Book Launch: Umut Özkırımlı & Spyros A. Sofos’s TORMENTED BY HISTORY

Nationalism in Greece and Turkey

ASEN Annual Conference on Nationalism
16th April, London

Program

18:00 – 19:30
Wednesday 16th April

Opening remarks by Professors John Breuilly & Kevin Featherstone of the LSE
Followed by a wine reception

Waterstone’s Economists’ Bookshop
Clare Market, Portugal Street
London WC2A 2AB
RSVP to Kathleen May: hurst4@atlas.co.uk or 0207 255 2201

Tormented by History
Nationalism in Greece and Turkey
Umut Ozkirimli and Spyros A. Sofos
A comparative study of nationalism in Greece and Turkey. This book traces the emergence and development of the Greek and Turkish nationalist projects, challenging the received wisdom about the inevitability of the rise of a 'Greek' and a 'Turkish' nation. Tormented by History is the first comparative study of nationalism in Greece and Turkey. Grounded in an extensive critical review of the popular and scholarly historiography and literature on Greek and Turkish nationalisms, it traces the emergence and development of the Greek and Turkish nationalist projects over the past two hundred years,challenging the received wisdom about the inevitability of the rise of a 'Greek' and a 'Turkish' nation. Acknowledging the complexity of the relationship between the two nationalisms, Ozkirimli and Sofos, one a Turk, the other a Greek, examine a complex terrain involving the politics of language, religion, memory and history, territory and landscape; processes of homogenization, marginalization and minoritization of populations and cultures as well as institutional support of Greek and Turkish nationalism. They also discuss the place of 'constitutive violence' - physical and symbolic - in the nationalist imagination and the ensuing trauma and sense of loss in the process of establishment and consolidation of Greek and Turkish identities.

REVIEWS

Fred Halliday,
Professor of International Relations,
London School of Economics and
Political Science

This is a most impressive text, drawing together, and in a very fluent and integrated way, the histories and debates on nationalism in Greece and Turkey and, at the same time, integrating these with the broader debates on nationalism that have been taking place over the past two decades or so on nationalism in general.

I am familiar with some of the individual, ‘national’, histories of politics and ideology in these countries (e.g. Mouzelis on Greece, Bernard Lewis on Turkey) but have never seen a comparative study of this kind, let alone one that, drawing on material in both languages to great effect, relates these two cases to the broader literature.

This is therefore a study both comparative and critical, the second in at least three senses: (i) the critique of primordialist theories and narratives of Greek and Turkish nationalism; (ii) the denial of the uniqueness of each case and the illustration of their conventional, almost modular, adhere to broader themes in modern nationalism; (iii) the identification of areas, such as the use of national terminology, of the treatment of minorities, in which a sociological and modernist analysis of both nationalisms leads to critique of the policies and official myths of these states.
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Professor John Breuilly,
Chair in Nationalism,
London School of Economics and Political Science

The historiography of modern Turkey and Greece is dominated by conflicting national perspectives in which uniqueness is stressed and where the other nation figures as the other.

This remarkable collaboration transcends this perspective by bringing together expertise on nationalism in both countries as well as on theoretical debates about nationalism. It proceeds by means of careful comparison, taking various themes which are explored for each case and then compared and contrasted.

This is both historically illuminating and a contribution to better understanding between Turkey and Greece.

AUTHORS

UMUT ÖZKIRIMLI is Associate Professor of Politics and the Director of Turkish-Greek Studies at Istanbul Bilgi University. His previous publications include Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (2000), Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Engagement (2005) and an edited collection Nationalism and Its Futures (2003), all published by Palgrave Macmillan.

SPYROS A. SOFOS is Senior Research Fellow in European and International Studies at the European Research Centre and the Helen Bamber Centre for the Study of Conflict and Human Rights of Kingston University, London. He is editor of the 'Journal of Contemporary European Studies' and of the journal 'Southeastern Europe; charting an emerging european region'. His publications include Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (edited with Brian Jenkins, 1996) and Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Networks (with Roza Tsagarousianou, forthcoming).