Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes to examine how “Armenia” is imagined and brought into existence in by diverse Armenian populations in contemporary Istanbul, Turkey.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary Istanbul not only is home to 70,000 post-Genocide Turkish Armenians, but also 20,000 recent (illegal) Armenians from the Republic of Armenia (RoA) who have immigrated to the city despite the political conflict between the two countries (no diplomatic relationships, a closed border and a disputed history). For many diaspora Armenians around the globe, homeland is not a fixed territory, however the materialization of the RoA in the form of a nation-state have shifted the centre of attention to the Armenia side of the Turkey-Armenia border. However, for many Istanbulite Armenians, "homeland Armenia" is still in Turkey, and they still feel connected to this homeland by living in Turkey. Moreover, many of them do not want to be associated with the RoA, its distance to the West and its Soviet history. On the other hand, many Armenian immigrants in Istanbul express their feelings about homeland in a more flexible way, referring to both sides of the border as homeland in different contexts.

Based on ethnographic research among Armenians in Istanbul, I would like to speculate on the location(s) of "Armenian homeland" and definition(s) of "Armenian homelanders." Neither Turkish-Armenians nor Armenian-Armenians form homogenous groups, and their self-definitions of "homeland" and "homelanders" have been deeply related to their perceptions about each other and the countries they are coming from. In this paper, I will critically examine the factors that shape these differences in perceptions of the other, and the imaginations about the homeland and the homelander.