16:50 - 18:30
P5
Room: South Room 222
Panel Session 5
Altan Atamer - De-Orientalizing World War I
Didac Queralt - When the State and Church Clash: Political Legacies of Religious Repression in Nazi Germany
Giacomo Lemoli - The political legacy of violent inter-group contact
Mary A. Shiraef - The Impact of Communist-era Multiethnic Identity Engineering on Post-communist Political Identity Transmission: A Natural Experiment at the Albania-Greece Border
De-Orientalizing World War I
P5-04
Presented by: Altan Atamer
Altan Atamer
University of Connecticut
Though World War I’s significance to international relations is rarely disputed, many scholars and historians take for granted its key events. Typical accounts of World War I articulate a historical narrative defined by the various declarations of war and treaties of surrender between the various members of the Entente and Central Powers. Removed from these narratives though, are substantive engagement with Turkish experiences and agency. Interpreting war from the tradition of critical war studies and postcolonialism, I offer an alternative reading of World War I that focuses on the Turkish experience of war during the later stages of World War I and beyond. This article shows that World War I persisted beyond the official treaties that mark its “end,” and that traditional accounts of World War I preserve Orientalist power dynamics and identities which continue to frame the former Entente’s relationship with Turkey and the domestic relations between the Turkish state and Turkish citizens. By illuminating the Turkish experience of war, this article seeks to disrupt traditional international relations’ uncritical fascination with the “Great Powers’” perspective and explore its complicity in the destruction of agency and voices from the Global South. This article contributes to the historiography of World War I, global international relations, and theories of war termination.