A conversation in English |

on the new book by Ümit Kurt

The Armenians of Aintab

The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province

Ümit Kurt, born and raised in Gaziantep, Turkey, was astonished to learn that his hometown, called Aintab by the Ottomans, once had a large Armenian community. The Armenian presence had not only been destroyed—it had been replaced. Gaziantep was a typical Turkish city. Kurt provides an invaluable account of genocide at ground level by digging into the details of the Armenian dispossession, examining, in particular, the population that gained from ethnic cleansing. Records demonstrate how much new wealth became available when the prosperous Armenians were ejected. Kurt shows that the prospect of material gain was a key motivator of support for the genocide. Those who benefited most then financed the nationalist movement that brought the modern Turkish republic into being. The economic elite of Aintab was thus reconstituted along both ethnic and political lines. (Harvard University Press, 2021)

The live broadcast will be accompanied by Hebrew subtitles

Participants

Prof. Omer Bartov, Department of History, Brown University

Dr. Ümit Kurt, Polonsky Academy Fellow at the Van Leer
Jerusalem Institute