Prof. Ugur Ungor on Property Confiscation during Armenian Genocide (April 30, 2012)

The Genocide Education Project (GenocideEducation.org) hosted a presentation by Prof. Ugur Ungor. Ungor's lecture was based on his two recent books, "The Making of Modern Turkey", which addresses how Western Armenia became part of the Turkish state, and "Confiscation and Destruction", about Turkey's seizure of Armenian Property. Prof. Üngör is Assistant Professor of History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly newspaper. He studied sociology and history in North America and Europe, and received a Master's Degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from the University of Amsterdam. His PhD thesis, published by Oxford University Press is titled, "The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950." From 1913 to 1950, successive Turkish governments subjected the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire to a violent policy of ethnic homogenization. Based on a decade of research on a range of unexamined records, Üngör demonstrates that the Armenian genocide was part and parcel of this wider process. He offers insights into the economic ramifications of the genocide and describes how the plunder was organized on the ground. He concludes that this violent process destroyed historical regions and emptied multicultural cities, but also cleared the way for the modern Turkish nation state. For teaching resources on the Armenian Genocide: www.TeachGenocide.com The Genocide Education Project GenocideEducation.org