in parallel, independently of each other. In others, the memory of repressions is formed according to the model of memory of the genocide, when the memory of repressions repeats some of the mechanisms developed in connection with the memory of the genocide, both at the individual and institutional levels (compare with the multidirectional memory according to M. Rothberg). And thirdly, the memory of repression can be contrasted with the memory of genocide.
Thirty years after the war in Abkhazia (1992-1993), the Armenians of Abkhazia are embedded in the fragile process of Abkhazian national construction. Within this young ethnic democracy, they are thus regularly questioned on several aspects of their identity: Are they Abkhazians or Armenians? Are the Hamshen and Armenian identities contradictory? How do they identify themselves and how are they identified by the Abkhazian State? Finally, what might their relationship to the Republic of Armenia be?