09.09.2023


Article by the AGMI researchers Edita Gzoyan, Regina Galustyan, Shushan Khachatryan and Narine Margaryan “In the Beautiful Heaven, a Golden Cage: Race, Identity and Memory in Turkification of Armenian Children in State Orphanages during the Armenian Genocide” was published in the prestigious Journal of Genocide Research (Impact Factor 1.5, 1 Quartile).

Building on existing research, this article first presents the ideological foundations of Turkish nation-building and the implementation of the Armenian Genocide to achieve this end, focusing on the forcible transfer and assimilation which selected Armenian children endured.

Informed by both published and unpublished memories of transferred children, the second part of the article reconstructs the actual process and methods of Turkification used in several state-run orphanages while also presenting the resistance of Armenian children to these efforts.

This article expands the number of known state orphanages and widens the geographic scope of where Turkification practices took place, thus substantiating a general assimilation policy of the CUP towards some selected Armenian children. It also enters new testimonies into public circulation that help to better understand the role of forced transfer during the Armenian Genocide and its implications on the survivors. The article argues that forced transfer and Turkification were used as a method of destroying the Armenian community https://www.tandfonline.com/.../10.../14623528.2023.2237700.