A Transdisciplinary Perspective on the Historical Traumas Among Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish People of Anatolia

Download or read book A Transdisciplinary Perspective on the Historical Traumas Among Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish People of Anatolia written by Nermin Soyalp and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focuses on the major impacts of reported historical traumas among ethnic groups (Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish) in Anatolia, Turkey, since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and how an understanding of significant psychosocial impacts might support current reconciliation and healing efforts among these politically conflicted groups. Historical trauma is here defined as the complex, lasting, and devastating physical, social, and psychological impacts upon a massive number of people at the same time and in similar ways. Collective trauma often affects the society at multiple levels: from micro (individual) to mezzo (local community) to macro (culture and the society at large). These multilevel traumas are inevitably passed on to subsequent generations and thus become transgenerational and historical. Applying a transdisciplinary framework, this study serves as a demonstration of historical traumas in Anatolia. The theoretical arguments of this research shed light and provide interpretation for what is going on in Turkey today and historically amongst Turks, Kurds, and Armenians. Furthermore, this research reveals epistemologies of ignorance in Turkey as keeping the lid on transgenerational experiences of trauma and preventing appropriate healing modalities. The epistemology of ignorance intends to keep information away from people, and in Turkey's case, it is currently tied to the maintenance of the Turkish National identity. In other words, transgenerational trauma has created an epistemology of ignorance, whereby certain historical realities have been consciously and unconsciously suppressed, and this, in turn, has deepened the trauma by not acknowledging it or beginning to address it.