1473) An Armenian At Parliament In Early Republican Period: Berç Türker-Keresteciyan (1870-1949)

Semi Ertan (University of Michigan)

This study aims at contributing to an overview of the process of transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish nation-state in the life story of an Armenian personality (Berç Türker-Keresteciyan). While his election as a deputy among the minorities in the single party era seemed to be already promising, the period he lived through consolidated the suggestion to study his life story. As an extension of the general and large questions for the conduct of this research, the major concern for me was to contribute to the limits and possibilities of different destinations for the non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire in the process of transition to a nation state. This question was reduced in this study to a single spectacle of how the relationship or connection of an Armenian individual would be transformed to his community constituted by religious belongingness, to the state and to the society in general in his life story including serious ruptures in terms of these surroundings. The single spectacle of a life story may help us in understanding different aspects of the voyage of non-Muslims from the empire tothe nation state.

Please read the full document below:

. . .




.