Paper long abstract:

The Armenian genocide of 1915 is silenced in Turkish national history. However, postmemories of the event are transmitted from generation to generation within families and localities in Turkey. In this paper, based on a research project in which a hundred life history interviews were conducted with ordinary individuals from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds in different regions in Turkey, I will analyze how Turks, Kurds and Armenians in Turkey creatively use multiple sources of knowledge on the past, including postmemory, (national)history and the media, in order to narrate the history of 1915 in the present. I will show in particular how the way Turks, Kurds and Armenians reconstruct history differs vis-a-vis their positionality in 1915 and within the present political context of Turkey.