GLENDALE—Munich Professor Talin Suciyan will present a special reading and discussion titled, “I have not seen anybody else’s face, [the baby] is from my uncle:” An Armeno-Turkish Petition from the Archives of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople. The presentation will take place on Tuesday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m. at Abril Bookstore, located at 415 E. Broadway, Glendale, CA 91205. Admission is free. For more information, call 818.243.4112.
A lawsuit was filed in the town of Akşehir, Konya in 1856 against a woman who insisted that she had been impregnated by her uncle. Her name is not mentioned, but her persistence and resistance to the pressures of the Armenian local administration to recant her statement resulted in the creation of an archival document. This very unique case involving incest, adultery, and abortion informs its readers about the various layers of mid-19th century Ottoman social life in Konya.
Talin Suciyan was born and raised in Istanbul. She is an Assistant Professor of Turkish Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Institute for Near and Middle Eastern Studies. She is the author of The Armenians in Modern Turkey: Post-genocide Society, Politics and History (2016).
Why not address the thousands of Armenian women who have been abducted, raped, enslaved by the Turks and Kurds? I’m sure the topic opened doors for her in US and European academia, though.