Central Peripheries: Nationhood in Central Asia

Abstract

women and men more clearly would have helped bring forward the human, rather than group-based, dimension of the “Armenian issue.” Thus, the perspectives of ordinary people get lost throughout the book. In this regard, Zabel Yesayan, an Armenian novelist, is worth mentioning in a detailed way because she was the only female intellectual targeted for arrest and deportation by the CUP. Centrally, the importance of political context that influenced the Turkish government’s approach is not clearly laid out throughout. While mentioning Turkish intellectuals’ anti-Armenian attitude, Cheterian refers to their support for Yaşar Kemal, a landmark name in Turkish literature, due to his comments criticizing state policies against the Kurds. According to the author, the same intellectuals were never interested in the “Armenian issue,” and so they were all distant (p. 137). This argument is ambiguous partly because Cheterian ignores the novelty of the “Armenian issue” for Turkish intellectuals. The final point is related to the editing of the book. Some Turkish words, including proper nouns, are misspelled and could be easily spotted by a native Turkish corrector. To conclude, Open Wounds shows how the past influences today through the critical aspects of the reception of the “Armenian issue.” It is a valuable and insightful analysis that could be beneficial to the general audience and the experts of the topic. It also reveals what the literature needs: a complete, thorough, and well-rounded historical evaluation of intellectual debates about the issue because not only the factuality but also how this issue has been debated through time provides us the strategies to heal the bleeding wounds.